I really appreciate their commitment to keeping costs low and giving as much as they can directly to people. I was looking for a way to donate my Coronavirus relief to people who needed it more and they had a fund to quickly and fairly distribute what ended up being huge amounts of donor money to those in need.
An amazing initiative. Supremely effective in doing good. Supremely cost-effective too--and with a virtually limitless funding gap. I would highly recommend checking out their GD Live section of their website to see up to date responses from recipients of their cash transfers--specifically the basic income experiment.
Give Directly stands out as a charity in many regards.
Their transparency is unprecedented. Information about what they are doing with your donation, and what has been the outcome, is available almost in real time in their front page.
Their direct cash transfers have been shown to significantly improve their recipients' lives, often times more cost-effectively than narrower interventions such as digging wells or giving out scholarships. Furthermore, as they are set up as an ongoing experiment, they actually learn from their mistakes and update their approach accordingly.
Give Directly may well be the future o philanthropy. The poor are in a much better position to assess what their needs are than most people looking from the outside. Results from randomized controlled trials have supported this hypothesis. This is why I have chosen to give to Give Directly.
It's GiveWell's top-rated charity (one of only 3). This is the highest accolade in the charity world. See this:
http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities
Review from Guidestar
Incredible to see just how effective Give Directly's counter intuitive approach is! Only a charity that test their approach and adjust accordingly has ever reached such high impact to my knowledge and there is a lot other charities can learn from Give Directly!
Top rated charity by Givewell, need I say more? Love that they are continuing to test different ways to improve.