Lost your USAID funding? These aid matchmakers have a solution.

The City of Seattle partnered with Zillow to create a searchable database of affordable vacant rental units. Case managers are using the tool to get homeless residents into housing.

ARPA-E, a Department of Energy program that provides high-risk grants to clean energy startups and universities, has leveraged $4 billion in government funding into $20 billion in additional private investment and 1,400+ patents. Companies like Fervo and Form Energy have advanced clean energy technologies using these grants.

Donors are cutting out intermediaries and funding local organizations through direct cash transfers to ensure a higher amount of aid goes directly to the people who need it. The flexibility also lets communities prioritize their needs as they see fit, as they know what will work best.

Palestinians trying to cross the border into Egypt to escape the war are starting crowdfunding campaigns with the help of strangers from other countries on social media to afford the rising cost of doing so.

RefashionNYC provides bins for commercial and residential buildings with more than 10 units, though the Department of Sanitation, to recycle clothes and textiles. When full, the contents are sorted by Housing Works, who either sells donations in their thrift shops, sends them to other nonprofit second-hand stores, or exports them to overseas markets. Clothing that is too damaged to be donated is sold to companies that reprocess them as rags or seat padding. 1,300 bins have been installed and over 12,200 tons of clothing and textiles have been diverted from landfills.

Across the country, governments at every level are working to tackle homelessness. In Houston, connecting permanent housing to services has proven an effective strategy but it has required an increase in affordable housing stock and more strategic organization between non-profits and officials.

Hartford, Connecticut looks to Boston as an example of a city that has succeeded in establishing a connection between nonprofits - who can donate payments to the city that are exempt from property taxes - and the local government. With a massive number of successful hospitals and colleges, Boston has created a system in which it can use donated money from these highly profitable institutions to work toward city planning without paying property taxes on the donations; Hartford hopes to create a similar relationship in its own city limits.

Recently, a coalition of community members and city government officials in San Francisco came together to rethink the way that the city issues fines and fees for minor infractions, which disproportionately impact low-income residents who already struggle in the country's most expensive city. Now, fees are reduced and can be paid in installments; the change has also been found to actually save the government money in administrative costs, rather than costing revenue as some critics expected.

From New York to Ohio to California, librarians have teamed up with the USDA summer food service program, along with other non-profits, to feed kids dependent on free/reduced-price lunches during the school year. Using census data to locate communities of greatest need and data to measure participation trends, the collaborative has witnessed a surge in effectiveness and impact across the states. Families, librarians, and public officials alike express satisfaction and enthusiasm for the initiative and its future.

In a creative twist, Syrian refugees are being given cash cards to spend as they wish rather than being given food boxes or in-kind donations. Agencies and refugees themselves say that it gives them dignity and choice, which are important in the survival process. It was also much more efficient and cheaper to distribute money than buying food. This podcast cites a study done to prove its efficacy, talks to a couple refugee families, and notes that results could vary from country to country.