GiveDirectly

"The nonprofit GiveDirectly plans to send payments of $1,000 on Friday to some households impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. The organization harnesses a Google-developed artificial intelligence tool to pinpoint areas with high concentrations of poverty and storm damage. On Tuesday, it invited people in those areas to enroll in the program through a smartphone app used to manage SNAP and other government benefits. Donations will then be deposited through the app’s debit card." The approach is meant to deliver aid 'in as streamlined and dignified a way as possible,' said Laura Keen, a senior program manager at GiveDirectly. It removes much of the burden of applying, and is intended to empower people to decide for themselves what their most pressing needs are. The influx of clothing, blankets, and food that typically arrive after a disaster can fill real needs, but in-kind donations can’t cover getting a hotel room during an evacuation, or childcare while schools are closed. 'There is an elegance to cash that allows individuals in these types of circumstances to resolve their unique needs, which are sure to be very different from the needs of their neighbors,' said Keen. She added that getting money into people’s hands fast can protect them from predatory lending and curb credit card debt. The organization employs direct payments for poverty relief around the world, but it first experimented with cash disaster payments in the U.S. in 2017, when it gave money to households impacted by Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Back then, GiveDirectly enrolled people in person and handed out debit cards activated later. The process took a few weeks. Now that work is done in days — remotely. A Google team uses its SKAI machine-based learning tool to narrow down the worst-hit areas by comparing pre- and post-disaster aerial imagery. GiveDirectly uses another Google-developed tool to compare those findings with poverty data. It sends the target areas to Propel, Inc, an electronic benefits transfers app, which invites users in those places to enroll. 'They don’t have to find a bunch of documentation that proves their eligibility,' Keen said. 'We already know they’re eligible.' In North Carolina, where electricity in some communities has still not been restored after Hurricane Helene, having a smartphone makes no difference without a way to power it and a signal to connect to. Keen said GiveDirectly is aware of this model’s shortcomings. She said some can be alleviated with a hybrid model that uses both remote and in-person enrollment. But the limitations also come down to funding." Support at https://lnkd.in/eQdxqUnT Gabriela Aoun Angueira for The Associated Press: https://lnkd.in/eKUp_9cB

What if families got cash aid just BEFORE a flood, not after? That’s what happened in Bangladesh this summer. ⬇️ ⛈️Due to climate change, the Jamuna River basin in Bangladesh is suffering from severe annual flooding, damaging crops, homes, and lives. 🛰️In partnership with a2i, Google’s flood hub, and JBA Consulting, GiveDirectly used satellite imagery of historical floods overlayed on agriculture data, population density, and relative poverty to determine the most at-risk areas. 💸So when flooding season started this summer, families received $90 each. Studies show that receiving money before the flood lets families secure their homes, buy food and water, and quickly repair resulting damage without going into debt. 📲These families are also receiving more payments after the floods and the response is completely remote. This means people can register on their phones and receive payments via mobile money, increasing the speed of aid and operational efficiency. ⏱️This pilot program demonstrates that sending cash is a fast and cost-effective way to ensure the most vulnerable are receiving the support they need, when they need it most. Give cash to more families at GiveDirectly.org/relief Read more about the effectiveness of giving cash ahead of disasters from @Vox: https://lnkd.in/eyjfJ5fP

A friend sent me Rory Stewart's TED talk about extreme poverty and I'll be honest: I put off watching it. I figured it was going to be "good for me," like a plate of asparagus. Nope, nope -- totally fascinating. And wonderfully blunt too! Here's Stewart on his experience, as the head of a $20 billion development organization, in visiting projects in the field: "What I saw was deeply depressing. When you go out on the ground, these projects are far worse than you could possibly imagine." The solution? Cash transfers. Let's remember: What people suffering from extreme poverty lack is, um, money. So why do we insist on doling out advice and training and buildings and technology -- designed and distributed by developed-world employees who make 100 or 1000x the wages of the people they're serving?? (And before someone dusts off the old saw about 'teaching a man to fish,' make sure to stick around for Stewart's dismantling of that particular analogy...) Can't recommend the talk highly enough! The leader in effective cash transfers, GiveDirectly, is the most exciting nonprofit in the world. https://lnkd.in/g3v5HGGW

