UBI Programs

Mozambique

GiveDirectly ran a multi-year, unconditional basic-income-style cash transfer program for households in the Cyclone Idai-affected Gorongosa National Park buffer zone of Sofala Province, Mozambique. Eligible households received roughly $40/month (a poverty-line-calibrated amount) via mobile money for about two years, alongside SMS messaging on maternal and child nutrition. Funded primarily by USAID with matching donor contributions, the program targeted disaster recovery, food security, and resilience-building rather than being a purely emergency relief payout. As of GiveDirectly's current Mozambique program listing, this program is categorized as a past/completed program, distinct from GiveDirectly's newer active Mozambique programs (Geo-targeted Cash for the Ultra-Poor, Cash for Social Protection and Economic Inclusion, Cash for Youth and Conflict Resilience) and from separate one-off emergency cyclone relief transfers (e.g., Cyclone Freddy Emergency Relief).

United States

CLIMB (Columbia Life Improvement Monetary Boost) was a guaranteed income pilot in Columbia, South Carolina, administered by the Central Carolina Community Foundation in partnership with the City of Columbia as part of the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income (MGI) network. The program gave 100 fathers $500 per month for 12 months via a MoCaFi prepaid debit card, with no restrictions on how funds could be spent. Participants were connected to wraparound support through the Midlands Fatherhood Coalition, Dream Team Consulting Firm, and SC Thrive. The pilot was funded through private/philanthropic sources associated with the MGI coalition. CLIMB was distinctive among guaranteed income pilots for targeting fathers rather than mothers or general caregivers.

United States

CoCo Go BIG was a six-month guaranteed income pilot (early-to-mid 2024) launched by RCF Connects (Richmond Community Foundation) in the Sycamore Drive neighborhood of Antioch, in Contra Costa County, California. The pilot provided unconditional monthly cash payments to a cohort of 30 residents, with foster youth participants receiving $200/month and adult participants receiving $400/month, distributed via reloadable prepaid debit cards. It was funded through private philanthropic partnerships, including the Robin Hood Foundation, as part of a broader $1.5 million community investment in the neighborhood that also funded park renovations and career-pathway programs. RCF Connects later cited the pilot's results in testimony to the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors that helped shape the county's subsequent, larger countywide guaranteed income program.

United States

COIN was a pilot randomized controlled trial run by PolicyLab, the research arm of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania. It randomized 24 Medicaid-eligible birthing parents of preterm infants in a single Philadelphia-area NICU to either a high-value ($325/month) or low-value ($25/month) unconditional cash transfer for four months. The study was funded by a CHOP PolicyLab Pilot Grant and NIH NHLBI T32 training grants. It tested the feasibility and acceptability of randomizing UCTs in a NICU setting and explored impacts on caregiver psychological stress. Results were published in the Journal of Perinatology (2025) and a companion qualitative study in Academic Pediatrics (2026).

United States

The City of San Jose partnered with the Bill Wilson Center and San José City College to provide guaranteed income to college students experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity. Up to 55 college-engaged young adults (ages 18-24) received monthly unconditional cash payments for a minimum of 18 months, beginning around summer 2024. The program is one of several coordinated pilots in the Santa Clara County regional guaranteed income movement tracked by guaranteedincomesv.org, alongside similar pilots for foster youth, LGBTQIA+ young adults, and other vulnerable populations. It was publicly funded through the City of San Jose, with participants selected via referral from partner organizations rather than an open application.

United States

CollegeBound Boost is a City of Saint Paul demonstration project, led by the Office of Financial Empowerment, that combined guaranteed income with children's savings account deposits for families enrolled in CollegeBound Saint Paul. Announced June 29, 2022 by Mayor Melvin Carter, it gave 333 randomly selected low-income families $500 per month in unconditional cash for 24 months plus a $1,000 deposit into their child's CollegeBound Saint Paul account. It was funded by $4 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars and $1 million in philanthropic funds. It builds on the City's earlier People's Prosperity Guaranteed Income Pilot (2020-2022) and is being evaluated by University of Michigan researcher Dr. William Elliott.

United States

United Way Bay Area's Community-Based Roads to Prosperity Program is a guaranteed basic income (GBI) pilot that gave 100 Alameda County families $18,000 in unconditional cash transfers over up to 18 months, alongside optional financial coaching through UWBA's SparkPoint centers. Recipients were low-income adults (18+) who had previously used services at SparkPoint Oakland, SparkPoint Fremont, or SparkPoint at Chabot College and were selected via random lottery. The pilot is funded by a $3 million grant from the Albertsons Companies Foundation (Safeway Foundation) as part of its Nourishing Neighbors program. UWBA's in-house data and evaluation team is studying how GBI, paired with optional coaching, affects participants' financial outcomes compared to a matched control group.

