GiveDirectly is a nonprofit organization operating in low income areas that helps families living in extreme poverty by making unconditional cash transfers to them via mobile phone.

GiveDirectly transfers funds to people in Bahamas, Bangladesh, DRC, Liberia, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Togo, Turkey, Uganda, USA, and Yemen.

GiveDirectly originated as a giving circle started by Paul Niehaus, Michael Faye, Rohit Wanchoo, and Jeremy Shapiro, students at MIT and Harvard, based on their research into philanthropy.

[4] In June 2014, the founders of GiveDirectly announced plans to create a for-profit technology company, Segovia, aimed at improving the efficiency of cash transfer distributions in the developing world.

[12] In 2023, an investigation revealed that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where GiveDirectly began operations in 2018, employees had diverted at least $900,000 from several hundred intended recipients in South Kivu to themselves, including the very audit teams tasked with identifying such cases.

[15] The machine learning algorithm First, it finds the poorest villages by analyzing roof material, sizes of farm plots and the presence of paved or unpaved roads through satellite images.

[20] As of 2024, GiveDirectly has provided cash transfers to over 200,000 households across various districts, including Gasabo, Gicumbi, Gisagara, Kayonza, Ngoma, Ngororero, Nyamagabe, and Rusizi.

[22] Impact assessments in districts such as Nyamagabe, Ngororero, and Gisagara have shown that recipients commonly invest in productive assets such as agriculture, livestock, businesses, and education.