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GiveDirectly mobilizes Emergency Cash relief for Venezuela earthquake survivors. GiveDirectly raised $100,000 in 24 hours and is deploying a team to send cash directly to families hit hardest by Venezuela's June 24 earthquakes. NEW YORK CITY, NY, UNITED STATES, June 28, 2026 / EINPresswire.com / - GiveDirectly, one of the largest and most trusted direct cash relief organizations in the world, is mobilizing an emergency cash response for families affected by the back-to-back earthquakes that struck northern Venezuela on June 24, 2026. GiveDirectly has launched a fundraiser at givedirectly.org/venezuela-earthquakes and is deploying an Emergency Cash team to the field this weekend. In its first 24 hours, the fundraiser raised more than $100,000. Over the past decade, GiveDirectly has delivered cash to more than 2 million people across 15 countries. Key facts: - The disaster: A magnitude 7.2 quake and a 7.5 mainshock struck northern Venezuela 39 seconds apart on June 24, 2026 - the strongest in more than a century. - The toll: More than 1,400 people killed and thousands injured, with the toll expected to rise, according to officials. - GiveDirectly's response: Deploying an Emergency Cash team to identify the highest-need communities and send cash directly to families. - Early support: More than $100,000 raised in the first 24 hours. - How to help: Donate at givedirectly.org/venezuela-earthquakes (English) or givedirectly.org/venezuela-es (Spanish). What Happened in Venezuela: On June 24, 2026, two major earthquakes struck northern Venezuela seconds apart - a magnitude 7.2 quake followed 39 seconds later by a magnitude 7.5 mainshock, the strongest to hit Venezuela in more than a century. The quakes collapsed hundreds of buildings across Caracas and La Guaira. More than 1,400 people have been killed and thousands more injured, and officials expect the toll to rise. The disaster struck a country where nearly 80% of people already live in poverty, many in unreinforced homes that crumble in earthquakes. What GiveDirectly Is Doing: GiveDirectly is deploying an Emergency Cash team to Venezuela this weekend to assess conditions and scope a cash response for the families most affected. GiveDirectly will use damage and poverty data to identify the highest-need communities, then enroll and pay families directly. Because GiveDirectly delivers cash digitally, it can reach families even when roads are damaged. The cash helps families cover urgent needs: - Food, water, and medicine - Shelter and temporary housing - Bills for phone, utilities, and healthcare for the injured "Families who survive a disaster know better than anyone what they need to recover," said Nick Allardice, President and CEO of GiveDirectly. "By sending money directly, we let the Venezuelans hit hardest by these earthquakes rebuild on their own terms - quickly and with dignity. We have delivered more than $1 billion to more than 2 million people across 15 countries, and we can reach families within weeks of a disaster." Anyone can help families affected by the Venezuela earthquakes by donating to GiveDirectly: - Donate in English: givedirectly.org/venezuela-earthquakes - Donate in Spanish (Dona en español): givedirectly.org/venezuela-es 100% of funds raised for this campaign go to GiveDirectly's Venezuela earthquake response. If GiveDirectly cannot deliver all funds to survivors, donations support the next emergency through its Emergency Response Fund. Donations are tax-deductible in the United States. GiveDirectly's Track Record in Disasters: GiveDirectly has a proven record of delivering cash quickly after major disasters: - 2023 earthquake in southern Turkey: cash to over 1,000 families across Hatay, Adana, Gaziantep, and Sanliurfa, where 94% reported their homes destroyed or damaged. - Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica (2025): $650 transfers to more than 2,500 people in St. Elizabeth Parish after the first Category 5 hurricane ever to strike Jamaica destroyed an estimated 90% of homes in the region. - Los Angeles wildfires (2025): partnered with Propel to deliver $3,500 transfers to over 1,000 families, enrolled fully remotely with no extra paperwork. - Hurricanes Helene and Milton (2024): used SKAI, a Google-developed AI tool, to find the hardest-hit, lowest-income households, then sent $1,000 to over 1,600 families within days. Frequently Asked Questions: How can I help Venezuela earthquake survivors? Donate to GiveDirectly at givedirectly.org/venezuela-earthquakes (English) or givedirectly.org/venezuela-es (Spanish). GiveDirectly sends cash directly to affected families. Donations are tax-deductible in the United States. What is GiveDirectly doing about the Venezuela earthquakes? GiveDirectly is deploying an Emergency Cash team to Venezuela and using damage and poverty data to identify the highest-need communities, then paying families directly through digital transfers. Why does GiveDirectly give cash instead of supplies? Cash lets families meet their own needs instead of having others guess for them, and people affected by disasters consistently say they prefer cash over donated goods. It is also fast and fully remote. How much of my donation reaches Venezuelan families? 100% of funds raised for this campaign go to the Venezuela earthquake response. If GiveDirectly cannot deliver all funds, they support survivors of the next emergency. How fast does GiveDirectly deliver cash after a disaster? In past emergencies, GiveDirectly has delivered cash to families within two to three weeks. Is GiveDirectly a trusted charity? Yes. GiveDirectly is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2009. It pioneered direct cash transfers, publishes independent research on its impact, and has been recognized by Fast Company, Forbes, and Inc. as one of the world's most innovative organizations. About GiveDirectly: GiveDirectly is one of the largest and most trusted direct cash relief organizations in the world. Founded in 2009, GiveDirectly lets donors send money directly to people living in poverty, with no strings attached. Over the past decade, it has delivered cash to more than 2 million people across 15 countries. GiveDirectly works in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda, and the United States. GiveDirectly is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN 27-1661997). Learn more at givedirectly.org. Media Contact: GiveDirectly Press Team [email protected] givedirectly.org/press Yonah Lieberman GiveDirectly [email protected] Visit US National Times on social media: LinkedIn Bluesky Instagram Facebook YouTube X Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. US National Times do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.

