Blog - Operations

Candid thoughts from staff, donors, and recipients on our work and the broader movement towards cash transfers.

Operations

GiveDirectly and Segovia

4/06/2021 | Segovia merger and relationship with GiveDirectly Segovia is a financial technology company co-founded in 2014 by two members of GiveDirectly’s board, which today is owned and operated by Crown Agents Bank (CAB). GiveDirectly uses CAB to issue payments via mobile money networks. A summary of the current relationship between the two organizations can […]

Operations

New funding from Google CEO, Google.org, and Flourish Ventures

Today, Google.org, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Flourish Ventures announced a $3M commitment toward GiveDirectly’s U.S. COVID-19 cash relief program. This latest round of funding triples the U.S. emergency fund which is actively providing $1,000 in direct cash payments to families hardest hit by the COVID-19 crisis.

Operations

International COVID-19 response now live

As of today, our international response to COVID-19 is live: you can give directly to households living in extreme poverty in the hardest-hit communities overseas. More information on this below. We are deeply concerned for these families. As the pandemic hits and governments impose lockdowns to try to limit its spread, many will suddenly be […]

Operations

Our emergency cash response for COVID-19

April 21, 2020 Update: We have officially launched Project 100. Project 100 is, by far, the most ambitious Covid-19 private direct payments initiative to date in the United States. March 19, 2020 Update: We have officially announced the launch of our program; you can find more details here. On March 18, 2020, we shared an […]

Operations

[Video] Cashout day in the Kiryandongo refugee settlement

GiveDirectly recently launched a $19M project saturating an entire refugee settlement with cash transfers. 10,000 refugee households and 5,000 host community households will receive transfers. Our team has been testing facilitated cashout events in the settlement, offering a central, easy-to-reach withdrawal location for recipients. We collected video footage on our second-ever cashout day in the settlement.

Operations

A Bizarre Baraza: Why One Village Refused Funds — Then Changed Its Mind

Recently, a village of about 70 households in Malawi was selected to receive GiveDirectly transfers. The village first refused funds — then changed its mind. Here’s what happened.

Operations

Behind the scenes at a GiveDirectly call center

Meet Sithembile Nyondo, who works in the GiveDirectly call center in Malawi fielding hotline calls from recipients. Every successful customer-facing company has mechanisms for ensuring quality service. We think recipients of aid deserve the same and have designed our call center processes accordingly.

Operations

How facial identification technology could help our field ops

We’re not interested in tech for the sake of tech. So, there were plenty of skeptics on the team when the possibility of integrating facial identification into our operations came up. Good for iPhones? Yes. Necessary for enrolling recipients in our program? Not obvious. The jury is still out on whether we’ll pursue it at […]

Operations

Solving the last mile payment challenge in Liberia

Think of the longest ATM line you’ve seen in the US…and multiply it by 80. On the World Bank index of ATMs per 100,000 people, Liberia comes in at fewer than 2 (by comparison, the US has 174). Not surprisingly, it’s the kind of place where delivering cash as an aid intervention is often deemed […]

Operations

Getting our bearings in Malawi

How big are villages in Malawi? The answer, our team has been learning, is not entirely straightforward. But it matters, for two key reasons: First, the randomized control trial we are running in partnership with USAID requires us to achieve a certain sample size (i.e. number of villages), within a budget constraint. If villages are […]