We’ve reached 1 million households in poverty and counting

We sent a cash transfer to our 1 millionth household this fall. In 2011, our first year operating, we paid… 99. See the growth in real time: The very first GiveDirectly payment ever Below is GiveDirectly’s co-founder Rohit Wanchoo making our very first test payment ever. Before we were instantly enrolling and paying tens of thousands people at […]

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Study: AI targeting helped reach more of the poorest people in Togo

This week researchers with Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) and the Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) published a working paper with the results of a first-of-its-kind contactless direct payments program. The program, which was led by the Government of Togo and supported by the research team and GiveDirectly, showed the machine learning targeting outperformed […]

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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 […]

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How does a basic income affect recipients during COVID-19?

Initial results from our basic income experiment were released today. In the working paper’s abstract, researchers Abhijit Banerjee, Michael Faye, the late Alan Krueger, Paul Niehaus, and Tavneet Suri wrote: “We examine some effects of Universal Basic Income (UBI) during the COVID-19 pandemic using a large-scale experiment in rural Kenya. Transfers significantly improved well-being on […]

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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 […]

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Reflections from a trip to Kenya

One of our donors recently spent five days with our team in Kenya and shared his reflections. We found them thoughtful, candid, and insightful, and asked to republish them here. — Carlos Dominguez Context note: I work at a financial firm in NYC. This firm has an “employee philanthropy bulletin board” where people discuss their […]

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