When President Trump, on the first day of his second term, signed an executive order suspending all US foreign assistance programs for 90 days, Steve Schmida wasn’t too worried.
The cofounder of a Vermont-based consulting firm and longtime contractor with the US Agency for International Development, Schmida felt the move could be “a little disruptive, but nothing catastrophic” for him and his staff at Resonance Global, which has worked around the world promoting economic growth and innovation, environmental sustainability, food security, and other projects.
In its 20 years, the firm had weathered similar pauses before, he noted.
But later that week, Schmida’s team heard from a source inside USAID that the agency’s accounting system had been shut down. That same day, the State Department issued a sweeping stop-work order on aid projects.
“It basically gave the entire industry a collective heart attack,” he said. “We never envisioned that the federal government would systematically not pay us.”
The Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the independent agency, which provides billions of dollars in aid to more than 100 countries, has prompted a massive outcry over the humanitarian consequences.
It has also devastated firms such as Resonance that rely heavily on USAID support. In a matter of days, the firm cut its staff of 90 people to 14 through two rounds of layoffs, Schmida said. He said about a quarter of the staff are based in the Northeast.
In addition, Schmida said Resonance has more than $3 million in unpaid invoices from USAID for expenses the company accrued since November while doing work under federal contracts, money he does not expect to receive any time soon.
The company’s leadership has taken a pay cut, and Schmida said he is not taking a salary and has dipped into his personal savings to keep the firm afloat.
“I don’t know what else to do,” he said. “No bank is going to touch us with a 10-foot pole.”
The experience at Resonance illustrates the chaos foreign aid firms are facing. Since the freeze, thousands of USAID workers have been placed on leave, and employees overseas were given 30 days to move their families back to the United States at the government’s expense.
On Friday, a Trump-appointed federal judge stopped the 30-day deadline and ordered USAID staffers who were placed on leave to be reinstated.
Schmida’s company has led and partnered with other groups on USAID-funded projects around the world, including fisheries conservation in Indonesia and the Philippines, education and school retention in Uganda, and expanding access to clean water in Tanzania.
Last week, the firm announced the second round of layoffs on a call with staff. Schmida said that it was “heartbreaking” but that employees “all were supportive.”
“They know what’s happening and they know the broader issues,” he said.
Schmida described the staff as “amazing, wonderful people who really dedicated their lives to advancing American values and American interests.”
“It’s just so hard to see people who . . .” he said, trailing off as he became emotional. “They’re all super smart. They could have gotten finance or computer science degrees . . . but they didn’t. They decided they wanted to work with farmers in Uganda and try to help raise their incomes.”
Resonance is one of many USAID contractors forced to furlough and lay off employees. DAI, a large USAID contractor based in Bethesda, Md., has laid off 450 of its workers in the United States, according to Steven O’Connor, a company spokesperson.
Allison Basson, who lives in Mendon, said she was furloughed from her job at DAI, where she started as a project coordinator in 2008 after finishing graduate school. She left the company in 2016 to take a job with Abt Global in Cambridge but returned three years later to work as director of business development for the company’s environment sector.
“I really felt like I had my dream job,” she said. “I loved my colleagues, we had such a good and cohesive group of people. I wish I had appreciated it more because I never thought this would happen.”
Basson said her team had its last video call on Jan. 31.
“No one wanted to hang up,” she said. “We knew that there was a high likelihood we would never all be together again.”
Basson said it has been difficult to see the criticism levied at USAID and its contracts in recent weeks, some of which has been fueled by false and misleading information on social media.
“It’s really sad to hear some of the propaganda that’s being spread, that we’re fraudulent and we’re criminals,” she said.
“I’m not saying that USAID is perfect. I know that they’re not, and none of us are claiming that. It’s just kind of like, was it necessary to blow up the entire industry for efficiency? Isn’t there a better way to do that?”
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com.