UC San Diego economist Paul Niehaus to receive Notre Dame Award for pioneering global cash aid research. April 21, 2026 Paul Niehaus, co-founder of GiveDirectly and an economics faculty member at University of California San Diego, will receive the 2026 Ford Family Notre Dame Award during an April 24 event hosted by the Ford Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity at the University of Notre Dame. The Ford Award and Lecture brings together scholars, practitioners and benefactors to engage with questions of poverty, human dignity and development practice. Niehaus will give a lecture on his experiences as co-founder of the GiveDirectly nonprofit organization, its role in facilitating direct cash transfers in anti-poverty work and key research findings that can inform international development. "Paul Niehaus exemplifies the kind of scholarship and impact we seek to recognize with this award," said Ford Program Director Patrizio Piraino. "His work combines rigorous research with a deep respect for human dignity, challenging conventional approaches to poverty alleviation while empowering individuals to make their own economic decisions." This alignment of research and impact is central to the Notre Dame Poverty Initiative, a University-wide effort to create a world intolerant of poverty by expanding knowledge about how to solve it. The University is deploying unprecedented resources, a wide range of research approaches and some of its brightest minds to better understand what causes poverty and how to end it. The GiveDirectly mission, Niehaus said, is rooted in a respect for people's agency and autonomy when delivering aid. Since 2009, direct cash payments have gone to at least 2 million people living in African nations like the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as in the United States. "GiveDirectly has grown from a crazy idea that people thought would never work to over $1 billion now distributed," said Niehaus, who welcomes the Ford Program recognition and the opportunity to share data from some two dozen rigorous studies on direct cash transfer. They include a December 2025 paper, co-authored by Niehaus, that demonstrates how just 0.3 percent to 0.5 percent of global GDP is needed to effectively end extreme poverty - everywhere. The numbers fall within a range that about 60 percent of "rich world" survey respondents would give up if it were to end global poverty, according to separate research on direct cash transfer by Nobel Prize recipients Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, as well as economist Michael Greenstone of the University of Chicago. Niehaus finds these results encouraging, even as research on direct giving continues at a national scale in places like Rwanda and Malawi. "We're asking the question, if you come in and give people one-time wealth transfers, what does that get you?" he explained. The impact can vary based on a range of variables. Among them are how larger amounts compare with smaller universal basic income-like payments over time, how demographics like age affect preferences and specific goals the cash support is meant to help people achieve. Those goals are self-directed and articulated by the people themselves, Niehaus said, with GiveDirectly data showing that about $1,000 U.S. dollars, given in a lump sum, translates in a year or so to improved income and assets, health outcomes and community life. "There's a lot of diversity within an ethical worldview," Niehaus said, with many donors looking for market efficiencies and quantitative data to support the direct cash approach. Others may place more focus on anti-poverty work itself, or on a limited scope like coffee and specific crops. Program success is achieved through tech-driven tools for both facilitating donor gifts and managing individual digital accounts in places like Kenya. Niehaus says the model essentially works everywhere, although security challenges can limit operations in some communities. Yet there's no one-size-fits-all answer, and research helps the GiveDirectly team to see the ethical implications of how they define and assess poverty, as well as how aid works in the real world. Niehaus says he increasingly spends time helping younger academics to refine their thinking on how to make a difference while designing research approaches. "Research helps us to find out what matters to people," Niehaus added. He looks forward to sharing some of those same insights during the Ford Program lecture. Founded in 2008 with a gift from the family of University of Notre Dame Trustee W. Douglas Ford, the Ford Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity, part of the Kellogg Institute in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, promotes Integral Human Development through community-engaged research, teaching and service aimed at understanding and addressing the challenges of extreme poverty while fostering human dignity and flourishing. Originally published by the Kellogg Institute at kellogg.nd.edu on April 20.

