Joe Huston: "GiveDirectly: Cash Transfers, Basic Income, and Hurricane Relief" | Talks at Google

GiveDirectly CFO Joe Huston visited Google’s Mountain View headquarters to discuss the nonprofit’s cash transfer programs in East Africa, their groundbreaking basic income experiment, and relief for Harvey victims.
Prior to heading GiveDirectly’s finance function, Joe spent 3 years managing operations for GiveDirectly in Kenya and Uganda, including leading the launch of GiveDirectly’s over 15,000 person experimental evaluation of universal basic income in Kenya.
GiveDirectly is leading a movement to reshape the fight against poverty, based on new evidence that transferring money directly to the poor is more efficient and effective than traditional top-down approaches. It has been consistently recognized as one of the most cost-effective nonprofits in the world by charity evaluator GiveWell, received the inaugural Google Global Impact Award, and been named one of the most innovative companies in finance by Fast Company. Its innovative work - including a landmark new initiative to test a universal basic income - has driven debate across media outlets such as NYTM, NPR, and PBS. GiveDirectly works primarily in East Africa, where it transfers ~90% of each donated dollar to extremely poor households using mobile money technology.