GiveDirectly

GiveDirectly never registers people for our cash programs over social media posts, messages, or WhatsApp. Reshare this post to help stop scammers using our name to trick people out of money. https://lnkd.in/dik8JMFC GiveDirectly staff will: 🚫 Never registers people for our programs over social media posts, messages, or WhatsApp. 🚫 Never asks for airtime or money from any community members or potential recipients. 🚫 Never makes loans, or gives money on the condition that you will pay it back. 🚫 Never asks you to pay money to get funds or be registered with us. 🚫 Never offers investment opportunities. If you receive one, it is fake. If you see a scam, please report it to scams@givedirectly.org

How could the UK’s £15 billion a year in international aid to do more good? Rory Stewart argues they should benchmark their programs against giving cash directly to find out how well they work. "When you are short of cash, using direct cash is a very good way of getting results." In his testimony to UK Parliament, Rory argues that aid agencies don't know if their programs work better than simply giving people in poverty cash directly. When it's been studied, direct cash often outperforms conventional programs. To make aid budgets do the most good possible, comparing to direct cash should be a more universal requirement. Better still, a cash transfer can improve not just one but all aspects of multi-dimensional poverty. More than a benchmark, direct cash should be our default, as Yolande Wright argues in Devex: GiveDirectly.org/default

A first-time visitor to Africa and I spent last week in a remote village among people living in extreme poverty somewhere on the continent. The locals kindly allowed us to participate in their community meetings and we had very engaging conversations with them. The visitor from outside Africa asked, "What would you like for yourself and your family?" The answers came thick and fast; 100% of the households wanted electricity, as none of them had it. Other responses included: "I plan to buy cattle," "I need to send my children back to school," "We want to start an irrigation system for our gardens," "We want high-yield beans and sesame (sim sim) seeds," "A mattress," "Cooking utensils," "My house needs repair," "I want to start a community grain mill," "We have business ideas," "We need good food," and "I need to go to the hospital for a check-up." The visitor later said to me, "If I had not heard for myself, I would not believe it. Unconditional cash transfers solve so many problems for so many people at the same time, and it is so cheap to send cash to people's phones too!" This is exactly the reason I joined GiveDirectly. As a research nerd, it was also the evidence from randomized controlled trials that had me hooked. Rory Stewart puts it best in this article. https://lnkd.in/eB7cZvf4

A new Vox piece covers "the best plan to help refugees" – large cash transfers. Here are the most important takeaways ⬇ 📋 "GiveDirectly is designing a new, larger study to see how cash can help refugees integrate into urban environments... The charity will closely monitor people for 2 years to see if recipients actually escape poverty for good." 💰 "4,500 recipients will receive the equivalent of $725 each... 'Sometimes we’re asked, why don’t you just give smaller amounts of cash [to more people]?' Miriam Laker-Oketta said. But 'should they keep receiving aid as if they’re in crisis mode? What can lift them out of dependency?' The results from a large lump sum study conducted in the Kiryandongo settlement in Uganda indicate that it’s better to help people invest in sustainable wealth creation." ➡ https://lnkd.in/e7tr6tXf 📈 In our Nairobi pilot last year, "recipients nearly doubled their average monthly income to 18,600 shillings — about $143 US — per month. Six months later, 88% of recipients reported earning more money than before. And a similar study in a semi-urban settlement in Uganda found that the number of refugee cash recipients there who were able to pay rent and feed their families had tripled, and more people could afford the health care they needed. Many spent their newfound income on children’s school fees." ➡ https://lnkd.in/eJQ2cjuf 💸 You can help reach more refugees at GiveDirectly.org/refugees and read Jacob Kushner's full piece at https://lnkd.in/ez77qr4Z for more, including intimate portraits of Nairobi recipients of GiveDirectly's cash transfers.

"We sat through conferences on international development, listening to expert after expert saying that the answer to all this is to focus on 'best practices,' 'capacity building,' and 'political will.' This sounded good but was actually profoundly offensive. It translated to saying 'people in this poor country were ignorant, unskilled, and lazy. We’re going to come in with our knowledge, training, and willpower to fix it.'... There are four factors that determine if a development project succeeds or fails: 1️⃣ Is it appropriate for the unique context? Not cookie-cutter or universalist. 2️⃣ Is it adjusted flexibly to meet individual needs and priorities? Not one-size-fits-all. 3️⃣ Is it giving the recipients freedom, control, and dignity? Not deciding for them. 4️⃣ Is it efficient and cost-effective? No excessive overheads. The only aid model I’ve seen do all four is unconditional cash transfers. It is a lesson in radical humility. Instead of seeing ourselves as heroic CEOs, we are trusting other people. The decisions are totally decentralized, disaggregated, and devolved to the level of the individual in the poorest household. Each family uses the money creatively to respond to opportunities and investments made by all the other families in their village... With cash in hand, the recipient and their community become the expert and the leader, finally given the dignity to choose for themselves. I came to direct giving as an effective tool for lifting people out of poverty, but found it holds a profound lesson in leadership. It turns radically against the single heroics of the individual, inverting our entire mental model of what leadership means to encompass a whole network and community. And it leaves with me two larger questions that apply to all our lives. When are we — in companies or in government — behaving as though some superhero in the centre has the knowledge and power to fix everyone else’s life? And what would a radical inversion look like? Instead of tinkering with program designs and feedback mechanisms, what if you gave power and decision-making to the most local level — your industry’s form of 'direct giving'? Here the moral lesson of humility is also the route to a more effective program and — in international development — a more just world." Rory Stewart writing for Big Think: https://lnkd.in/efNK2Sjh