"We have a moral imperative to use every dollar entrusted to us as wisely and impactfully as possible," USAID's Deputy Administrator, Isobel Coleman while launching a position paper on the power of unconditional cash transfers to address poverty last week as part of the agency’s commitment to using cost-effectiveness analysis to drive funding decisions. This caps a long-building shift in how USAID leverages their $30B a year budget to help end extreme poverty. From first running a cash benchmarking study in 2015 to now — for the first time — formally endorsing direct monetary transfers as a core element of its development toolkit. This is a significant step forward in empowering individuals, households, and communities to make their own financial decisions, which promotes dignity and respect while driving local economic growth. What does the USAID paper on Direct Monetary Transfers argue? 📜 Cash Has Evidence-Based Results: The paper highlights over 100 randomized evaluations — including multiple GiveDirectly studies — proving the long-term positive impacts of cash transfers on food security, health, well-being, and incomes years after transfers end. 📈 Cash is Cost-Effective and Efficient: Direct cash helps stretch budgets further, delivering impactful, rapid, and transparent assistance. It has a multiplier effect, boosting local economies far beyond the direct recipients. 💰Cash Helps Address Poverty, Not Just Disasters: USAID’s stance moves cash transfers into broader development work (helping communities out of poverty), an evolution from when cash was mostly used for emergency and humanitarian relief. GiveDirectly has long advocated for the power of direct cash to respect people's agency and achieve measurable results. We are ready to strengthen our partnership with USAID and other donors to maximize the impact of every dollar of aid and accelerate the use of cash to end extreme poverty. 🎥 Watch the full event: Improving the Impact per Dollar of USAID Programming: https://lnkd.in/eb2aHpUK  📗Read USAID’s Position Paper on Direct Monetary Transfers for Development Outcomes: https://lnkd.in/ggeAqYjd  📘Read USAID’s Position Paper on Cost-Effectiveness, which was released at the same time time and is a model for how governments can plan to spend existing money better: https://lnkd.in/grieqiFr

Send your cash, not your stuff! https://lnkd.in/eQdxqUnT You can give money directly to low-income families impacted by Hurricanes Helene & Milton, reaching them quickly & fully remotely, empowering them spend on what they need most. GiveDirectly is delivering emergency cash to low-income families in Florida & North Carolina's hardest-hit areas, helping them cover immediate needs like: 🚰Essentials: food, water, generators, medicine, diapers 🏨Bills: phone, rent or hotels, utilities 🔨Repairs: homes or cars Here’s how we get your cash to survivors: 🛰️ID the highest-need communities using storm damage imagery and poverty data. 📲Enroll & pay families through food stamps benefits app Propel, Inc in the next week or so. 💸Cash hits their accounts just hours after enrolling, much faster than conventional aid. Cash aid allows disaster survivors to meet their own needs rather than having others guess for them — which is why people impacted by a crisis say they prefer cash relief over donated goods. Your donations will help thousands of families meet their own urgent needs and rebuild their lives. Give today: https://lnkd.in/eQdxqUnT

Send your cash, not your stuff! You can give money directly to low-income families impacted by Hurricanes Helene & Milton, reaching them quickly & fully remotely, empowering them spend on what they need most: https://lnkd.in/eQdxqUnT GiveDirectly is delivering emergency cash to low-income families in Florida & North Carolina's hardest-hit areas, helping them cover immediate needs like: 🚰Essentials: food, water, generators, medicine, diapers 🏨Bills: phone, rent or hotels, utilities 🔨Repairs: homes or cars Here’s how we get your cash to survivors: 🛰️ID the highest-need communities using storm damage imagery and poverty data. 📲Enroll & pay families through food stamps benefits app Propel, Inc in the next 1-2 weeks. 💸Cash hits their accounts just hours after enrolling, much faster than conventional aid. Cash aid allows disaster survivors to meet their own needs rather than having others guess for them — which is why people impacted by a crisis say they prefer cash relief over donated goods. Your donations will help thousands of families meet their own urgent needs and rebuild their lives. Haven’t heard of GiveDirectly before? Here’s why you can trust us: 🌀We’ve delivered cash to thousands of families impacted by Hurricanes Ian & Fiona (2022), Dorian (2019), and Harvey (2017).  🤝We’ve run over a dozen emergency relief programs across the world with partners including Google and USAID. 🏅Fast Company named GiveDirectly in their “50 Most Innovative Companies” for our 2022 hurricane response: https://lnkd.in/erapRmgG

