Home / Focus Areas / Global Health and Development / Miscellaneous

Error message

Warning: Use of undefined constant openphil_social - assumed 'openphil_social' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in openphil_social_block_block_view() (line 90 of /var/www/html/openphil/live/sites/all/modules/custom/openphil_social_block/openphil_social_block.module).

GiveDirectly — General Support (June 2015)

A GiveDirectly cash transfer recipient and his daughter in Kenya's Koga village in October 2014. (Photo courtesy of GiveDirectly)
Organization Name 
GiveDirectly
Award Date 
6/2015
Grant Amount 
$25,000,000
Purpose 
For general support
Topic (focus area) 
Global Health & Development

Published: August 2016

Note: This grant was awarded while the Open Philanthropy Project was a partnership between GiveWell and Good Ventures.

Good Ventures awarded a $25 million grant to GiveDirectly for the support of GiveDirectly’s general operations. While the grant is unrestricted, we expect that GiveDirectly will most likely use this grant as follows:

  • ~$6-9 million: to hire a marketing team to raise significantly more funding than GiveDirectly has raised in the past.
  • ~$16-19 million: to provide cash transfers to extremely low-income households, either using its standard operating model or as part of collaborations with large aid institutions or governments. These collaborations are intended to address questions that institutional funders have about cash transfers and could include running experiments comparing other aid programs against cash transfers.

We see this grant as an outstanding giving opportunity because:

  • We believe that GiveDirectly is an exceptionally strong organization, and we see supporting its growth as an excellent opportunity.
  • Providing funds to help GiveDirectly build its marketing team and arrange partnerships with large institutions could lead to future funding for cash transfers that dwarfs this initial investment.
  • Funding GiveDirectly’s current model is one of the best giving opportunities we know of. A significant portion of this grant will directly fund GiveDirectly’s core model.