GiveDirectly

??The The New York Times Highlights Our Call to Reimagine U.S. Foreign Aid The New York Times just said what we've been saying all along: America’s foreign aid system needs a reimagining. "Aid as we know it is gone... adjusting to the new reality means approaching aid in a radically different way," writes Farah Stockman, who highlights Unlock Aid's work. She links to our New American Foreign Partnership Standard to reimagine how the United States works with the rest of the world. In the wake of the U.S. foreign aid freeze, our #AidWeWant campaign advocates for new model of U.S. engagement that: ? Promotes economic growth, jobs, and health, benefiting both America and partner countries ? Focuses on measurable results, not process with clear accountability for impact ? Invests directly in local leadership rather than funding layers of middlemen ? Requires strategic exits and self-reliance with clear transitions to local ownership ? Leverages innovation and technology to deliver faster results at lower costs ?? Read our full New American Foreign Partnership Standard here: https://lnkd.in/duXkaT-x ? This is a critical moment. The decisions that our leaders make in the weeks to come will shape the future of U.S. engagement with the world for decades. ?? Join our campaign: Help us shape what comes next: ?https://lnkd.in/dzqCtrfA P.S. We also appreciate the NYT's shout-out to donate to our Foreign Aid Bridge Fund! Give your support today for high-impact, frontline organizations by clicking here: https://lnkd.in/gPCbrYTC #AidWeWant #AidReimagined https://lnkd.in/eqJM4w2n

With funding under pressure, can we still make climate action a priority? I’ll be joining a fantastic panel hosted by Ground Truth Solutions on Thursday 27 March (9:00 – 10:30 AM CET) to explore this — and how innovative cash assistance can help. Hear from: ? Sophie Tholstrup, Humanitarian and Climate Policy Leader at Ground Truth Solutions ? Adessou Kossivi, Global Advocacy Manager at GNDR ? Sunayana Sen, Director of Programmes and Operations at Resurgence ? ? Michael Lillis (me!) , Humanitarian Specialist at GiveDirectly Join us in person at the CICG in Geneva or register online for the event here ???https://lnkd.in/gePvpp5N This session is part of ???????????????????????? ???????????????? ?????? ???????????????????????? ???????? (HNPW) 2025. If you’ll be in Geneva next week, drop me a line! Yolande Wright Isabelle Pelly Federico Barreras Ariana Keyman Daniel Quinn Sophie Tholstrup Virginia Leape Andrea Caflisch Jonathan Stone Jon Kurtz Rebecca Carter Juliet Lang Kerrie Holloway Tim Waites Paul Harvey Louisa Seferis Ian O'Donnell Thomas Russell Sarah Dalrymple Katie Rickard

?? GiveDirectly & International Rescue Committee were recognized for our Google funded "anticipatory" pilots delivering cash assistance to families in Nigeria days before devastating floods hit ?? From Fast Company: "GiveDirectly and the International Rescue Committee have long helped people recover after a disaster or humanitarian crisis. But in 2024, they partnered to see how they could help before disaster even struck. Together, the nonprofits received $4.6 million from Google.org, which funded an “anticipatory” cash transfer pilot that allowed the nonprofits to deliver cash assistance to 3,000 households in Nigeria before devastating floods hit. In Kogi, a state in the North Central region of Nigeria, the annual rainy season often causes severe flooding. As of October 2024, floods that began in September had displaced more than 2 million people. But both nonprofits were prepared long before that. Their projects use Google’s AI flood prediction models to identify at-risk communities and send payments to those people early. In 2024, GiveDirectly enrolled 30,000 people across flood-prone areas and provided more than 4,500 of the most-at-risk households with their first cash payments before the peak of the flooding ($315 per person). One recipient, Dr. Felix Akor, whose home was surrounded by water and his farmland destroyed, used his transfer to pay for relocation for his family to higher ground and transportation for his children to keep going to school. The International Rescue Committee targeted another 3,000 households, giving out $400 apiece. The Nigeria pilots are still ongoing, but both nonprofits had earlier success that shows that advanced aid gave families the ability to stockpile food and medicine, harvest their crops before the flooding ruined them, and evacuate their families." Read more: https://lnkd.in/eM2FbTq6

I've been following GiveDirectly's work since I started reporting on philanthropy within global development four years ago. The direct cash payment charity created by MIT and Harvard graduate students nearly two decades ago, has delivered more than $800 million to over 1.6-million people, largely in sub-Saharan Africa. The group's effort to allow financially struggling people to use aid money as they see fit — rather than as directed by faraway grant makers — has seen success and failure. Lessons learned from missteps have helped instruct how GiveDirectly operates its U.S. program, which launched seven years ago with a focus on disaster relief. Yet, what works in Kenya does not necessarily work in Kansas — and GiveDirectly has become enmeshed in debates about universal basic income, the no-strings-attached cash payments intended to even the U.S. economic playing field. Its home turf story is one of learning through failure, collaboration, and identifying the communities where it can have the biggest impact. “We’re a learning organization. We are committed to research, we’re committed to candor,” said Sarah Moran, a vice president at GiveDirectly. “We don’t want to be doing things that don’t work.”

