When crisis hits, emergency cash could arrive in days, not months

Historically, GiveDirectly has been overwhelmingly focused on ‘development’ (cash to reduce extreme poverty in stable settings). By 2030, most of the world’s poorest will live in ‘fragile contexts’ – places hit by climate shocks, conflict, and instability that push them deeper into poverty. If we’re serious about our mission, we have to reach them too.

We’ve responded to one-off crises since 2017, building tools to send emergency cash that have improved all our programs. That track record – combined with growing mobile phone coverage and new tech capabilities – convinced us there’s a big opportunity to improve crisis responses for people in need. 

So this year, we went for it, starting on a moonshot bet that could radically improve the systems meant to support people in crises.

Note: our emergency cash responses and the team behind them are funded entirely by donors donating specifically to support our emergency cash work. Website donations still default to our poverty relief work.

The problem: humanitarian aid is often too slow, too rigid, and too disconnected from what people actually need

When a cyclone makes landfall or conflict escalates, we all see the same images: homes underwater, families sheltering in tents, people lining up for food. Then the news cycle moves on. 

What you don’t see is the weeks and months it takes for people impacted by disasters to rebuild their lives with  humanitarian aid often failing to help in a timely and appropriate way:

• Shipments of tarps or grain can take weeks to arrive (at great expense) and weeks more to distribute.
• An influx of free goods gets stuck in ports or floods markets, making it harder for local businesses to restart. 
• Food and vouchers are the main aid given, despite people having a wide range of needs and priorities.
• Families take on debt or sell assets to address short term cash needs but risk longer term poverty.

After a disaster, survivors regularly rank ‘cash’ as their biggest unmet need, over shelter or food. Researchers find refugees will sell large portions of their food rations because what they actually need is cash. Even vouchers are resold for half their value. Cash is spent locally, so supports and enables local rebuilding efforts, which far outweigh international aid efforts.

While research has established that cash is more effective, more dignified and more efficient, it makes up less than 20% of humanitarian assistance today, its lowest share in years.

Humanitarian preparedness today looks the same as it did before the rise of mobile phones and the internet – thousands of warehouses full of tarps and grain but nearly no accounts full of emergency cash transfers. The result is an expensive and heavily intermediated humanitarian system delivering very mixed results for people impacted by disasters. 

Meanwhile, crises themselves are getting bigger and more complex. Climate shocks, conflict, and economic instability now overlap; people are hit again before they’ve recovered from the last disaster.

The opportunity: mobile phones, digital payments, and AI can revolutionize emergency aid

The basic building blocks for a radically faster, more dignified emergency response are increasingly in place:

• Mobile phones: 70% of people worldwide now own or have access to a phone.
• Digital payments: remittance payments are available worldwide and 2 billion people use mobile money; in many countries, it’s how families already send support in an emergency.
• Data & AI: Satellite imagery, telecom mobility data, and AI tools can show us which neighborhoods are underwater or emptied by conflict within hours, not weeks.

We’re proving what’s possible

• Our program in Eastern DRC is sending cash to people displaced by conflict as soon as 24 hours after they are displaced, compared to the 100+ days it often takes to get aid to people in that region. 
• Our response in Jamaica delivered money to people 13 days after Hurricane Melissa, weeks before traditional systems despite the fact we’d not had operations on this island beforehand. 

Families have used GiveDirectly’s emergency cash to buy food, relocate to safety, repair homes, & restock shops – all before any other aid has even reached them. The UN’s own humanitarian leaders have said there’s no reason more humanitarian shouldn’t look like this, asking donors to fund cash “‘not incrementally, but ambitiously.”

Our moonshot: build a five-day global emergency cash system

GiveDirectly is building from our experience and leveraging existing and emerging technologies to run at an audacious goal:

How fast is 5 days? The ambitious bar for most major aid groups to get cash out is one month. Traditional in-kind aid can take far longer than that. 

What does that take? A lot:

1. AI-powered targeting that finds people in need, fast

Traditionally, teams walk house-to-house conducting registration interviews. That’s slow, expensive, and can miss people who are displaced or afraid to speak up.

We are working toward sophisticated targeting analytics (‘MobileAid’) that combine:

• Satellite imagery to assess damage and triangulate poverty.
• Digital inclusion to ensure the most vulnerable households have accounts and connectivity
• Poverty statistics to ensure we prioritize communities in poverty
• Telecom data to understand population movements, residency, poverty and other factors.
• Saturation targeting to address entire groups rather than looking for the worst off in already marginalized and impacted communities.

Multi-source identity models to verify individual eligibility.

2. Self-Service at Scale 

People impacted by disasters know who they are and what they need. The presence of mobile phones in these communities means they can reach out directly and ask for support. To make this possible, we are investing in:

• Multi-channel digital communications technology to meet people where they are on feature phones, social media, SMS, etc.
• AI-supported enrollment and support processes to allow us to engage with everyone at once.
• Mobile connectivity partnerships to ensure connectivity is restored or supplemented quickly after disasters

3. Multi-path payments that reach people wherever they are

We’re working with payment providers to build multi-path systems that will enable cash out methods aligned with recipient needs in any given crisis – whether that’s debit cards, mobile money, crypto, or a simple bank transfer. 

