You smashed our goal

We tripled last year's GiveDirectly fundraising number, rounding $1 million in total support for some of the poorest people in the world

We did it! Or you did. Or we all did it together.

Two years ago, we included a link to GiveDirectly in our 2022 Giving Tuesday post, along with a brief explanation of our support. That seemed like the right thing to do on that day, but we didn’t expect much to come of it. A week later, though, we got a nice note from GiveDirectly thanking Slow Boring readers for their support, because without much prompting at all, you had made 21 donations totaling nearly $3,000, with new recurring donations bringing in $235 a month.

That seemed pretty good! And I thought that with a little effort on our part the next year, you might help us raise as much as $75,000 in 2023.

As we shared last year, that goal vastly underestimated your generosity. And so after you donated over $250,000 last year, we thought you might help us raise $350,000 this year, especially with other writers participating.

Once again, Slow Boring readers blew our expectations out of the water. This year’s fundraiser brought in $846,278 between campaign donations and match funds, more than three times last year’s total! That’s in part because more newsletters participated in the fundraiser, but an incredible 76 percent of donations came from Slow Boring readers.

We raised enough to deliver cash to our original goal of 335 families across two villages in the very poor Nyabinyenga region in central Rwanda — plus 280 additional families across two additional villages. One round of funding from the campaign has already been delivered, and the next is scheduled to be delivered on January 21. GiveDirectly shared new data from surveys of Rwandan families who received cash one year ago, including some our 2023 campaign helped support. Families reported increases to income, transportation, asset ownership, savings, medical access, and more.

We know that many of you were already supporting GiveDirectly — some due to our previous Giving Tuesday posts, but many for even longer than that. Knowing how strong our readers’ existing support for this organization was, we were also shocked to see just how many new donors there were this year. You managed to help GiveDirectly best last year’s previous high!

Chart via GiveDirectly

And while we’re sure that many of you would’ve donated without any incentives at all, we did want to try to sweeten the deal and nudge people to be a little more generous, and that seems to have worked. Last year, the average donation from Slow Boring readers was $222; this year, it was over $350. Approximately 600 of you gave a donation larger than $300, or $25 per month, which was the threshold for receiving extra newsletters. Of those 600, more than 100 of you gave more than $1200, or $100 per month.

And so many of you (135 readers) responded to our request to become a recurring donor! GiveDirectly estimates that your monthly donations will help deliver an additional $129,168 to people in poverty in the months to come.

We also want to thank everyone who filled out our survey that helped guide the design of our incentives. We really wanted to get it right, and we’re particularly grateful to the brilliant Professor Emily Thorson (buy her book, and read Slow Boring’s coverage) for her assistance and expertise during this process.

Last, we want to note that none of the totals above include matches from your employers, which we know many of you were able to secure (thank you!). Nor do they include many of you who wrote and mailed physical checks or made donor advised fund grants. So I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that because of you and your surprising generosity two years ago, roughly a million dollars is going to support some of the people who need it most. And it’s not too late if you’d still like to chip in!

So thank you, so much, from the whole team here at Slow Boring, and we hope everyone who celebrates has a very merry Christmas. We’ll be off tomorrow, but back in your inboxes on December 26. I’ll leave you with this video from GiveDirectly showing the impact of cash transfers over the course of a year.