GiveDirectly is a charity that gives money, no strings attached, to people living in poverty. The Glo Foundation donates all money it earnsfrom the Glo Dollar to GiveDirectly’s basic income program.

This program gives everyone in a specific village $34/month, transferred via mobile money technology, for 3-5 years. For people living on less than $2/day this is transformational. 

The Glo Foundation will fund this program by giving away its portion of the revenue earned from the Glo Dollar to GiveDirectly.

GiveDirectly officially launched in 2009 and has distributed more than $550 million directly to people living in extreme poverty.

GiveDirectly operates mainly in subsaharan Africa, with programs in Yemen and the United States.

We think that GiveDirectly is a great organization.

We like that they:

• Consistently get top scores from charity evaluators
• Give 89% of every dollar received directly to recipients
• Are exceptionally transparent about their finances and impact

Some people hear this idea and think: “there’s no way that can work. You can’t just give money away like that.” But here’s an eye-opener – researchers have found that cash transfers typically reduce spending on “temptation goods" (alcohol, tobacco, etc.) and increase spending on food, savings, investments, and assets.

We work with GiveDirectly because they have the experience and infrastructure to distribute basic income.

We believe that the ultimate promise of cryptocurrency is worldwide financial inclusion, and we’re excited to build that. But getting people who live in extreme poverty on crypto payment rails is really hard. Rather than waiting for the future, GiveDirectly allows us to help people today.

See our article Why Glo Foundation chose to donate to GiveDirectly for more on why we believe in GiveDirectly and cash transfers.