GiveDirectly helps people escape poverty through cash transfers. People living in poverty or close to poverty are disproportionately affected by crisis, and it’s estimated that two thirds of people living in extreme poverty will be living in fragile and conflict-affected situations by 2030.1 

A well-timed cash transfer can help people affected by crises meet their needs and recover more quickly, which is why they prefer cash over other types of aid. 

We’ve responded to 12 emergencies since 2018. In the past year, we responded to three natural disasters:

  • 🇹🇷 Turkey earthquake. Sent 1,100+ families ~$500 in our first rapid response effort in a new country.
  • 🇲🇼/🇲🇿 Cyclone Freddy. Sent 6,800+ families in Malawi and Mozambique between $225-300 in response to the longest storm in recorded history. 
  • 🇲🇦 Morocco earthquake. Sending 200+ worker cooperatives ~$9,000 in response to the country’s largest earthquake in the past century. 

To advance this work, in 2023 we invested in our ability to respond more quickly to global crises:

  • 🌍 We improved our preparedness by establishing an in-house global crisis monitoring system that combines 20+ sources of information
  • ⏱️ We reduced our go / no-go decision time to just a few days by developing a framework to estimate the effectiveness, efficiency, and operational feasibility of a potential crisis response. With 240+ natural disasters and 117M people forcibly displaced in 2023, we have to be thoughtful about where we respond, given limited resources.2
  • 🤝 We now have systems to locate survivors and send payments in 130+ countries (up from less than 30) through new partnerships with payment providers and other responders, allowing us to respond faster and more efficiently.
  • 💸 We added a donation option to raise funds before the next crisis response, so we can begin responding immediately without first having to raise donations.

In 2024, we’re aiming to deliver your donations to disaster survivors living in poverty, and will continue working to shorten the time between disasters and cash to demonstrate its power to the emergency response sector.

Give cash before the next emergency

Footnotes:

  1. Sources: “disproportionately affected by crisis” & “two thirds of people“
  2. Sources: “240+ natural disasters” & “117M people“
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