Despite renewed attention to global poverty alleviation and sustainable development, most agencies and organizations donating large amounts of funds for the social sector have been decreasing their aid to literacy and nonformal (basic) education. In most cases, donors trying to combine support for basic education with poverty alleviation focus on primary education or recently developed alternative patterns for providing primary education to school dropouts or unschooled youths. Among the reasons for declining donor support of literacy and nonformal (basic) education are the following: the overwhelming magnitude of the problem; the nonformal sector's relative lack of equipment and organization; the physical invisibility of success; the view that literacy is a sensitive area for involvement by oversees governments; lack of methods to evaluate nonformal literacy programs' results accurately; the belief of many donors that literacy is a "murky area" best left to nongovernmental organizations; and lack of resources to mount national literacy and nonformal education campaigns. (The bibliography contains 30 references. Appended are graphs/tables detailing the following: number of illiterate people in 1980-2010; number of illiterate people by sex; German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development aid to education in 1993-1995; and characteristics of education aid among selected donors.) (MN)