From Project Management Institute: "The GiveDirectly team wanted to observe the outcome of giving money to the world’s poor without assessing a recipient’s 'worthiness' or placing conditions on how it was used... It didn’t take long for studies about its work to substantiate what they suspected — unconditional cash transfers work. People used the money wisely. Many invested the funds in entrepreneurial projects that could boost their income. But even a robust body of research didn’t fully help GiveDirectly address resistance to the model. 'There have been a lot of studies of cash transfers that prove their viability, but when you take these studies to government, they will say, ‘Yes, great, but that’s in Kenya. The local context is different,’' says Nkurunziza Richard, MBA, GiveDirectly’s senior manager of Rwanda programs. The nonprofit decided to launch an even more audacious project in 2023, taking the unconditional cash transfer idea from the village-level to a larger scale. The purpose of the project, says Nkurunziza, is to swiftly and effectively lift Rwandan families out of extreme poverty. The unconditional cash transfer project in Rwanda centered recipients, extending them the trust and dignity to best choose how to improve their lives with the cash. GiveDirectly’s Rwanda team worked closely with local and national governments and village leaders to roll out the program in line with their development goals. 'The only condition [to receiving the cash] is that you fall below the poverty line,' Nkurunziza explains. 'We opt for saturation, covering an entire village, so we aren’t making decisions about the [relative worth] of one family or household or another.' His colleague, Nathalie Bintu, GiveDirectly’s external relations lead, adds that one year into the project, GiveDirectly is seeing a big pay-off. 'We’ve already started observing outcomes: improved health, massive drops in food insecurity, and a general ability for recipients to meet basic needs,' she says. Nkurunziza agrees, 'Cash transfers impact so many other areas: child mortality, gender equity. Cash transfers are respectful. They provide agency. They are unconditional. And they’ve been proven to work.' Bintu concludes that 'if we can do this at the national level successfully, we can do this in other countries.'" More from our recognition by Project Management Institute at https://lnkd.in/eJrFD5NM More on our work in Rwanda at GiveDirectly.org/rwanda

CALP Network and cash world! USAID is launching 2 position papers super relevant to you, one on Cost-Effectiveness, and another on Direct Monetary Transfers (often referred to as cash transfers) this Thursday at Center for Global Development In a world with tremendous need, Cost-Effectiveness helps us understand tradeoffs in program choice, design and implementation, enabling development actors to achieve the greatest impact possible with available resources. The paper on Direct Monetary Transfers paper builds on the great work by humanitarian actors that have been using it at scale (USAID's BHA allocated >$1.5B in emergency cash and voucher assistance in FY 2023), and expands on this work to discuss how transfers can be used to impact development outcomes (spoiler-- it's often very cost-effective and can impact outcomes from household resilience to microenterprise growth). Come (in person or virtually!) to learn about USAID's increased attention on these topics Register here: https://lnkd.in/efAh66rq Rory Crew Gabriele Erba Zehra Rizvi Lynn Y. Holly Welcome Radice Paula Gil Baizan Cheryl Harrison Ugo Gentilini Jean-Martin Bauer Clément Rouquette Elizabeth Tromans Kenn Crossley

We think the way to save lives is more medicine and doctors, but more money also helps. Dozens of research studies across Africa show giving cash directly can… 🥘Improve nutrition 🏥Reduce illness  🤰🏾Increase access to prenatal care  👶🏾Reduce child mortality To see how it works, watch how a village in Malawi used their $550 from GiveDirectly to invest in better nutrition, clean water, and better access to healthcare. Learn more about this life-changing impact at GiveDirectly.org.

Worried people in poverty blow cash aid on booze? Spoiler: They're too busy blowing it on food, medicine, & education. GiveDirectly.org ⬇️ 📚 Dozens of research studies show giving people in poverty cash instance does not increase spending on 'temptation goods' like alcohol and tobacco. Source: https://lnkd.in/eRMwBgsU David Evans & Anna Popova for The World Bank 🍛After receiving GiveDirectly cash, Kenyan families spent more on food, medicine, and education. Source: https://lnkd.in/eWye4mbF Johannes Haushofer & Jeremy Shapiro for Princeton University 🛖Another study found communities that received cash saw fewer people drinking daily and were less likely to say drinking as a problem in their village. Source: https://lnkd.in/eM6DVvGN Tavneet Suri et al for Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) 📋 Worried cash recipients tell researchers they aren't drinking to keep them happy? Here's how studies are designed to avoid that: https://lnkd.in/eRMwBgsU Cartoon by David Ostow, licensed from CartoonStock.com