U.S. cuts have hobbled aid groups and local networks providing essential aid to millions. Yet food and medicine are still available—families just need money to buy them. GiveDirectly cash will help families like Alefa’s in Malawi get food, transport, and medicine. Give today: GiveDirectly.org/aidcuts

Seven of our direct cash programs were among the 10,000 terminated by the U.S. State Department order last week. This abrupt elimination of 90% of U.S. foreign assistance is devastating for the millions of vulnerable families meant to receive aid. For GiveDirectly specifically, it means about 38,000 families across Mozambique, Malawi, DRC, and Morocco will no longer receive life-changing cash transfers this year unless we can raise funds to fill a $20M gap: GiveDirectly.org/aidcuts We’d already put in the upfront costs to prepare these programs, but now lack the cash to send out. We’re able to fill some of the gap with emergency funds, but currently only have enough to reach a fifth of those families. If you’re in a position to give, your donation will leverage past work and reach impacted recipients faster: GiveDirectly.org/aidcuts These U.S. cuts are a significant blow, yet we're fortunate that most of GiveDirectly's funding comes from other sources, putting us in a position to meet the urgency of this moment. While the needs in the communities we serve have only intensified, so has our commitment to supporting the world's most vulnerable families. Consider giving below ??

Seven of our direct cash programs were among the 10,000 terminated by the U.S. State Department order last week. This abrupt elimination of 90% of U.S. foreign assistance is devastating for the millions of vulnerable families meant to receive aid. For GiveDirectly specifically, it means about 38,000 families across Mozambique, Malawi, DRC, and Morocco will no longer receive life-changing cash transfers this year unless we can raise funds to fill a $20M gap: GiveDirectly.org/aidcuts We’d already put in the upfront costs to prepare these programs, but now lack the cash to send out. We’re able to fill some of the gap with emergency funds, but currently only have enough to reach a fifth of those families. If you’re in a position to give, your donation will leverage past work and reach impacted recipients faster: GiveDirectly.org/aidcuts These U.S. cuts are a significant blow, yet we're fortunate that most of GiveDirectly's funding comes from other sources, putting us in a position to meet the urgency of this moment. While the needs in the communities we serve have only intensified, so has our commitment to supporting the world's most vulnerable families. Consider giving below ??

Research is the reason cash transfers went from 'you must be mad' to mainstream. This opportunity to lead research at GiveDirectly requires technical chops, relational depth, leadership, moral vision- and it's going to be a lot of fun. https://lnkd.in/gqhKawsH

Nature Magazine: "Conventional poverty-relief projects rely on data gathered through in-person surveys — which were?not possible during the pandemic. But Togo’s effort, dubbed Novissi, which means ‘solidarity’ in the local éwé language, incorporated AI to determine who should receive aid. The project, led by Cina Lawson, the Togo Minister of Digital Economy and Transformation, along with scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the non-governmental organization (NGO) GiveDirectly, analysed satellite images and?data from mobile-phone networks?to estimate the wealth of particular regions and individuals. “We needed a surgical approach,” says Lawson. It was an important moment for the use of AI in anti-poverty work, she says. AI allowed Lawson to leapfrog the conventional hurdles of using old and incomplete data to quickly make the most of her limited budget... When governments and aid agencies are facing limited budgets and sudden economic shocks, AI could be the key tool that helps to get aid to the people who need it most." Read the full piece: https://lnkd.in/eAW6RqK8 Learn more about GiveDirectly's AI/ML work: https://lnkd.in/ezwMNHXk

A fast, effective way to help families fleeing conflict in DRC: send cash ?? GiveDirectly.org/congo Over 500,000 people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have been displaced by the fighting between M23 rebels and Congolese government forces for control of the city of Goma and surrounding regions. Three in four people in DRC are living in extreme poverty and are especially vulnerable after displacement. Fleeing civilians have to abandon their already precarious livelihoods and most of their possessions to seek safety elsewhere. Despite the fighting, markets and shops are reopening, which means cash in hand can help displaced families meet their immediate needs like food, water, and shelter. With our partners at Flowminder, GiveDirectly has developed a first-of-its-kind method to deliver money remotely to civilians as they flee, getting cash in their mobile wallets just days after a violent incident. This quick cash can be life-saving, helping families make rapid decisions like paying for transport to safety, stocking up on food, buying urgently needed medicines, or simply avoiding starvation. Here's how that technology works: ?? Imagine as you are fleeing with your family to safety, your mobile phone pings with a ten-question enrollment survey that you can complete in two minutes over text message. GiveDirectly takes less than an hour to confirm your identity before sending funds to your phone, fully remotely. ?? We remotely sent ~$125 each to 490 people on January 17 and 23, a week after they fled outbreaks of violence in North Kivu using this method. We partner with local mobile network providers to obtain anonymized subscriber cell-tower ping data. After a thorough background check and identity verification, we enroll and pay them fully remotely. ?? This is a major breakthrough, as it can take ~100 days for aid groups to get cash aid to families after they were displaced and ~130 days for in-kind food aid. That is because most aid organizations need to wait until a family makes it to a displacement camp to enroll them, followed by a waiting period before their first disbursement. Our method can reach them about 20x faster. Your donation can help us reach even more families fleeing crisis and scale up the use of this new technology, though we may also deliver funds to impacted families using other targeting methods: GiveDirectly.org/congo More from Caroline Teti in the video below.