Save the Children disaster response: A pre-positioned, field-ready cash assistance model

Program overview

AidKit and Save the Children have launched a pre-positioned cash aid partnership capable of moving as fast as emergencies unfold. Combining Save the Children's vast experience supporting children in need with AidKit's configurable aid-administration platform, the partnership aims to provide critical relief for those impacted by recent disasters while standing ready to activate within hours of a new event.

The results have been powerful: in just over four months, the model has already supported four distinct responses, distributing cash assistance to more than 4,000 families and some 10,000 children throughout the country. Together, AidKit and Save the Children have laid the groundwork for an emergency aid model that is not merely reactive, but ready.

A scalable framework for disaster response

The U.S. has experienced more than 40 catastrophic weather and climate events since the beginning of last year alone, including deadly hurricanes along the Gulf Coast and devastating wildfires in Southern California. Recognizing a gap in its disaster relief efforts, Save the Children set out to find a technology partner that would enable its team to respond rapidly while tailoring each response to the specific needs of impacted communities. With its broad network of community-based partners, Save the Children was already well positioned to identify and refer families in crisis. What it lacked was a field-ready method for distributing assistance that could be managed in one place, without relying on spreadsheets, manual workflows and third-party payment providers. Through AidKit's platform, that need was not only met but turned into an operational strength.

"With AidKit managing everything in a single system—from registration all the way through payment and follow-up—it reduces the tasks we previously had to manage in-house and takes a significant load off our staff."

— Bjorn Betzler, Cash Advisor, US Emergencies, Save the Children

1. Replicable but bespoke

The first priority for Save the Children was delivering back-to-school cash aid to families still reeling from Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the Los Angeles County wildfires. To accommodate these distinct responses—and ensure readiness for the next—AidKit created a workflow that was replicable and easily deployable, yet flexible enough to adapt to the unique needs of each program. Instead of navigating separate access points, Save the Children logs into a central platform to review and assist participants, with each disaster organized into its own dedicated program. For each new response, Save the Children can define custom eligibility verification protocols and determine different payment amounts, with participants automatically routed to the right program through a unique disaster code. The number of payments for each recipient is also configurable by program.

2. Operational speed in action

The impact of this model was immediate. Save the Children delivered cash to hurricane and wildfire survivors within just three weeks of partnering with AidKit, and the speed of subsequent responses only increased. When a small wildfire struck Fresno County, California, in late August, Save the Children was able to get money to families affected by smoke damage within two days of finalizing program requirements with AidKit. And when the government shutdown disrupted SNAP benefits in November, leaving families across the U.S. in need of food assistance, the response was deployed within 24 hours despite a much larger pool of participants. For Save the Children, this modular, adaptive workflow has been essential.

"Strategically, we look to AidKit to help us be scalable, so that we can expand within 48 hours or faster and respond to emergencies."

— Betzler

3. Guided by expertise

A defining strength of Save the Children's approach is how it blends technology with its own connections and field-tested experience. The organization's strategy is grounded in a deep understanding of how children and families actually access and benefit from aid. To that end, Save the Children leverages local and hyper-local partners who know their communities intimately and can identify families most in need, a critical capability when resources are limited. Save the Children also works with NASA to map the areas hardest hit by disasters, which AidKit has the ability to overlay with applicant and disbursement data to visualize where assistance is making an impact. In every response, Save the Children avoids using pre-crisis assistance lists and keeps human judgment at the center of its decision-making, ensuring no community is overlooked. Together, these research-backed processes lay the groundwork for the smooth enrollment and delivery of cash assistance that follows.

4. Streamlined enrollment and cash delivery

Once families are identified, Save the Children and AidKit work together to ensure assistance is delivered securely, with support for multiple languages, accessible enrollment and minimal barriers. In practice, the process looks simple: partners provide a spreadsheet of eligible participants, and Save the Children uploads it into AidKit's platform. The system then runs a deduplication check and invites participants to enroll. In most cases, families can begin enrolling in their disaster relief program within an hour of being imported. Depending on the payment method they choose, funds can be delivered within just three hours. For families already facing overwhelming challenges, the process is fast, simple and stress-free.

"The potential to continue delivering this incredibly dignified, discreet assistance to Americans who desperately need it … that is something we'd all be proud to be a part of."

— Betzler

5. A unified dashboard experience

To manage multiple active responses at once, Save the Children needed deep visibility across all programs and within each individual response. To accomplish this, AidKit built dedicated dashboards for each disaster, displaying key data on applications and enrollments, household demographics, payments disbursed and follow-up surveys. AidKit also developed high-level dashboards that aggregate the same metrics across all programs, giving the team a comprehensive view of performance with the ability to filter by state, year and even by referral partner. This real-time, comprehensive dashboard experience has been pivotal for a team responding to the needs of diverse and wide-ranging communities.

"One of the joys of this system that we designed together has been the insight into the actual families that we've assisted. The number of people who've taken an extra two minutes in their busy schedules to just say 'I used this money on X, Y and Z, and this is the difference that it made for my family' is a level of insight that is rare."

— Betzler

Program impact

As of December 2025, Save the Children has already reached around 10,000 children across 22 states through this partnership. In total, over $2 million in critical support has been delivered to communities impacted by natural and economic disasters. By pairing AidKit's adaptable platform with its own humanitarian expertise, Save the Children has made a strategic decision to be the leading cash organization for children in the U.S., equipped to respond to multiple simultaneous disasters. AidKit's platform ensures that participants receive support quickly and with dignity, while Save the Children program administrators maintain visibility and control throughout each response. Together, these strengths position the partnership to scale rapidly in the year ahead.

"We selected AidKit to fill a need. But we also selected AidKit because there's a real mission overlap: at the end of the day, both organizations are committed to improving cash assistance in the U.S., and we understand that there's a lot of work to be done."

— Bjorn Betzler, Cash Advisor, US Emergencies, Save the Children