Giorgi Gogua, the founder of Project 64, a multimedia startup producing explanatory journalism in Georgia, said USAID money made up around 40 percent of its 2025 budget.
But now the company’s future is in doubt.
“This was our startup capital, which as it turned out, we don’t have anymore,” Gogua said. “If we can’t find a solution, we’ll be forced to stop our operations, at least partially …. So far we haven’t been able to pay our staff at the end of last month.”
Gogua has been working to find new donors, but with the Georgian government planning to adopt more restrictive laws that would ban foreign funding for media altogether, those cash streams are unlikely to materialize. This would hit independent media outlets hard, especially online media that struggle to commercialize their work due to the small market, and that rely almost entirely on foreign cash to operate.
“At this point, we don’t have expectations that USAID funding will continue. We’re speaking to European donors to help us with emergency funding and fill the financial gap,” he added.
‘EU cannot fill the gap’
The EU needs to step in and fill the vacuum by providing funding for civil society and humanitarian groups, the Regional Studies Center’s Giragosian argued, while noting that Brussels is “notorious for moving very slowly, it’s very bureaucratic.”