A subtle shift with big upside. GiveDirectly is leaning into "plus cash" approaches - here's why. by Sarah Moran * GiveDirectly has experimented with "cash plus" (cash+) approaches to amplify the impact of cash alone * Increasingly, we're expanding our product set to enable more "plus cash" (+cash) approaches - where can cash, delivered alongside other scaled investments and interventions, have outsized impact? * This is both a symbolic and a substantive evolution in how we think about cash as an enabling and catalytic ingredient in development ecosystems, especially as aid flows recede * We're testing new "cash+" approaches in 2026, and are eagerly sourcing partnerships to expand in 2027 and beyond Development finance is at an inflection point. Aid budgets are contracting. Governments are rethinking what they can afford. Across sectors - health, livelihoods, climate resilience - there's a growing recognition that the most effective interventions aren't always the most expensive ones, but the ones designed to work together at scale. GiveDirectly has spent 15 years proving that cash transfers are among the most effective tools in poverty alleviation. Now I'm increasingly asking a different question: not just "what can cash do?" but "what can cash unlock?" That question is behind a subtle but meaningful shift in how GiveDirectly, Inc. is developing cash-based solutions at GiveDirectly - from "cash+" to "+cash." What the Product team at GiveDirectly does. For nearly 15 years, the core of GiveDirectly's programs has been large cash transfers delivered to all households in poor villages, with no strings attached. The evidence for this model is deep and consistent: lasting increases in income, assets, and consumption. Simple, scalable, transparent. For many donors and recipients, it's still the gold standard. Last year, GiveDirectly, Inc. established a Product team, bringing together its cash delivery technology, research and evaluation, data, and new product verticals under one roof. Its north star is what GiveDirectly, Inc. call the "green triangle": the intersection of what's impactful for recipients, fundable by donors, and feasible to implement at scale. Its job is to find and build at that intersection, with an increasing focus on cost-effectiveness. The reality is, there's a limit to how much innovation you can drive with cash alone - small amounts v. big; highly targeted v. not; before a disaster or after. For me, one of the most exciting innovation spaces is around where cash complements other effective, scalable investments and unlocks incremental impact. Admittedly, when GiveDirectly, Inc. has experimented in "cash+" innovations, GiveDirectly, Inc. has run into constraints inherent in taking anything that works and smushing it together - higher coordination costs, bespoke and layered interventions that can't scale, things that work in one context but can't generalize to others, unclear attributable impact. There are myriad ways you can imagine cash interacting with other evidenced interventions to drive outcomes - where is the biggest potential for impact at scale? "Cash+" v. "+cash": a distinction that matters. The terms sound similar, but they're not the same. Cash+ is about add-ons that make the impact of cash more intense, durable, or predictable - e.g. coaching, information, behavioral support. In this frame, cash is still the main ingredient: the "plus" component extends or amplifies what it can do. The question is: how do GiveDirectly, Inc. improve the enabling environment for cash transfers, especially when delivered at scale? +Cash flips the frame entirely. It asks: where can cash be an enabling factor for other large-scale interventions? Here, cash isn't the main event. It's the ingredient that makes the main event work better, reach further, or stick longer. Cash+ programs center a core intervention that GiveDirectly, Inc. know is scalable, generalizable, and effective, and GiveDirectly, Inc. hold a pretty high bar to what GiveDirectly, Inc. would layer on top of cash. But the +cash frame opens a different kind of conversation: one that takes health systems, infrastructure programs, climate funds, and government policies and considers - how can GiveDirectly, Inc. make these initiatives more accessible, and more effective, for the extreme poor? Three ways +cash creates value. When I think about where +cash has the most potential, three mechanisms stand out. Catalyze. Cash can close the demand-side access gap that would otherwise "zero out" the impact of other interventions. A scholarship covers school fees, but a student can't afford room and board and drops out. A health system offers free delivery services, but transport