Give directly to 734 families for Giving Tuesday
Your donations will be delivered directly to every family living in Gasutamo, Gasharu, and Nyaruteja villages.
Thanks to your incredible generosity, all 734 families across 3 Rwandan villages are receiving cash.
Hear what families in Gasutamo village said after receiving your donations via mobile money.
Reaching our fundraising goal means life-changing funds for all 734 families across 3 rural Rwandan villages, where most residents live on less than $1/day.
Each family will receive ~$1,100 each, more than what most live on in an entire year. In these villages, extreme poverty means struggling to afford:
- Food – many residents don’t eat more than 1 meal per day (usually limited to local crops like bananas, beans, and corn)
- School – most parents struggle to afford the ~$19 semester fees to keep their children in school
- Transportation to markets – residents in remote villages need to access customers to sell their crops (especially in Nyaruteja, which is ~28 miles from the nearest market)
- Safe housing – many houses lack proper windows and doors, and recent high winds destroyed most families’ roofs in Gasutamo
- Electricity – residents in Gasutamo (which isn’t connected to the national electricity grid) need ~$40 to buy solar panels
All 3 villages currently lack running water, so residents have to walk to nearby rivers for drinking water. With just ~$200, residents could install water pumps in their homes.
Nearly everyone in these villages is born into extreme poverty but unable to afford a path to escape. With cash, families can transform their lives through investments in:
- Farming – people can produce more food and income with better inputs like fertilizer and certified seeds, especially in Nyaruteja where most soil has eroded from wind and rain
- Livestock – improves families’ nutrition (milk, eggs, meat), fertilizes crops, and generates income
- Motorbikes – enables families to reach major markets (currently inaccessible due to $10+ moto-taxi fares) to sell their goods
- Education – children can access better job opportunities by completing school
- And much more – because families in need know what they need
Sometimes, people simply want to sleep on a mattress for the first time.
“I’m a 74-year-old widow living with 3 granddaughters. When we received the money, the first thing I bought was a mattress, food, and enrolled our family for medical insurance. With the rest, we’re renovating our house and will invest in livestock and farming for income.”
– Verena (pictured with her first mattress) in Mutokerezwa, Rwanda
Hundreds of academic studies show families use cash to increase earnings, health, education, and much more.
Frequently Asked Questions
+How does the match work?
All donations through this page will be matched (1:1, or 2X) until 11:59PM ET on November 29th, or until $350,000 in match funds is used. This is a “true match”, so if we don’t reach our $350,000 goal, the leftover match funds will expire.
Due to processing times, we’re unable to match donations made via ACH, check, wire, DAF, stocks, crypto, or our international partners.
If you’re interested in making a match pledge for future campaigns like this or would like to request we run a match campaign in your country, reach out to us at [email protected].
+What if we raise more or less than the fundraising goal?
Funding all 734 families in Gasutamo, Gasharu, and Nyaruteja costs ~$929,000. We’re planning to allocate internal funds to make up the gap between our fundraising and the total needed to ensure every family receives funds. If we surpass this goal, any excess funds will help us reach more families in extreme poverty in Africa.
+Can I make a recurring donation?
Please do! Recurring donations make our fundraising more consistent, which makes planning and operations more efficient. If you donate with a recurring donation today, only the first payment will be matched.
+How much of my donation will families receive?
We expect that 85 cents of every dollar will be delivered directly to residents. The other costs of delivering transfers are those required to deliver the funds themselves, prevent fraud, and provide customer service to recipients via staff in Rwanda.
This efficiency (total money delivered to recipients ÷ total money delivered + transfer costs) varies by program.
+What is GiveDirectly?
We’re a nonprofit that lets donors send money directly to the world’s poorest, no strings attached. In the last decade, we’ve delivered your donations to 1.5 million people across 15 countries.
+Is my donation tax-deductible?
Yes, donations are tax-deductible in the United States. While only donations made via credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay are eligible to get matched, we also accept ACH, checks, wires, stocks, cryptocurrencies, and more.
Reach out to us at [email protected] with any questions or for more information on ways to give.
+Can I give from outside the U.S.?
If you’re giving outside the U.S., you can still give to this campaign via card/PayPal, but your gift may not be tax-deductible. You can donate via our international partners to claim tax benefits, but due to partner processing delays those donations will not be matched.
If you’re based in Australia, you can make a tax-deductible donation to our match campaign with The Life You Can Save.
If you’re based in the UK, we’re planning to run a match via GDUK next month. Sign up for our email list below to receive an update when this match is live.
+Can I sign up to receive funding?
In order to be as fair to all as possible, we select recipients using a systematic and proactive set of criteria that vary from country to country, and do not accept inbound applications for our international programs.