Last fall, GiveDirectly and Canva, the visual communication platform, announced a partnership to give money directly to some of the world’s poorest people – a $10 million pilot that is sending a basic income through mobile money payments to people in extreme poverty in Khongoni, Malawi. The pilot, launched this March, will deliver ~$50 per […]
Blog - Operations
Candid thoughts from staff, donors, and recipients on our work and the broader movement towards cash transfers.
Operations
Building aid applications that are actually accessible
U.S. guaranteed income pilots have limited funds so ultimately reject most eligible applicants. As administrators of anti-poverty programs, we have a responsibility to run an equitable and easy process both for those randomly selected to enroll and those who are not. We launched applications for two guaranteed income efforts in Chicago and Georgia in the […]
Operations
Why we didn’t launch in Ukraine
When Russian troops attacked Ukraine on February 24th, disrupting the future of millions of people, we needed to quickly decide if we would launch a response despite rapidly changing conditions. Ultimately, we decided not to launch one. While a response seemed warranted, it would have come with costly internal trade offs – primarily, delaying a […]
Operations
2021 Report
Operations
$241,633 was lost to fraud this year — that’s about what we expect
So far in 2021, GiveDirectly has delivered $106.3M to 431K people in poverty across seven countries in Africa. We estimate 0.23% of those funds was lost to theft, bribes, and imposters. Every major nonprofit experiences losses from fraud, but few rigorously investigate and safeguard against it; fewer still openly report on it [1]. We believe […]
Operations, Recipients
I was a COVID-19 recipient. Now, I’m an employee
Note: This post was was written in Kirundi and translated by Aline’s coworker, Roben. Read the original here. My name is Aline Fernicka. I am a Burundian refugee and a former GiveDirectly recipient. I currently work as a Field Officer at GiveDirectly in Kigali, Rwanda registering recipients in our programs so that they can receive […]
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 […]