costs and insurance fees keep women from making it to the clinic. GiveDirectly, Inc. is seeing exactly this in its early Mothers & Babies data from Kenya, where cash during pregnancy is being used to cover insurance enrollment fees, clinic transport, and out-of-pocket medical costs- removing the barriers that would otherwise make a well-functioning health system inaccessible. In these cases, a targeted cash transfer doesn't compete with the primary intervention. It enables it. Amplify. Some investments become dramatically more valuable when cash arrives alongside them. New infrastructure - a bridge, a market, a clinic - creates opportunity, but households need resources to act on it. GiveDirectly, Inc. is testing this directly: one of its GiveWell-funded pilots in Uganda delivers cash shortly after trail bridge construction connects isolated communities to markets. The hypothesis is that cash enables faster utilization of new market access, generating both immediate consumption gains and sustained economic growth. The combined intervention may outperform either on its own - a genuine 1+1=3. Derisk. Crises and shocks don't just cause acute harm - they undo years of prior investment. Each year, millions of people fall back into poverty due to climate events, conflicts, or economic shocks. GiveDirectly is building infrastructure to enable rapid, targeted cash response anywhere in the world within five days. This isn't just a humanitarian program- it's an insurance layer for development portfolios. If you've spent a decade building health systems, agricultural capacity, or economic resilience in a region, emergency cash is what prevents a single bad season from erasing it. Why this moment. Three things are converging to make this "+cash" approach particularly timely. First, technology is enabling combinations that weren't previously feasible. As more interventions are delivered digitally - health messaging, agricultural extension, financial services - the ability to layer cash into those channels increases. Organizations building digital delivery infrastructure are natural "+cash" partners, and the operational complexity of integration is dropping every day. Second, aid flows are shifting. Government ODA is contracting in many markets; donors and governments are looking for leverage: scalable, legible interventions that make their other investments go further. "+Cash" is a direct answer to that question. It repositions cash not as a competing use of development dollars, but as a multiplier on them. Third, the evidence base is building. Its current pilots with GiveWell, its partnership with Lwala Community Alliance, and its Cash + Coaching work are all proof points to demonstrate how cash can integrate into large, multi-component programs without losing what makes it distinctive. What excites me, and where I'm uncertain. I'm genuinely excited about what this makes possible. The most interesting version of GiveDirectly's future isn't cash as a standalone product competing for a share of the development budget. It's cash as a standard ingredient in how philanthropy and the sector approach poverty alleviation - embedded in health systems, shock response, and job creation - wherever financial resources are the binding constraint between good intentions and actual impact. I'm also clear-eyed about the risks. Transformational partnerships mean coordination costs. Moving from a simple, scalable model toward more complex combinations requires real discipline to avoid drifting into something slower, more expensive, and harder to evaluate. And, as GiveDirectly, Inc. optimize for cost-effectiveness as an organization, GiveDirectly, Inc. is grappling with these tensions: when do combined interventions drive real gains, for recipients v. serve the interests of donors? Where will gains actually compound with scale, rather than diminish? How can GiveDirectly, Inc. preserve agency and unconditionality? I'm thinking carefully about those tradeoffs, and I'll write more about them soon. What GiveDirectly, Inc. is looking for. GiveDirectly, Inc. is actively validating several +cash models in 2026 and are eager to find the right partners to expand in 2027 and beyond. The partnerships GiveDirectly, Inc. is most interested in are ones where: * A resource or access constraint is the binding factor between a program and its intended outcomes * Digital delivery infrastructure exists or is being built * There's appetite for rigorous evaluation of the combined model * Scale and replicability are part of the ambition If that sounds like work you're doing - in health, livelihoods, climate resilience, or emergency response - I'd love to talk. Reach out at [email protected].