Sometimes it feels like we’re worlds apart from our recipients: (most of) our domestic team is based in NYC, whereas our recipients live in rural Kenya and Uganda; and the $1000 we send is more than a year’s income for our recipients, but it’s just another month’s rent in NYC. Despite these differences, some things […]
Blog - Yearly Archives: 2014
Candid thoughts from staff, donors, and recipients on our work and the broader movement towards cash transfers.
Uncategorized
Holiday break in real-time data
Since we relaunched this website last month, the performance charts you see throughout pipe in data from the field in real-time as our field team carries out its work. So, we thought we should let you know that the team is taking a well-deserved break from December 20 to January 4, to recharge their batteries […]
Recipients
What’s $1 worth?
People often ask us how far a standard GiveDirectly cash transfer – approximately $1,000 – goes for a recipient household in Kenya. The easy answer is: a lot further than it would go in the U.S. In order to understand exactly how much further, I recently asked my colleagues in Kenya about the average cost […]
Opinions
GiveWell (re-)recommendation
We’re thrilled that GiveWell has listed us as one of their top recommended charities once again this year. It’s not an easy mountain to climb: GiveWell reviews hundreds of organizations in unbelievable depth, and recommends very few – this year, only four. I’m grateful to my teammates here at GiveDirectly, as their strong performance is […]
Opinions
Our new website
Today we’re launching a new website for GiveDirectly—the first major update since www.givedirectly.org went live in 2011. Our main goal in reimagining the site was to create radical transparency into what we do and how well we do it. We’ve invested a lot to integrate cutting-edge technology into our field model so that we have […]
Opinions
Cash transfers: not “whether,” but “how”
Many people think that simply giving money directly to the poor is a radical new idea. We’re flattered, but the reality is: it isn’t. Over the last decade, cash transfers have quietly become one of the most widely used poverty-fighting tools in the toolkits of aid agencies and emerging market governments. If the question about […]
Recipients
Why so few stories?
If you regularly check our website, blog, or Facebook page, you may have noticed something you don’t often see: stories and photos of our recipients. Given how closely we interact with recipients and how prominently stories feature in most nonprofits’ messaging, you may be wondering if we’ve completely missed the marketing boat. We try to […]
Opinions
News round-up: Digitizing cash transfers
We’ve used mobile payments to deliver cash transfers since launching in Kenya in 2009. But many cash transfer programs around the world – including large-scale programs run by governments – still operate with physical cash, which is often costly, slow, and prone to error and corruption. Increasingly we’re seeing programs shift to mobile and other […]
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 […]
Opinions
GiveDirectly COO’s TED Talk
“The more cash we give to the poor, and the more evidence we have that it works, the more we have to reconsider everything else we give.”In a new TED talk, Joy Sun, COO-domestic of GiveDirectly, asks us to reconsider how we think about and deliver aid, and provides evidence on the power of unconditional […]
Year
Category
- Donation Info (3)
- Operations (86)
- Opinions (79)
- Recipients (46)
- Research (27)
- The Future of Cash (3)
- Uncategorized (91)