Some big news! I’ve joined GiveDirectly as President & CEO. I joined the fight to end extreme poverty almost 20 years ago. The fact that 700m people live without enough food or access to healthcare, and are incredibly vulnerable to climate shocks and conflict is a burning, urgent, tragic abomination – one that has motivated my work and giving. 10 years ago I learned of an upstart organization breaking all the rules on how to change this reality. As mobile phone penetration and mobile banking opened up across Africa, GiveDirectly was using technology to reach those in extreme poverty remarkably efficiently, and delivering to them one time unconditional cash transfers. Even more - they were doing rigorous academic research to study the effects of these transfers, bringing data and evidence to a field that had long been full of ‘feelpinions.’ The data is incredibly clear. Unconditional cash transfers are amongst the most effective, efficient and scalable interventions out there. People in poverty don’t need bureaucratic organizations telling them what to do; they just need the means to do it in a way that is right for their unique situation. No one is better placed to determine that than they are, and cash is the best way to empower them to do it. Five years ago I became a donor to GiveDirectly. There are few organizations as audaciously ambitious and operationally capable, and it’s not just me who thinks that. Donors have sent $800m+ to recipients through GiveDirectly, and it has variously been listed as amongst the most ‘audacious’ (Inc), ‘innovative’ (FastCompany) and fastest growing (Forbes) organizations in the world. I couldn’t be more excited to join and lead this team. GiveDirectly’s organizational values feel true to who I am and what I think is important, and the team embodies them in a truly inspiring way. I’m hitting the ground running - I’m with our teams in Kenya right now, and will be in Mozambique later this week. We have a huge ambition, and want to act with urgency - we’ll need donors big and small, partners, technologists, governments, team members and more. If you’re interested in being involved, please reach out - I’m eager to connect.

We’re pleased to announce Nick Allardice as GiveDirectly’s new President and CEO and thank Samuel Mwamburi Mwale for serving as our Interim President during this search: https://lnkd.in/eRKJi9AG Supported by Daversa Partners, we spoke to 250+ candidates from across the globe, ranging from politicians to development leaders to business executives. We were impressed by Nick Allardice's leadership at Change.org, where he established teams in 20 countries and scaled the global activism platform to 400m+ users and over 1 billion actions. His clear commitment to our ‘recipients first,’ ‘think rigorously & act quickly,’ and ‘proactive candor’ values will serve GiveDirectly well as we pursue our most ambitious projects yet. GiveDirectly.org/values For more on Nick Allardice’s appointment and what’s next for GiveDirectly, see our announcement page: https://lnkd.in/eRKJi9AG

Want to 2x your donation to families living in extreme poverty? 👉 GiveDirectly.org/beast Thanks to a generous match donor, every new gift before August 15th to our campaign with Beast Philanthropy will be doubled until we reach our $150K goal, enough to send ~$1,000 to every family in the next Ugandan village. Learn more about the project: https://lnkd.in/ekWFGfae

"Gladys Austin and Biyeni Twaya were among 633 Nsanje households who are the first climate survivors globally to receive loss and damage funds via cash transfers. Payments of $750 were distributed over three months, as part of a fund launched by The Scottish Government at Cop28 in 2023, and facilitated by the US nonprofit GiveDirectly, which provides humanitarian aid in cash and has been operating in Malawi since 2019. GiveDirectly’s donors matched Scotland’s £1m support – enough to provide 2,709 households with relocation funds. The cash is provided with no strings attached. Austin and Twaya used their payment to buy materials for a new house. It wasn’t a difficult decision, says Austin, a roof over their heads was the most pressing need. The first of the money came in December 2023 through a mobile payment via phones provided by GiveDirectly. Austin says that until she received that payment, she wasn’t sure she could believe the scheme was real. 'Since 2012, we have been living in fear of flooding,' says Austin. 'We would have moved, but there was the matter of money and resources – we didn’t have any.' With the second payment in February 2024, they bought more housing materials, plus clothing for their children. The third payment in March paid for labour to complete the construction of their home. 'I don’t know what we would have done without that money,' says Austin. 'If it weren’t for the transfers, we would still be living [in a shack] under that tree. There it was cold, and the children were getting sick. That wasn’t a home.' '[Climate change has] created a terrible cycle of displacement, where storms force people out, but they return to their ravaged villages, only to have to leave again with the next floods,' says Charles Kalemba, the commissioner for DoDMA. By 2022, most of Makwalo’s fields were knee-high in water; the Ruo shifted course by several hundred metres, rendering a government bridge project defunct. 'We have to try to solve the root cause of the displacement, which means relocating people once and for all,' Kalemba says. 'The government is therefore changing its strategy to building resilience, rather than responding to annual emergencies.' 'The west has an obligation to assist us to repair, recover, get to resilience. We didn’t contribute to a lot of the problems we are facing now,” he adds. “The United Nations should be used to mobilise resources. It’s helpful to talk to governments and bring people together, but we’ve talked for over 20 years now. We’re going into Cop29, that’s 29 years of talking. Many of those pledges remain just that – pledges.'" Learn more at GiveDirectly.org/climate Read the full The Guardian article from Kang-Chun (KC) C. at https://lnkd.in/efC_q_vq

Full-time employment tripled, household income went up by 237%, and many young adults were finally able to move out of their parents' homes and build their own lives. That’s the impact of a one-time $550 cash transfer to 18 to 35-year-olds in rural Rwanda. Studies show cash transfers can outperform traditional training programs in transforming lives: https://lnkd.in/d7K3iMQ Find out more at: https://lnkd.in/dbCU7R-P