Emergency Relief | GiveDirectly (2024)

If you lost everything, would you want a stranger to guess what you needed most? Or would you rather choose for yourself?

When disasters strike, individuals have their own personal emergencies. Whether it’s losing their home, being unable to get to work and pay the bills, or needing to purchase medicine, each person has their own unique challenges. These needs are difficult to predict. Yet donors still send canned goods and used clothes, making the decision of what the recipient needs most.

Wouldn’t you rather choose for yourself?

Cash enables that choice.

Imagine instead of getting a pile of used clothes you were given $1,500 no strings attached. What would you spend it on? Fixing your car, buying a generator, or replacing your fridge? Cash recognizes that everyone has unique emergencies and it is unrealistic to expect aid organizations to predict the wide array of complex needs that arise. Instead, cash allows recipients to prioritize and solve their own challenges.

Unsurprisingly, a majority of recipients prefer cash to traditional disaster relief.

And it turns out it’s pretty impactful.

Cash transfers are among the most well-researched and proven approaches to reducing poverty and changing lives. With over 165 studies, cash has been shown to have a wide range of positive impacts. In our disaster relief pilot in Puerto Rico, we saw the strongest evidence of impact on debt avoidance, stress reduction, and improvement in living conditions.

• Choice
• Impact
• Transparency
• Efficiency

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Disaster Donation

Is my donation tax-deductible?

Yes, donations are tax-deductible in the United States. GiveDirectly is a registered 501(c)(3), and our U.S. federal EIN is 27-1661997.

I’m an existing GiveDirectly donor – will any of my donations go to US disasters?

No. Only donations specifically marked for disaster relief at point of donation will be delivered to recipients affected by a qualifying disaster. Donations marked for our poverty alleviation programs (or those marked “no preference”) will not be used in disaster relief efforts.

How much of my donation does a recipient receive?

In our previous disaster relief pilots, over 90 cents of every dollar donated was delivered to recipients. The remainder was spent on key aspects of our operations: identifying the recipients most in need, preventing fraud, and ensuring a high bar of customer service. In future projects we will strive to deliver 90 cents of each dollar.

How do you decide who receives money?

To identify those who are most impacted by a disaster, we look at two variables: poverty and damage. First, we use aerial imagery and existing poverty data sets to identify highly impacted areas. Next, our field team confirms the eligibility of recipients through on-site damage assessment and verification of enrollment criteria. We use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as a proxy for confirming the poverty level.

Disaster response at GiveDirectly

How do I know recipients will spend cash appropriately?

The research is clear: poor households are some of the most effective spenders around. FCDO’s High Level Panel on Humanitarian Cash Transfers concluded that “Cash transfers are one of the more thoroughly researched forms of development intervention”¹. In addition, common concerns that people will spend money on vices have been consistently disproven. In a post-disaster context, needs can vary greatly. Cash empowers recipients to spend on what they need most. A good question to ask: if your home was hit by a disaster and someone gave you $1,500 how would you spend the money? Having said that - we don’t know that every recipient will spend the way the donor thinks best. By giving cash, donors entrust recipients to best define their own needs².

What’s the evidence base on cash?

Over 165 studies on cash have shown impact across a range of outcomes. Learn more on our research page.

How much of disaster relief funding is distributed as cash today?

There is room to grow the use of cash in disaster relief. In 2016, the Global Public Policy Institute estimated that if cash was used wherever the evidence suggests it should be, it would account for 40% of humanitarian aid, four-times its current share³.

How do you prevent fraud?

We use a mix of prevention, detection, and auditing techniques to manage fraud. These include, for example, defined staff roles, controls on the number of cards that can be ordered per batch, spot checks of data captured in the field, remote GPS coordinate checks, and independent follow-up calls with recipients, among others. We use government-issued IDs, utility bills, and other documents to confirm the recipients' place of residence.

Can I choose to whom to give?

No; you cannot choose an individual recipient. Practically speaking, if we did the latter we would risk being regulated as a money transfer service and losing our charitable status. Philosophically, we aim to target the poorest possible recipients in high impact areas of Hurricane Karol, and not those with compelling profiles or narratives.

Do you implement the program yourself or partner with other organizations?

We manage the full transfer process, end-to-end. We partner with other organizations to improve our technology and data; for example, we use NOAA satellite data and Google technology to assess damage and Visa prepaid cards to transfer payment. But our team directly manages each stage of the transfer process.

Can I sign up to be a recipient?

Unfortunately, GiveDirectly is not able to respond to individual requests for cash transfers. In order to ensure fairness and equity in our processes, we only select recipients using our eligibility process detailed above.

Will you be responding to future disasters?

That's our goal. We're currently building both operational and fundraising capabilities around a range of humanitarian scenarios, including natural disasters, conflict, and refugee responses. Our decision on whether to deploy for a given disaster depends on the severity of the disaster, the number of low-income households impacted, and our ability to fundraise for relief efforts.

How can I learn more about your work?

GiveDirectly is an NGO with 9+ years of experience delivering over $150M across six countries. In 2017, our team ran two disaster relief pilot programs in response to Hurricanes Harvey and Maria. To learn more about this work, see our published whitepaper here.