Raising money for a UBI fund that helps families affected COVID-19

I'm a huge fan of GiveDirectly, who does tremendous work with direct cash transfers for people in poverty essentially, micro-scale experiments in Universal Basic Income, with long-term data impact studies. As they describe themselves:

GiveDirectly is the first and largest nonprofit that lets donors like yousend money directly to the worlds poorest. We believe people living in poverty deserve the dignity to choose for themselves how best to improve their lives cash enables that choice. Since 2009, weve delivered over $140 million in cash directly into the hands of over 130,000 families living in poverty. Cash allows individuals to invest in what they need, instead of relying on aid organizations and donors thousands of miles away to choose for them. Isnt this what you would prefer?

Despite the fact that UBI has such a wide range of support from Nixon to MLK, from Socialists to Libertarians many people are still resistant to the idea of no-strings-attached monthly cash payments in lieu of other poverty-assistance/welfare programs. I think this largely has to do with America's 300-year experiment in villainizing the poor. But time and time again, UBI experiments have demonstrated that people do not waste their money on drugs and alcohol. They do tend to work about 5-7% fewer hours on average, but they fill the rest of their days by finding new ways to be productive and contribute to society without succumbing to soul-sucking jobs. Instead of stressing to make ends meet through desperate wage-slave labor, they invested their time, money, and energy into things like educationandentrepreneurship, which makes everyone happier overall. Read the rest