Non-governmental organizations receiving U.S. government funding are facing increased scrutiny and reporting requirements—and confusion—around their travel programs following an August executive order from President Donald Trump around federal grantmaking oversight, according to executives from non-profit travel management specialist Diversity Travel.
The executive order is the latest in a challenging year for NGOs, many of which started the year seeing their funding under fire amid the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency and the dissolution of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Amid that, many NGOs saw some or all of their funding cut, though within the Diversity client base, most were able to maintain operations, though some at a smaller scale, with private funding, said DeAnne Dale, who joined Diversity as general manager for its U.S. operations earlier this year.
"Since then, it has been constant reporting regulations and things changing," Dale said. "They've had to scale up very quickly from a reporting standpoint, and we've had to make changes on the fly, because every week it could be something different."
With the Aug. 7 executive order, "it's getting even more stringent" for NGOs in reporting and auditing around their travel to maintain funding, she said. That order called for a "strong need to strengthen oversight and coordination of, and to streamline, agency grantmaking" and also called for preference in awarding grants to "institutions with lower indirect cost rates."
While NGOs must abide by specific regulations and audit trails to obtain and maintain federal funding, the executive order did not provide any standardization around that process, according to Dale. In a recent forum with top Diversity NGO clients, they said all their projects and funding were being asked for a different set of reporting requirements, she said.
One example is with the Fly America Act, a requirement established during the Ford administration that requires federally funded air travel to be on U.S. flag carriers whenever feasible. When needing an exception to fly on a non-U.S. carrier, NGOs are supposed to document the reasoning, and as the funding environment has become more restrictive, "that waiver checklist is being required more often than not," Diversity VP of account management Rebecca Diamond said. Some government officers now are asking for narratives on why a certain routing was accepted, and sometimes they even ask to see a screenshot from the reservation system showing that a U.S. flag carrier could not offer a certain route, she said.
This growing scrutiny comes as NGOs have to contend with a number of other moving restrictions, such as travel bans and changing visa requirements, Dale said. At the same time, the number of providers specializing in NGO travel has decreased, Diamond said. U.K.-based Key Travel was one such specialist, but in recent weeks the company was split up with Globespan Travel Management acquiring its U.S. division and China-based Trip.com Group acquiring its U.K. and Europe, Middle East and Africa operations. She noted that some clients had tried working with corporate-travel-focused TMCs but ultimately returned because they needed that specialization.
While the trend in corporate travel long has been toward a higher share of online transactions, Dale said the increased scrutiny is moving NGOs in the opposite direction.
"We have an online booking tool, and they do use the online booking tool to access the humanitarian fares we have available, but with all the complexities, you need highly, highly experienced consultants," Dale said. "It's very much a specialty, and the majority of our clients are calling and relying on us to have specialized consultants to help them through that journey."