Anti-poverty programs must often start with a rather obvious step: finding poor people. This may seem like a simple exercise, particularly in countries with high poverty rates. However, consider the potential pitfalls of some common approaches: a simple asset test (questions like “do you have a bicycle? A cow? A radio?”) may be easy to […]
Blog - Operations
Candid thoughts from staff, donors, and recipients on our work and the broader movement towards cash transfers.
Operations
Announcement: Moving to our third district in Kenya
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 […]
Operations
Fighting fraud in Uganda
We recently dealt with our worst fraud case to date, with 2% of a round of transfers in Uganda diverted. This incident brought to light vulnerabilities which we have since addressed, and we don’t expect changes in performance going forward. We are making it a point to write openly about this case, however, because nonprofits […]
Operations
How would you explain what a PIN is?
M-Pesa is famously ubiquitous in Kenya, with more than half the adult population using it or some other form of mobile money. M-Pesa agents, who take users’ deposits and provide cash-outs, operate in most towns and even small villages. The breadth of the network has certainly made our work delivering cash transfers, even in rural, […]
Operations
Rolling model
Here in Kenya, our team is focused on transferring money to as many poor households as possible. So, in March of this year, we made a significant change to our field model that allows us to reach more households than ever before.Our process of identifying recipients and transferring funds involves several distinct stages, each of […]
Operations
What Happened When We Gave to Whole Villages
“How do you decide whom to give to?” is usually the first question I get when I describe GiveDirectly’s model. It’s also a question we think about a lot internally. Effective targeting is a core feature of the product we offer donors, and a moral imperative. In 2013, we began to experiment with a new […]
Operations
GiveDirectly is in Uganda!
From the beginning, our goal at GiveDirectly has been to build an efficient and scalable platform to deliver cash transfers to poor people around the world. After months of planning and execution, we are very happy to announce that we now have a program up and running in a second country: Uganda! Cash transfer recipients […]
Operations
Building Our Technology Team
Technology is at the heart of what we do. We’ve built a secure, scalable and efficient platform that we’ll use to deliver cash transfers to thousands of poor households this year, and now we’re planning the next generation technology that will let us scale this platform up to serve millions of the world’s poor across […]
Operations
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 […]
Operations
Targeting in the field
See first-hand what locating and enrolling poor households in Kenya looks like. Jeremy recorded the following footage on his most recent trip to the field.
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