Ideas in Development: GiveDirectly's journey to scale

This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney’s conversations on evidence.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8eCnQy5fF4 
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/givedirectlys-quest-for-scale/id1866874059?i=1000791048981 
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ffbhYkt9bYNiWUc5KPIuZ?si=13787b330c604508 
Audioboom: https://audioboom.com/posts/8955404-givedirectly-s-quest-for-scale 

GiveDirectly started out as a small nimble team founded by PhD economists, who had a novel approach to ending poverty – just give cash. But they are no longer the new kids on the block, and have been scaling their operations rapidly in recent years, a trend that could intensify if the third wave of American philanthropy materialises.

That’s a huge opportunity, but the potential of operating across entire countries is a radically different proposition. So what does an evidence-driven organisation research when it's trying to go from moving millions a year to billions?

Caitlin Tulloch, Senior Director for Research, Learning and Product at GiveDirectly, joins Oliver Hanney for a wide-ranging conversation on cash transfers at scale. We cover running a research portfolio like the treasury, the macro forecasting work around a new Malawi project, the trade-off between fraud and reach, building a global emergency response capability, and the politics of putting a lot of cash into someone else's economy.

Ideas in Development is a VoxDev podcast on economic policy and research. Find us wherever you get your podcasts, and read the full write-up on our Substack: https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/