FOR RELEASE: December 3, 2013
Media Contact, Good Ventures: Kirk Brown, 415.577.3561, [email protected]
Media Contact, GiveDirectly: Joy Sun, 617.669.9977, [email protected]
Media Contact, GiveWell: Elie Hassenfeld, 646.233.2035, [email protected]
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Good Ventures today announced $5 million in matching funds for donations made to GiveDirectly from December 3, 2013 through January 31, 2014. All donations to GiveDirectly during the period, up to $100,000 per donor, will be counted toward the match. The funds are intended to help GiveDirectly attract new donors and reach its goal of transferring tens of millions of dollars to extremely poor households in developing countries over the next few years.
“Supporting GiveDirectly is an excellent opportunity to help empower extremely poor people to improve their lives,” said Good Ventures President Cari Tuna. “The GiveDirectly team is outstanding, and their tool — unrestricted cash transfers — has the potential to become a new standard of comparison for efforts to help the global poor.”
“We’re building a platform to work at massive scale,” said GiveDirectly Co-Founder and President Paul Niehaus. “This matching grant is an opportunity to push that platform to the next level, while giving thousands of poor families the resources to transform their lives in the process. It also underscores the value of rigorous and transparent evaluation of impact.”
The matching funds for GiveDirectly are part of a series of grants made by Good Ventures in recognition of GiveWell’s charity recommendations for 2013. Other grants included $2 million in unrestricted support to GiveDirectly (in addition to the matching funds), $1.5 million to the Deworm the World Initiative, and $750,000 to the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative. Detailed reviews of the charities can be found at www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities.
About Good Ventures
Good Ventures (www.goodventures.org) is a philanthropic foundation whose mission is to help humanity thrive. The foundation was created by Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz in 2011, and its initial grantmaking has focused on global health and development and increasing the impact of philanthropy by encouraging effectiveness and transparency across the social sector.
About GiveDirectly
GiveDirectly (www.givedirectly.org) allows governments, foundations and individual donors to make direct cash transfers to the extreme poor — securely, efficiently and transparently. GiveDirectly’s platform uses the latest technology to locate recipients, integrate them into electronic payments systems and monitor transfers end-to-end. GiveDirectly charges the full cost of delivering this service and nothing more.
Answers to frequently asked questions about GiveDirectly are available at www.givedirectly.org/faqs.php. Information on how to donate to GiveDirectly can be found at www.givedirectly.org/give.php.
About GiveWell
GiveWell (www.givewell.org) is a nonprofit dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities and publishing the full details of its analysis to help donors decide where to give. For most of its history, GiveWell has focused on identifying charities with strong evidence of impact and quantifiable cost-effectiveness. Now, GiveWell is exploring the full range of ways that a major philanthropist can have an impact.