United States

The Community Love Fund is a guaranteed income initiative first announced in January 2021 by Families for Justice as Healing in collaboration with The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, both based in Roxbury, Boston. This original (Year 1) cohort provided direct, unconditional cash relief to five formerly incarcerated and directly affected women from the Roxbury community for one year. It was intended to demonstrate that directly affected women can build the resources needed to support one another and to challenge racial and economic injustice tied to the criminal legal system. The program was funded through donations to the two partner nonprofits, and later expanded into a larger, F4GI-administered second annual cohort in 2022.

United States

The Community Love Fund is a guaranteed income initiative run by The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, in partnership with Families for Justice as Healing, with the Fund for Guaranteed Income (F4GI) serving as implementation and disbursement partner. First launched in 2021, the program was expanded in 2022 to 21 system-impacted women -- seventeen formerly incarcerated and four currently incarcerated -- each receiving $500 a month for a year, no strings attached. It is reported to be the first guaranteed income program to deliver recurring cash relief to women currently incarcerated in state and federal prisons. The program is funded through philanthropic/nonprofit donations to The National Council.

Comoros

Under the World Bank-financed Comoros Social Safety Net Project (SSNP), the Government of Comoros delivered unconditional cash transfers (Transferts Monétaires Non-Conditionnels, TMNC COVID-19) to vulnerable households in urban and peri-urban areas whose incomes were hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and related confinement measures. Households were identified through a proxy-means test combined with community-based validation and received three cash payments via mobile money or microfinance institutions. The component was funded through a US$6.5 million allocation of IDA financing under the SSNP (approved 2015, expanded via COVID-19 restructuring in 2020 and Additional Financing in 2021). It ultimately reached about 21,556 households, more than double its original target, and payments were completed by mid-2021.

United States

The Compton Pledge was a two-year guaranteed income pilot that delivered $9.3 million in unconditional cash to 800 low-income households in Compton, California, making it one of the largest city-based guaranteed income programs in the U.S. Recipients were randomly selected without an application, including undocumented and formerly incarcerated residents, and received $300-$600 per month (scaled by household size), distributed either bi-weekly or quarterly. The program was privately funded through donations raised by the Fund for Guaranteed Income (F4GI), in partnership with the Office of the Mayor of Compton and the Jain Family Institute (research/design partner). Payments were made through a custom digital platform offering direct deposit, PayPal, Venmo, or a prepaid debit card. An independent randomized controlled trial (with researchers from JFI, NYU, Columbia, and Stockholm University) studied outcomes such as employment, spending, and financial well-being.

El Salvador

Comunidades Solidarias Rurales was El Salvador's national conditional cash transfer program, launched in 2005 as Red Solidaria and renamed in 2009. Run by the Presidency (Technical Secretariat) and the Fondo de Inversion Social para el Desarrollo Local (FISDL), it paid bimonthly cash bonuses to mothers of children under 5, school-age children, and pregnant women in the country's poorest rural municipalities and, from 2009, poor urban settlements, conditional on school attendance and health check-ups. It was funded by the Salvadoran government together with loans and grants from the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and bilateral donors (Spain/AECID, Luxembourg, European Union, Andalusia). The program operated 2005-2016 before being folded into successor social protection strategies, and FISDL itself was dissolved by legislative decree effective January 1, 2022.

United States

Contra Costa Thrives is a county-run guaranteed income pilot serving 170 Contra Costa County, California residents with unconditional cash payments of up to $1,250/month for 18 months. It targets four groups already enrolled in county services: youth transitioning out of foster care, families with young children experiencing financial hardship, low-income seniors, and people on probation returning from incarceration. Administered by EHSD, funded by $3.25M in Measure X sales-tax revenue, $1M in AB 109 state realignment funds, and $16,200 from nonprofit VESTIA. First payments issued January 15, 2026; pilot runs through December 2027. UC Davis is conducting the evaluation, including a five-year follow-up study.

United States

The Cook County Promise Guaranteed Income Pilot was a county-government-run guaranteed income program that provided $500 unconditional monthly cash payments to 3,250 low-to-moderate-income households across Cook County, Illinois. Funded by $42 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) federal relief funds, it was administered by GiveDirectly and AidKit, with optional financial counseling offered by Working Credit. Participants were selected by lottery from over 233,000 applicants, and payments ran from December 2022 through January 2025. Cook County describes it as the largest publicly funded guaranteed income pilot in the nation, and it is being evaluated as a randomized controlled trial by the University of Chicago Inclusive Economy Lab.

Turks and Caicos Islands

The Turks and Caicos Islands Government's Cost of Living Relief Payment is a one-time $500 direct cash grant approved by Cabinet on June 24, 2026 for approximately 13,000 eligible British Overseas Territories Citizens (BOTCs) and Turks and Caicos Islands Status Holders. It is intended to ease the financial burden of rising fuel prices and cost-of-living pressures tied to global economic conditions. The roughly $6.5 million programme is funded entirely from the Turks and Caicos Islands Government's general revenue/budget. It is administered by the Ministry of Finance, Economic Development, Investment and Trade through the online colrelief.gov.tc portal, with payment via cheque collected or delivered by island. It is the fourth round of direct citizen cash relief the government has issued since 2021, following similar one-time grants in 2021, 2022, and 2024.

