GiveDirectly

Notes from June 8 call with Stella Luk

Context: “GiveDirectly is looking to expand its operations into India. GiveDirectly is the world's first and largest NGO committed to putting choice in the hands of people living in extreme poverty. The kind of work we do is to deliver cash, no strings attached, sometimes in tandem with complementary interventions or nudges.”

Did Stella share how/if our team would be responsible for gathering stories from cash transfer recipients for their GDLive platform:

GiveDirectly: Send money directly to the extreme poor ?

Stella discussed identifying profiles of eligible potential recipients for fund transfer but gathering stories from the field was not specifically discussed. Though DG being a tech organizations her expectation seem to be using digital tools, like scanning pictures and satellite images as they do, for identifying poor habitations.

Have they figured out how one can legally transfer cash (whether in mobile money or bank transfer) to individuals? Would that not attract service tax on the recipients?

They are using mobile money and bank transfer both in Africa but in India they are still having discussions and figuring out what could be the best way of cash transfer. We are not sure about tax liabilities on the recipients. I think this has to be paid. Stella is meeting lawyers and discussing modalities of fund transfer to the recipients in India.

Participants	GiveDirectly: Stella, Madhumitha DG: Krish, Kunal and Sanjeev (In-person), Vineet and Gautam (Virtual)

Topics	Discussion Points
Introduction	Post individual introductions, Krish shared our current work and new strategy
Why Unconditional cash transfer	Unconditional cash transfers allow poor households the choice and flexibility of allocating resources to meet the needs they find most pressing.
India Agenda	Stella started by reiterating about GiveDirectly (GD) model and indicated that they are currently in the initial stage and exploratory phase in India gathering information, addressing legal concerns etc. and meeting with various potential partners basically to explore a win-win model and that partner could be GD's implementation partner in India. Since they are currently exploring and studying the Indian market, have not decided on any focus state as of now. In discussion with our Legal advisor as well for various legal concerns and soon shall be setting up GD’s India office.
Beneficiary Focus	Stella talked very clearly that GD's focus is not necessarily on the smallholder farmers rather their beneficiary focus remains irrespective of the sector. Krish also suggested introducing with few other humanitarian organizations (non-Agri) that can be potential partners to GD to scale up beneficiaries.
Local Government Partnership	GD works in any geography while keeping the local government in confidence, obtaining necessary approvals at each level and always getting positive support from Government.
Mechanism in identifying the target beneficiaries	Though the GD field team identifies extremely poor villages using poverty data from the national census and then enrols all recipients in the village under their unconditional cash transfer programs, however, at times GD works with external partners to identify and reach recipients in need and list their profiling. They also partner with research organizations to conduct independent evaluations of the impact of their programs.
Recipient Profile listing	GD doesn’t use any such technology platform to capture this information, their field team collect these data manually which gets verified 2-to 3 folds by in-person visit or phone calls etc.
Need of Partners	They need an implementation partner who can work on the ground to support the implementation of their programs. They want the implementation partner to collect, validate and supply profiles of the people who are looking for donations which can be listed on their systems for getting discovered by donors. Basically, the implementation partner will do the heavy lifting. Stella asked if DG would like to be an implementation partner for GD in India and Krish shared the consent with a keen interest to collaborate however, as our focus is on farmers exclusively, Stella shall check with her board on the modalities and come back to DG soon.
Farmer Organizations/Group funding	GD may not be interested in funding farmer groups as that is not their area of interest. They will consider doing this if there is an instruction from the board. \ Currently, GD is interested in unconditional recurring (monthly) donations to individuals. But, she wants to keep this topic open for discussion and shall like to explore more going forward.
Scope of product-level integration	There won’t be any product-level integration with implementation partners of lead providers. They will just collect profile data and load it into their system. No technology convergence/integrations.
Consolidated donation requests from a group	We also explored the possibility of consolidated donation requests from a group while the donation goes to individuals as small denominations and further, the group pools the funds for their shared project requirement, however, GD have not thought about such scenarios. She kept this open for discussion. Irrespective of who is requesting and how the donations are being requested, their system will perform a plain function of distributing the funds to individuals and they are never interested in how the funds are going to be used. It's always unconditional.
Potential risks in programs	The main risks that often arise in their cash transfer programs involve the manipulation of the list of eligible recipients.
Next Step	Stella shall take the discussion with the larger team and the GD’s board and shall come back with modalities of DG: GD partnership while addressing a few open-ended discussions.