Guided by the intent of Conrad N. Hilton and Barron Hilton, the Disaster Relief and Recovery program provides vital assistance to local and national organizations and networks dealing with the onset of a disaster or ongoing humanitarian crises. In addition to providing fast and flexible funding, our grantmaking portfolio supports institutions, catalytic partnerships and innovations that strengthen both the United States’ and the international community’s ability to respond to disasters.
We aim to be both immediate in our response as well as deliberate about the contexts, organizations, and scope of programs we sustain. Whenever possible, we invest in community-based organizations and networks to uplift local humanitarian leadership.
We allocate a minimum of 25 percent of our funding directly to national and local organizations as well as to efforts that engage people with lived experience to develop community-empowered solutions to disaster prevention and recovery. In 2023, all of our domestic disaster response grants were made to community foundations or local implementing organizations. Internationally, 70 percent of all disaster response grants were made to local organizations, either directly or through intermediaries.
Disasters and their effects are rarely short-lived or isolated; therefore, our grantmaking includes projects that build community resilience, allow for the anticipation and prepositioning of interventions and resources, and prevent or mitigate the impact of future crises.
We commit funding to a wide range of evidence-based programs and interventions, depending on the needs and resources in each context. For example, evidence shows that in most disaster settings, cash transfers are more effective and efficient than in-kind donations or food assistance. In those circumstances, we provide support to the humanitarian community through financial aid rather than food or other material goods.
Our grantmaking extends to four categories:
Israel-Hamas war; earthquakes in Morocco and Türkiye; Cyclone Freddy in Southern Africa.
Ongoing displacement resulting from protracted humanitarian situations in Afghanistan, Mali, Myanmar, Syria, and Yemen; food insecurity across the Sahel; and the humanitarian situation in the Darién Gap.
Winter 2022-23 California floods; Spring 2023 tornado outbreak across Midwestern and Southern US; August 2023 Hawai`i wildfires.
Includes resilience-building projects, anticipatory action, early-warning disaster systems, research, and efforts to promote local humanitarian leadership and diplomacy. This is often not country or geographically specific.
