Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning#

TO: Nick Allardice CEO, GiveDirectly
FROM: Sarah Kayongo, VP, Programs Candidate
DATE: March 21, 2025
SUBJECT: Strategic Planning Recommendations: Country Footprint, Crisis Response, and Allocation of $100M in Flexible Funding

1. Country Footprint Adjustments (Next 2–3 Years)#

Recommendation: Prioritize strategic deepening over geographic expansion.

Proposed Actions:

  • Exit or pause operations in geographies with sustained delivery or fraud challenges (e.g., DRC, currently paused and high-risk).

  • Double down in high-impact, scalable markets: Rwanda, Kenya, and Togo. These countries offer strong government partnerships, operational track records, and data for long-term investment.

  • Pilot programs in 1–2 strategically chosen, underrepresented regions (e.g., Sahel or Horn of Africa) where climate-driven poverty is acute and digital infrastructure (e.g., mobile money) is emerging.

Rationale:
Chasing new country launches dilutes focus and risks executional mediocrity. Instead, we should become the global benchmark for cash delivery excellence in a concentrated footprint, then scale outward with political capital, data, and brand trust.

2. $5M Investment in Crisis Response Footprint#

Recommendation: Build modular, tech-enabled crisis response infrastructure.

Allocation Plan:

  • $1.5M – Develop a central Crisis Response Playbook + surge staffing system (including rosters, contracts, and SOPs).

  • $1.5M – Stand up pre-cleared, ready-to-launch emergency programs in 3–4 diverse geographies (e.g., Nigeria, Turkey, Mozambique, Yemen).

  • $1M – Pre-position tech systems (beneficiary ID pipelines, payment rails, satellite/AI targeting tools).

  • $1M – Localized risk and safeguarding capacity-building in fragile contexts.

Why:
Speed is everything in a crisis—but speed without integrity can kill trust. We must design crisis readiness like a startup: lean, modular, and nimble. This $5M should act as a force multiplier, not a shallow band-aid.

3. Allocation of $100M in Unrestricted Funds (Africa)#

Guiding Principle: Cash is not enough—cash plus dignity, data, and durable exits.

Allocation Framework:

  • $60M – Expand sustained basic income pilots in Kenya and Rwanda, generating gold-standard evidence and long-term impact.

  • $20M – Launch adaptive, time-bound livelihood boosts in Nigeria, Malawi, and Uganda with localized exit strategies.

  • $10M – Contingency and innovation: test digital ID-linked transfers in refugee populations or climate-vulnerable regions (e.g., Lake Chad Basin).

  • $10M – Operational backbone: invest in talent, fraud detection, and safeguarding systems to de-risk future scale.

Impact View:
This is not just about poverty alleviation—it’s about institutional credibility and global agenda-setting. Let’s not just be effective; let’s be undeniable.

In summary: GiveDirectly should become not just the best executor of cash transfers, but the global authority on how to do it with trust, speed, and dignity. The opportunity is here—and the world is watching.

Respectfully,
Sarah Kayongo VP of Programs

Would you like a separate memo for the safeguarding incident response next?

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