Thanks Alex N.! We’ll have a look into this.
GiveDirectly
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We know cash transfers improve lives. Can they transform entire economies?
What will it take to deliver billions a year to the world’s poorest?
Hi, yes this would be from self-reported data. We aren’t currently collecting detailed M&E data on economic indicators during this phase of work.
Good question. Digital literacy is fairly low and many people did not have smartphones until we ran this pilot. Language offerings are limited in free commercial offerings, particularly for voicenotes, which are essential for engagement in this group.
Hi NickLaing, you raise excellent points—this does raise ethical issues and it’s something that we have thought a lot about and have put systems in place to address. We do gather consent from recipients when they are initially enrolled, and we ensure that data is anonymised when it is analysed. We have built additional railguards into the chatbots (we tested exactly the types of questions you raised to check how the chatbot responded and then ensured that any questions that raised a red flag receive responses that link them to our call centre). Our safeguarding teams also monitor messages for anything problematic and address these with the appropriate level of engagement depending on the issues that surface. Our approach to safeguarding and guardrails is evolving as we learn—if you have additional suggestions of things we should be thinking about, we’d welcome these suggestions.
Hi! We’re taking a phased approach to our learning on digital innovation. These results are from the first phase of work—small pilots assessing uptake and usability through qualitative research (focus groups) and data from the chatbots. We are now running A/B tests of different prompts to see which ones respond most effectively to recipients. Once we know which prompts perform best, we will move on to A/B testing of cash versus cash plus chatbot to evaluate economic indicators that we believe from the micro-data of past studies are leading indicators of longer-term income.
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Effective Zakat Fund 2026
We deliver cash transfers in Eastern DRC: https://GiveDirectly.org/drc
We also deliver cash transfers to Sudanese refugees fleeing to Uganda: https://muslimimpactlab.org/give-zakat-directly-to-sudanese-refugees/
Reach out to info@givedirectly.org if you want to learn more
What giving people money doesn’t fix
Study: Giving people money returned 2.5x the value without causing inflation
While the broad cash program in this study is certainly more expensive per family than other global health programs, the researchers note that if the cash was targeted to pregnant women in their third trimester, it could be “comparably cost effective to a number of WHO-recommended maternal and child health interventions, even without taking into account other possible benefits of unconditional cash transfers (such as consumption gains).”
We’re launching a pilot this fall in Kenya specifically for pregnant women to learn just how much more cost-effectively cash can improve infant and maternal health, one of our many tests to improve our programs for specific outcomes.
(updated our post above to clarify this)
Study: Giving cash to mothers cut infant deaths in half
From proven to fit-for-purpose: what GiveDirectly’s doing next with cash
Darren “We don’t push hard for donations. Our primary goal is to educate and inspire, not fundraise. Donations are a bonus. We usually have sponsors for the videos, and the money we earn from those sponsors goes directly to the projects. In the case of the GiveDirectly video, we made a $200,000 donation, and anything beyond that is a bonus. However, someone who saw the video is now matching up to $150,000, which will help reach the fundraising goal.”
If you want to help this match succeed, reshare the campaign page or Darren’s X post.
Also here’s our blog on how we optimize matches to maximize impact.
Hi David T., you are right to ask the question on whether people would rather have had the cash instead of a better chatbot. This is why we are starting with small pilots and using these to inform our next steps. So far the feedback has been very positive—people say that they wish they had had the chatbot earlier. Next we want to know if adding a chatbot boosts the impact of cash—if so, then rolling this out at larger scale will involve minimal costs but the benefits could be high. We don’t know of other non-profits that are offering unrestricted versions of chatbots at this point (many focus only on agricultural advice) - but we believe this offers the kind of information access that should be available to people and allows people to make decisions based on their own needs.