When Russian troops attacked Ukraine on February 24th, disrupting the future of millions of people, we needed to quickly decide if we would launch a response despite rapidly changing conditions. Ultimately, we decided not to launch one. While a response seemed warranted, it would have come with costly internal trade offs – primarily, delaying a […]
Blog - Operations
Candid thoughts from staff, donors, and recipients on our work and the broader movement towards cash transfers.
Operations, Opinions
The neglected climate change solution
A worsening cycle of storms and drought is threatening safety and food supply for many in southern Africa. Tropical Storm Ana struck Malawi in January, washing away nearly 200K acres of crops and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Four more large storms have swept through the area since. GiveDirectly is providing emergency cash relief […]
Operations
Our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts
Racism, colonialism, and other forms of discrimination surround most aspects of international nonprofit work. At its most aspirational, GiveDirectly challenges a primarily white-led aid sector to hand over more power to the people it exists to help. However, we continue to look at our organization through a critical lens to disentangle our work from this […]
Operations
2021 Report
Operations
$241,633 was lost to fraud this year — that’s about what we expect
So far in 2021, GiveDirectly has delivered $106.3M to 431K people in poverty across seven countries in Africa. We estimate 0.23% of those funds was lost to theft, bribes, and imposters. Every major nonprofit experiences losses from fraud, but few rigorously investigate and safeguard against it; fewer still openly report on it [1]. We believe […]
Operations, Recipients
I was a COVID-19 recipient. Now, I’m an employee
Note: This post was was written in Kirundi and translated by Aline’s coworker, Roben. Read the original here. My name is Aline Fernicka. I am a Burundian refugee and a former GiveDirectly recipient. I currently work as a Field Officer at GiveDirectly in Kigali, Rwanda registering recipients in our programs so that they can receive […]
Operations
GiveDirectly and Segovia
4/06/2021 | Segovia merger and relationship with GiveDirectly Segovia is a financial technology company co-founded in 2014 by two members of GiveDirectly’s board, which today is owned and operated by Crown Agents Bank (CAB). GiveDirectly uses CAB to issue payments via mobile money networks. A summary of the current relationship between the two organizations can […]
Operations
New funding from Google CEO, Google.org, and Flourish Ventures
Today, Google.org, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Flourish Ventures announced a $3M commitment toward GiveDirectly’s U.S. COVID-19 cash relief program. This latest round of funding triples the U.S. emergency fund which is actively providing $1,000 in direct cash payments to families hardest hit by the COVID-19 crisis.
Operations
International COVID-19 response now live
As of today, our international response to COVID-19 is live: you can give directly to households living in extreme poverty in the hardest-hit communities overseas. More information on this below. We are deeply concerned for these families. As the pandemic hits and governments impose lockdowns to try to limit its spread, many will suddenly be […]
Operations
Our emergency cash response for COVID-19
April 21, 2020 Update: We have officially launched Project 100. Project 100 is, by far, the most ambitious Covid-19 private direct payments initiative to date in the United States. March 19, 2020 Update: We have officially announced the launch of our program; you can find more details here. On March 18, 2020, we shared an […]