GiveDirectly is crossing an important milestone: after over two years working in Siaya district, we’re moving our enrollment teams to our third district in Kenya – Ugunja. This is an exciting moment for GiveDirectly because it’s a sign of the scale we’ve reached: we’ve now been to all the villages in a district that our […]
Blog
Candid thoughts from staff, donors, and recipients on our work and the broader movement towards cash transfers.
Opinions
Government waiting rooms and definition deliberations
I often hear GiveDirectly cited as one of the most innovative players in the nonprofit sphere for giving out cash with no strings attached. Although that’s noteworthy, for me, what makes the organization exceptional is its team’s commitment to use rigorous, scientific evidence to inform, evaluate, and improve its program.For the past six months, I’ve […]
Opinions
Conversations with the Kenya team
As a way of building connections among our teams in the US and Africa, GiveDirectly has set up regular international one-on-one chats between team members in Uganda, Kenya and the US. Of course a call or online chat isn’t as good as meeting with coworkers in person, but these short conversations are teaching me a […]
Recipients
GiveDirectly has a song?
Recently, we found out that one of our recipients used his transfer to start a band; he bought instruments and hired seven other musicians and four dancers. They play paying gigs around their community and have even put out an album. Our favorite track is a song about GiveDirectly. It’s not only catchy and fun […]
Recipients
How our recipients celebrate Christmas
Sometimes it feels like we’re worlds apart from our recipients: (most of) our domestic team is based in NYC, whereas our recipients live in rural Kenya and Uganda; and the $1000 we send is more than a year’s income for our recipients, but it’s just another month’s rent in NYC. Despite these differences, some things […]
Uncategorized
Holiday break in real-time data
Since we relaunched this website last month, the performance charts you see throughout pipe in data from the field in real-time as our field team carries out its work. So, we thought we should let you know that the team is taking a well-deserved break from December 20 to January 4, to recharge their batteries […]
Recipients
What’s $1 worth?
People often ask us how far a standard GiveDirectly cash transfer – approximately $1,000 – goes for a recipient household in Kenya. The easy answer is: a lot further than it would go in the U.S. In order to understand exactly how much further, I recently asked my colleagues in Kenya about the average cost […]
Opinions
GiveWell (re-)recommendation
We’re thrilled that GiveWell has listed us as one of their top recommended charities once again this year. It’s not an easy mountain to climb: GiveWell reviews hundreds of organizations in unbelievable depth, and recommends very few – this year, only four. I’m grateful to my teammates here at GiveDirectly, as their strong performance is […]
Opinions
Our new website
Today we’re launching a new website for GiveDirectly—the first major update since www.givedirectly.org went live in 2011. Our main goal in reimagining the site was to create radical transparency into what we do and how well we do it. We’ve invested a lot to integrate cutting-edge technology into our field model so that we have […]
Opinions
Cash transfers: not “whether,” but “how”
Many people think that simply giving money directly to the poor is a radical new idea. We’re flattered, but the reality is: it isn’t. Over the last decade, cash transfers have quietly become one of the most widely used poverty-fighting tools in the toolkits of aid agencies and emerging market governments. If the question about […]
Year
Category
- Donation Info (2)
- Operations (80)
- Opinions (76)
- Press (1)
- Recipients (45)
- Research (23)
- The Future of Cash (3)
- Uncategorized (93)