91探花

This year, 91探花 will hit a milestone few thought possible: committed to people in poverty, alongside 25+ independent studies rigorously testing how that cash was spent, what changed, and why. 

Now we鈥檙e raising the bar. 91探花 has set an audacious new goal: deliver $5 billion by 2035 to accelerate the end of extreme poverty and meet humanitarian needs.

Getting there won鈥檛 just require more of the same. It demands we grow faster, test smarter, and build for the future. Three shifts are pushing us forward:

• Rising need, shrinking resources: Crises are compounding, aid budgets are not. We must deliver more impact per dollar to reach more people in need.
• Faster tech, new tools: AI and digital finance are changing how people work, save, borrow, and learn. Our cash delivery should take advantage of these without exacerbating inequity.
• Deeper evidence base: With and counting, we now know far more about what cash can do and are designing programs that push beyond 鈥渄oes it work?鈥� to 鈥渨hat works best in which contexts?鈥� 

Call it “91探花 2.0.” We鈥檙e continuing to scale what鈥檚 working 鈥� village-wide, unconditional lump sums 鈥� with greater speed and reach. We鈥檙e also adapting for the places and people where traditional aid falls short: displaced families, pregnant women, climate-vulnerable regions. 

That means more targeted designs, like transfers timed to pregnancy or structured to test the most cost-effective paths to lift incomes. To drive this, we鈥檝e built a dedicated product function focused on optimizing our model: testing more, iterating faster, and shaping programs around the outcomes that matter most to recipients and donors. 

Even as we evolve, our guardrails remain clear: every 91探花 program must be respectful to recipients, effective at improving lives, and scalable to many places.

鉁� What we鈥檙e still doing: Scaling what works

馃捀 Large lump sums to people in extreme poverty

Our core program remains one of the most effective and efficient ways to support people in extreme poverty. The evidence base is robust:

• Recipients see lasting increases in income, assets, and consumption, even seven years after receiving cash
• Spillover effects are real: every $1 in cash can generate up to $2.50 in economic activity for communities

It works at scale: we鈥檙e set to deliver $90m in lump sum transfers in 2025 (about 70% of our work), and could responsibly absorb and deliver an additional $250m+ in the next year

In 91探花 2.0, we鈥檙e not just scaling our core program 鈥� we鈥檙e improving it. We鈥檙e investing more in our core technology so that we can launch programs faster and better adapt to local needs. That unlocks the ability to test questions big and small that matter for outcomes: 

• 馃捀 What鈥檚 the ideal transfer size for different communities or contexts? 
• 馃�� How can we leverage AI to drive more efficient and inclusive programs? 
• 馃棧锔� Which eligibility explanation best reduces confusion or stigma? 
• 馃摑 Which survey question yields the most honest answers?

馃啒 Rapidly responding to disasters around the world

Since 2020, we鈥檝e delivered $25m to over 70,000 people in response to rapid onset crises in increasingly sophisticated ways, leveraging partnerships and technology to get cash to victims of hurricanes & cyclones, fires, floods, , and conflict. 

And, we鈥檝e gotten faster 鈥� faster at making decisions, faster at raising money, and faster at deploying cash.

This year, we鈥檙e doubling down on the technical infrastructure and partnerships needed to send life-saving cash anywhere in the world within 5 days of a crisis. Not just to show it’s possible, but because this kind of speed will increasingly whether or not people survive and help shrinking aid budgets stretch further. 

We鈥檙e also investing in research to help us understand the relative impact of cash, information, and quick action.

馃實 Delivering cash in conflict-affected areas

More than of the world鈥檚 poorest people are now living in fragile or conflict-affected states. That means ending extreme poverty requires reaching those places quickly, safely, and reliably for both our large lump sums and our crisis payments. 

In 2025, we鈥檙e testing:

• Remote targeting to identify and pay people displaced by conflict in DRC
• Giving cash for livelihoods in the insurgency-affected Memba district of northern Mozambique
• Flexible delivery models so recipients can receive funds when and where they鈥檙e safe

馃啎 What we鈥檙e starting: Designing for higher impact per dollar

Our large transfer program is already one of the best bets in global development. We think cash can do even better on specific outcomes with the right adaptations.

馃懇馃従鈥嶐煃� Cash for new moms and babies

is born into extreme poverty each year. More than of them will die before their fifth birthday, most from preventable causes.

New evidence suggests that cash delivered during pregnancy or infancy could cut infant mortality in half. That鈥檚 what we saw in Kenya, where large transfers coincided with better access to care and nutrition.

We believe this could be one of the most cost-effective ways to save lives and reduce poverty, which is why pursuing that target cash specifically to pregnant women.

In September, we鈥檙e partnering with a Kenya community health organization, , to deliver cash to pregnant women alongside care at trusted, local health facilities. Each woman will be randomly assigned to one of two transfer structures, letting us test which model delivers better outcomes for moms and babies. A similar pilot is in early design in eastern DRC. 

We鈥檙e seeking funders and partners to scale what we learn and deliver one of the most cost-effective ways to save lives.

馃�濔煆� Cash with digital coaching

Over the past 15 years, studies of multi-faceted poverty programs (often called 鈥樷�溾�� programs) have found that adding coaching to cash can boost impact, especially on long-term income gains. Lighter-touch models that focus on mindset and planning, not technical advice, have outperformed cash alone in places like , , , and .

In collaboration with the experts who drove these findings, we鈥檙e now developing a digital coaching  package that layers digital supports on top of a large lump sum transfer. The goal is to find out whether a lighter-touch approach can match the impact of more intensive graduation programs, but at a fraction of the cost and complexity, making the impact easier to scale.  

With lots of potential content (goal-setting, planning, agency, empowerment, reminders, financial and digital skills, etc), many potential digital channels (text message, IVR, video, audio, AI chatbot, etc), and questions about how much coaching is needed (one-off, weekly, monthly, etc) – we anticipate it will take some trial, error, iteration, and A/B testing to arrive at the most cost-effective package. We have some early R&D funding to get started, and some pilots in the works, and look forward to learning more.

馃攳 Innovating for 10x the impact

We鈥檙e piloting new program designs that could deliver significantly more impact per dollar, up to 2, 3, or even 10 times as much. These pilots aim to outperform our core cash program on cost-effectiveness:

• 馃棑锔� Reaching people at key moments like becoming a parent or finishing school
• 馃尡 Giving cash alongside existing education, agriculture, or water access interventions
• 馃摬 Pairing cash with smartphones and AI-enabled chatbots giving farming advice
• 馃П Giving village committees $14k to spend on local infrastructure projects

We鈥檒l incorporate the ones that work into our existing programs or spin them off as new ones. This effort is funded in part by , and will shape our pipeline of innovation going forward.

Our next billion dollars will be even more impactful

Our goal is maximizing impact for recipients in increasingly scalable and cost-effective ways. 

We鈥檙e doing this by systematically building and testing program variations that meet our three-part bar: they must be respectful, scalable, and more impactful than simply giving the additional costs to recipients as cash. That benchmark challenged the sector a decade ago and we鈥檙e still holding ourselves to it.

If you want to back proven, repeatable impact at scale, our Poverty Relief program is shovel-ready and underfunded: we have $90m to deliver in 2025, but capacity to give out $250m+.

If you want to back innovation 鈥� supporting fragile states, new mothers, or next-generation program technologies 鈥� we鈥檙e raising an additional $25m to move from early-stage pilots to scalable, cost-effective models. Some of these haven鈥檛 been tested yet; this fund is how we do that.

We鈥檝e delivered nearly a billion dollars in highly impactful ways. Now we鈥檙e ensuring the next billion will do even more.

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