This week in cash transfers

Every so often, we’ll be sharing recent news about cash transfers from around the world. Here’s the latest: Cash transfers can plug PDS leakages: study – The Hindu – February 1, 2015 – study estimates that almost half of grains released through PDS did not reach intended beneficiaries in 2011-2012, and that cash transfers may […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Heartbleed Update

We treat the privacy of our donors and recipients seriously and do not believe it was affected by the Heartbleed Bug.We confirmed that our hosting provider, Amazon, had patched the bug and then we updated all our certificates and keys. We verified that Stripe, our payments processor, did the same. We do not believe that […]

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GiveWell’s First Full Update on GiveDirectly

Please visit the GiveWell website to read an in-depth report on GiveDirectly’s work in Kenya, our expansion into a second country, and our long-term outlook as we continue to scale up our cash transfer operations. The report covers our activities since November 2012, when GiveWell named GiveDirectly their #2 rated charity based on their criteria […]

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New Blog Format

Thanks to the time and efforts of a generous volunteer, this section of  the GiveDirectly website will now feature more frequent updates, including reports from our field team, lessons learned from our work, and the latest evidence on the impact our cash transfers have on the lives of the poor. If you have a question […]

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Spring 2013: Cash transfers in the headlines

Evidence behind unconditional cash transfers captured the media’s attention in May: Jacquelline Fuller in Fast Company: “This is a way to transform how people think about aid. There is no reason why a lot of development dollars couldn’t be shifted to a model like this.” Matthew Yglesias in Slate: “Money with no strings attached not […]

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