Mitch Riley, one of GiveDirectly’s field directors, explains the logic that goes into answering the question: “why do we use the transfer timing that we do?” The decision on how to break up the approximately $1000 payment per recipient is more complicated than it might seem. We have to take into account a range of […]
Blog - Operations
Candid thoughts from staff, donors, and recipients on our work and the broader movement towards cash transfers.
Operations
Here we come, Homa Bay
We are very pleased to announce that GiveDirectly is moving its operations in Kenya from Siaya County, north of Kisumu, to Homa Bay County to the south. In Kenya, the counties of Siaya and Homa Bay are relatively close to each other and to our main office in Kisumu. The move represents GiveDirectly’s expanding potential […]
Operations
A wet and muddy situation in the field
Emmanuel, a field officer from Uganda, reflects on a wet and muddy situation in the field. Not every organization can put “how to navigate potentially hippo-infested swamps” on their weekly problem-solving agenda. Field officers traverse the swamp. The enrolment process for our most recent campaign in Uganda began in March – the dry season – […]
Operations
Targeting innovation in Kenya
Anti-poverty programs must often start with a rather obvious step: finding poor people. This may seem like a simple exercise, particularly in countries with high poverty rates. However, consider the potential pitfalls of some common approaches: a simple asset test (questions like “do you have a bicycle? A cow? A radio?”) may be easy to […]
Operations
Announcement: Moving to our third district in Kenya
GiveDirectly is crossing an important milestone: after over two years working in Siaya district, we’re moving our enrollment teams to our third district in Kenya – Ugunja. This is an exciting moment for GiveDirectly because it’s a sign of the scale we’ve reached: we’ve now been to all the villages in a district that our […]
Operations
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 […]
Operations
How would you explain what a PIN is?
M-Pesa is famously ubiquitous in Kenya, with more than half the adult population using it or some other form of mobile money. M-Pesa agents, who take users’ deposits and provide cash-outs, operate in most towns and even small villages. The breadth of the network has certainly made our work delivering cash transfers, even in rural, […]
Operations
Rolling model
Here in Kenya, our team is focused on transferring money to as many poor households as possible. So, in March of this year, we made a significant change to our field model that allows us to reach more households than ever before.Our process of identifying recipients and transferring funds involves several distinct stages, each of […]
Operations
What Happened When We Gave to Whole Villages
“How do you decide whom to give to?” is usually the first question I get when I describe GiveDirectly’s model. It’s also a question we think about a lot internally. Effective targeting is a core feature of the product we offer donors, and a moral imperative. In 2013, we began to experiment with a new […]
Operations
GiveDirectly is in Uganda!
From the beginning, our goal at GiveDirectly has been to build an efficient and scalable platform to deliver cash transfers to poor people around the world. After months of planning and execution, we are very happy to announce that we now have a program up and running in a second country: Uganda! Cash transfer recipients […]