Heartbleed Update

We treat the privacy of our donors and recipients seriously and do not believe it was affected by the Heartbleed Bug.We confirmed that our hosting provider, Amazon, had patched the bug and then we updated all our certificates and keys. We verified that Stripe, our payments processor, did the same. We do not believe that […]

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GiveWell’s First Full Update on GiveDirectly

Please visit the GiveWell website to read an in-depth report on GiveDirectly’s work in Kenya, our expansion into a second country, and our long-term outlook as we continue to scale up our cash transfer operations. The report covers our activities since November 2012, when GiveWell named GiveDirectly their #2 rated charity based on their criteria […]

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New Blog Format

Thanks to the time and efforts of a generous volunteer, this section of  the GiveDirectly website will now feature more frequent updates, including reports from our field team, lessons learned from our work, and the latest evidence on the impact our cash transfers have on the lives of the poor. If you have a question […]

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Spring 2013: Cash transfers in the headlines

Evidence behind unconditional cash transfers captured the media’s attention in May: Jacquelline Fuller in Fast Company: “This is a way to transform how people think about aid. There is no reason why a lot of development dollars couldn’t be shifted to a model like this.” Matthew Yglesias in Slate: “Money with no strings attached not […]

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Benchmarking development aid

Jacquelline Fuller in the Harvard Business Review: “…GiveDirectly has a new concept: What if cash transfers are used as a standard benchmark against which to measure all development aid? What if every nonprofit that focused on poverty alleviation had to prove they could do more for the poor with a dollar than the poor could […]

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Holiday media coverage

GiveDirectly in the news this holiday season: Dana Goldstein in the Atlantic: “So simple, it’s genius.” Dylan Matthews in the Washinton Post: “The idea, in a way, is so obvious it’s hard to believe people hadn’t tried to do it on this scale before: ending poverty by giving people money.” Chris Hayes on MSNBC: “A […]

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Global Impact Award from Google

We are pleased to announce that GiveDirectly has received a $2.4M Global Impact Award from Google. Two things excite us about this project. First, over 90% of the award ($2.21M) is earmarked for direct cash transfers to the poor. Delivering these funds will enable thousands of families to pursue their own goals with no strings […]

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GiveWell: GiveDirectly “top-rated”

We are happy to share the news that GiveWell, a leading non-profit evaluation group, has updated its evaluations for 2012 and now names GiveDirectly one of three “top-rated” organizations. As you may know, GiveWell’s recommendations are extremely selective: their process includes field visits and comprehensive reviews of relevant research, and they ultimately recommend only 1% […]

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Chris Hughes joins the board

We are thrilled to welcome Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and editor-in-chief of The New Republic, to our board. Chris’s commitment to rigor and honesty in giving align him perfectly with our vision, and he brings a track record of leadership and innovation in both new and old media to our team. Chris has shared […]

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