With multiple distribution options, we can easily tailor transfer designs to match survivor’s needs in dynamic environments – whether that’s smaller payments in advance of a crisis to allow people to prepare, or larger amounts to enable rebuilding. 

Our goal is simple: within five days, a survivor should see money on their phone or in their hand.

Our plan: testing, scaling, and influencing over 5 years

We’re not going to flip a switch overnight; we’re building this system in stages.

Now through 2027: Respond to disasters and learn

• Respond to emergencies around the world – build, test, and refine our tools and systems
• Deepen our relationships with payment providers and telecom companies
• Demonstrate what a ‘cash first’ humanitarian response looks like
• Read our progress to date in the Appendix

2028 to 2029: GiveDirectly scales up

• Shift from proving an approach to scaling, hitting a consistent 5 day response time around the world
• We are a go-to emergency cash actor for governments, telcos, and donors
• Influence the humanitarian system to make ‘cash first’ the norm

2030 to 2031: 5 day cash is the new norm in the sector

• 5 day response times becomes the norm in emergency responses 
• Globally, cash assistance is 25-50% of humanitarian aid spending
• We launch a white-label platform so governments, multilaterals, and NGOs can plug into our infrastructure to run their own rapid responses

The future: cash flows right as disaster strikes

Imagine this near-future scenario:

A cyclone forms off the coast. Forecasts show it will hit a low-lying region within 48 hours. Our systems flag communities in poverty in the path of the storm and cross-reference mobile-money coverage, and start enrolling families and making payments remotely before the storm makes landfall. Within days, even as floodwaters recede, families are already using cash on their phones to buy food, rent safer housing, repair boats, & restock shops.

We’re working toward a world…

• where crises do not push people further into poverty.
• where survivors don’t have to queue for hours for a sack of rice,
• where aid moves as fast as our compassion does.

GiveDirectly’s moonshot is simple: no one should wait months for help after a disaster. With the right investment and partners, we can build and share the systems needed to make five-day, direct-to-people cash the new global standard.

If you’re interested in helping us build that future – as a funder, policymaker, or partner – we’d love to talk.

• Our emergency cash fundraising is coordinated by Ariana Keyman
• Our engagement with global cash actors is coordinated by Isabelle Pelly 
• Our engagement with telecoms and wider emergency cash strategy is run by me, Leith Baker

Please also keep an eye on our recruitment page for new roles supporting this moonshot.

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Appendix

The progress we’ve already made

• Rapid Deployments: In 2025, we launched 6 quick short disaster response programs, including in the Philippines and Jamaica where we had no previous experience or staff:
  • 🇨🇩💥 Armed Conflict in DRC – using telcom mobility data to pay families displaced by fighting within a week fully remotely
  • 🇺🇸 🔥 LA Wildfires – cash to impacted low-income families 2-6 weeks faster than FEMA aid
  • 🇺🇸 🌧️ Texas Floods – 61% of recipients said they’d received no other aid at all
  • 🇵🇭 🏚️ Philippines Earthquake –  first NGO to pilot using mobile money (Gcash) rather than traditional physical cash
  • 🇯🇲 🌀 Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica – cash out to families in <2 weeks, with major UN agencies still not having sent cash by EOY
  • 🇺🇸 🥫 U.S. SNAP Cuts – $11.5m sent to 238k families in less than 2 weeks
• Telecom Data Agreements: We’ve made agreements with telecom companies in Bangladesh, DRC, Kenya, Malawi & Togo to address humanitarian needs. As an example of what this enables: in DRC, we delivered cash to the phones of people displaced by conflict 24 hours after they fled this month.
• Sector Influence: We’ve worked with UN OCHA and others to center cash as a key part of humanitarian reform amid shrinking aid budgets – see policy brief. 
• New Funding: We have seen tremendous donor enthusiasm for this work and are bringing new resources to humanitarian response. 

What we know, and what we’ll learn

Across countries and crisis types, research shows that fast, direct cash:

• improves food security, housing, and health;
• reduces harmful coping strategies like selling assets, taking on high-interest debt, or pulling kids from school;
• boosts local economies, with each $1 in post-crisis cash generating up to $2 in local economic activity.

Despite this evidence, there is still have more to learn and test: 

• What is the optimal transfer size? Research indicates that larger lump sum transfers will have more transformational impact than smaller monthly distributions.  How does that play out for families after a crisis and what is the breadth vs. depth tradeoff?
• What is the experience of people without devices or digital literacy? We assume this is a rapidly decreasing proportion of the world’s population; however, it will never be zero. What are the consequences of a digital first emergency cash response and how can downsides be mitigated?
• How do we fundraise if we’re getting out cash faster than donors give? We assume that 5 day responses will outpace fundraising. In Jamaica, we signed most of our donor agreements after the bulk of cash transfers to individuals were completed. What are the fundraising models, framework agreements and flexible resources that will allow rapid responses and donor engagement?