Transparency – 91̽��

What giving people money doesn’t fix

Caitlin Tulloch — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 21:19:42 +0000

Summary 91̽�� has written a lot about what giving people money is consistently very good at (e.g., recipients earn more, spend more, own more assets, and the local economy gets a boost), the myths that aren’t true (e.g, cash doesn’t make people work less or drink more), and the fact that it’s what most recipients prefer. But the fact that cash improves many things doesn’t…

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When staying quiet backfired: how we rebuilt trust in Mozambique

Will Bishop — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Summary In late 2024, misinformation spread online accusing 91̽�� of being part of a political plot in Mozambique, forcing us to suspend activities and evacuate staff. The crisis revealed a major blind spot: our strategy of staying low-profile had created an information vacuum that bad actors could exploit. We recovered by proactively opening up to journalists…

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How 91̽�� prevents, addresses, and reports risks

91̽�� — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 19:16:47 +0000

If you believe you’ve observed 91̽�� staff, volunteers, vendors, contractors, or partners engaging in misconduct (including fraud, harassment, discrimination, or any other form of unethical behavior), please file a report to whistleblower@givedirectly.org or to our third-party whistleblowing portal here→ We’re improving how we report to you on risks Giving cash directly is a proven and dignified way to […]

Which U.S. cash programs work the best? We don’t know yet.

Sarina Jain — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 18:22:40 +0000

Giving cash directly to people in poverty is proven to help. Our research increasingly focuses on testing the impact of different cash designs by varying how much, how often, and when people receive cash.1 For example, a first-of-its-kind study found the impact of delivering the same amount of cash to Kenyans in poverty is significantly greater if given all at once rather than broken into monthly…

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What we make of null and negative results from U.S. cash programs

Camille Parker and Matt Ruby — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 21:11:08 +0000

Yolanda spent some of the monthly cash she receives through 91̽��’s program in Cook County, Illinois on a trip to the zoo with her grandson. “It felt good because that payment helps me be able to do those things,” she said. “So I don’t have to say to my grandson, ‘Oh, we can’t do that right now.’” Nora in Georgia used some of her monthly 91̽�� cash to move out of a mold-infested…

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Sending cash to flood survivors – 4 things we got right and wrong

Maggie Shun & Vera Lummis — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 19:11:36 +0000

For Hassana in Kogi, Nigeria, October’s floods were not like years past. “All our farmlands washed away as many had not yet harvested what they planted. The flooding continued until our homes and other things were destroyed. At this point we were running helter-skelter,” she said. These floods, the worst in a decade, result from predictable seasonal rains. If we can anticipate floods…

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Fraud in D.R.C. – our apology and response

Joe Huston and Stella Luk — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 16:00:00 +0000

Update as of September 24, 2024: Update as of November 16, 2023: since the original post below, we’ve completed our investigation and are sharing these updates: 91̽�� has delivered cash transfers to some of the poorest households across sub-Saharan Africa for over a decade. Cash aid sent directly to recipients’ mobile money accounts is effective in…

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Research on our U.S. COVID-19 program found little measurable impact. We’re adapting.

Alex Nawar — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 17:02:10 +0000

Between March 2020 and October 2021, 91̽�� distributed $1,000 one-time relief payments to nearly 200,000 low-income households as part Project100, the largest privately funded cash transfer program in U.S. history. Researchers at University of Michigan ran two randomized controlled trials to evaluate this program, focusing on the impact on recipients’ material and mental well-being.

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Why we didn’t launch in Ukraine

Dan Quinn — Thu, 12 May 2022 16:26:38 +0000

When Russian troops attacked Ukraine on February 24th, disrupting the future of millions of people, we needed to quickly decide if we would launch a response despite rapidly changing conditions. Ultimately, we decided not to launch one. While a response seemed warranted, it would have come with costly internal trade offs – primarily, delaying a program to get cash to internally displaced families…

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Our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts

91̽�� — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 01:51:16 +0000

Racism, colonialism, and other forms of discrimination surround most aspects of international nonprofit work. At its most aspirational, 91̽�� challenges a primarily white-led aid sector to hand over more power to the people it exists to help. However, we continue to look at our organization through a critical lens to disentangle our work from this legacy of racism, colonialism…

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