You are Alejandra Gómez Tovar, co-founder and executive director of Formación Digital Inclusiva (FDI), a Bogotá non-profit that trains young people from low-income neighbourhoods as developers, data analysts and designers. It is Monday 6 April 2026 and USAID has just cut COP 1,400 million from your year. By Friday's board meeting you must decide how many of the 580 students who started on 1 March FDI will carry through to December.
The situation
FDI runs sites in Ciudad Bolívar and Usme (Bogotá), Comuna 13 in Medellín and Aguablanca in Cali, with 28 full-time staff and 45 part-time instructors. Since 2019 it has graduated 1,820 young people who, when in work, earn on average COP 2.4 million a month against about COP 900,000 for similar young people without the programme. Its 2025 budget was COP 4,200 million, and 38% of it came from competitive grants, mostly USAID. The cut takes a third of the budget. FDI holds COP 400 million in reserves.
The programme runs ten months. Keeping all 580 to December costs more each quarter than comes in, and the reserves will shrink every quarter until the income side changes. There is possible new money on your desk — a bank offers a paid bootcamp, a foundation will renew only if FDI's governance changes — but none of it is cash yet. Cutting the cohort saves money, and it means sending home young people who are already enrolled.
The same week, an investigative journalist has asked in writing how FDI arrives at the 72% placement rate on its website. An audit that counts only formal jobs held six months or more puts it at 52%. Your board — three founders and two outside members — trusts you. You have never cut a cohort.