Substantial development aid is channeled to recipient countries with varying levels of political development and implemented by organizations from both civil society and the private sector. The nonprofit and for-profit intermediaries may differentially respond to an aid delivery opportunity in a country with few political constraints—that is, the nations where the policymakers in political institutions disproportionally accommodate the interest of the privileged few instead of undergoing the pressure to serve the majority. We develop a conceptual framework of the selection of nonprofits and firms into a country with a low level of political constraints, and test our theory using a proprietary dataset of 1,166 bids for international development aid contract initiated by the United Kingdom’s bilateral agency. We show that, holding constant the nature of the project and the economic development of the target country, nonprofits as champions of marginalized populations are more willing to compete for contracts in countries distinguished by few political constraints, compared to for-profit firms. Our findings also suggest that the purely socially-oriented nonprofits, not the hybrid ones, with a neutral agenda distanced from value-driven statements are most willing to address the lack of political constraints and most likely to win these contracts. Further, presence of peer organizations facilitates the engagement of other types of nonprofits with the absence of political constraints: Hybrid nonprofits more likely compete for and secure the contracts targeting countries with low political constraints, when there is already a strong presence of transnational social organizations. Our results underline the critical role of nonprofits with an under-the-radar approach in advancing the most needed public welfare in politically challenging contexts, without incurring unwanted political interventions.