South Africa

The SRD grant is a means-tested monthly cash transfer of R370 (about $22) paid by SASSA to unemployed South Africans aged 18-59 who have no other income or government support. Introduced in May 2020 as an emergency COVID-19 relief measure, it has been repeatedly extended by the National Treasury and, as of the 2026 Budget, runs through 31 March 2027. It is widely regarded as the de facto precursor to a permanent Basic Income Support (BIS) policy that the Department of Social Development is developing with National Treasury. Eligibility is reassessed automatically every month against bank, SARS, UIF, NSFAS and Home Affairs records.

United States

Crédito por Trabajo is Puerto Rico's local, refundable Earned Income Tax Credit, run by the Puerto Rico Department of Treasury (Hacienda), that supplements the wages of low- and moderate-income working residents, self-employed people, and pensioners. Eligible filers receive a cash credit (paid as part of their tax refund or as a separate check) sized to their earned income and number of qualifying dependent children. It is funded through the Commonwealth's general budget together with a large federal allocation ($600 million) provided under the American Rescue Plan Act, which was used starting in 2021 to substantially expand the credit. Puerto Rico residents do not file federal income tax returns and are excluded from the federal EITC, so this program exists to replicate that anti-poverty wage subsidy locally. It benefits roughly 640,000-700,000 working families annually with total disbursements exceeding $1 billion in recent years.

United States

The Creative Communities Coalition for Guaranteed Income (CCCGI) is a participatory-grantmaking guaranteed income initiative in which Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) provided funding and technical assistance to six San Francisco Bay Area arts and culture organizations, who then selected and distributed $1,000 monthly unconditional cash payments to 60 San Francisco artists for 18 months. Rather than YBCA designing and running the program itself, each partner organization used its own criteria to nominate artists rooted in communities typically overlooked by traditional arts funding, including artists of color, immigrant/refugee/undocumented artists, queer and trans artists, sex-working artists, and housing-insecure artists. The program was funded primarily through philanthropic gifts from Jack Dorsey's #StartSmall LLC and MacKenzie Scott, channeled through YBCA.

United States

DCT+ is the Oregon Department of Human Services' Youth Experiencing Homelessness Program (YEHP) unconditional cash-transfer pilot for young adults ages 18-24 experiencing homelessness, delivered in partnership with Point Source Youth (PSY). Verification confirms DCT+ is the SAME program previously documented in Dotare as 'Oregon Direct Cash Transfers Plus' (record 209); this record reflects the program's second cohort/expansion phase, which added a Jackson County (Medford) site to the original Multnomah, Clackamas, and Deschutes County sites (Portland, Sandy, Bend). The second 120-participant cohort receives $1,000/month for 24 months plus a one-time $3,000 enrichment fund, with the expansion partly funded by a $1 million philanthropic gift and Oregon Senate Bill 5526, alongside continuing public ODHS funding. Services are delivered through community partners including NAYA, AntFarm, JBarJ Youth Services, and Maslow Project (Jackson County). As of early 2026, the program was not accepting new applicants because the second cohort had already been selected.

India

The Delhi Lakshmi Yojana (originally announced as the Mukhyamantri Mahila Samriddhi Yojana) is a Delhi state government cash transfer scheme, approved by the Delhi Cabinet in March 2025, that will provide eligible low-income women Rs 2,500 (~$26 USD) per month via direct bank transfer. It targets women aged 21-60 from families resident in Delhi for at least 10 years with annual household income under Rs 2.5 lakh (~$2,588 USD), with only one woman per eligible family receiving the benefit. As of this research (July 2026), the scheme has been formally re-announced and renamed but has not yet begun accepting applications or disbursing payments; rollout is targeted around Raksha Bandhan (~28 August 2026). It is administered by the Department of Women and Child Development, Government of NCT of Delhi.

United States

The Denver Basic Income Project (DBIP) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that delivered unconditional cash payments to over 800 people experiencing homelessness in Denver, Colorado, in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) research design. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three payment groups ($1,000/month, $6,500 lump sum plus $500/month, or a $50/month control) for 12 months, with a subset of cohorts extended into a second year through 2024. The program is led by DBIP in partnership with the University of Denver's Center for Housing and Homelessness Research (research/evaluation) and was funded through a mix of city government, philanthropic foundation, and private donor support. Year-one findings (published June 2024) showed significant housing, financial, and public-cost-savings improvements. As of 2026, DBIP has paused new cash disbursement rounds and is repositioning as a broader participant-centered organization while advocating for renewed city guaranteed-income funding.

China

Dibao is China's national means-tested minimum livelihood guarantee, providing monthly cash top-ups to urban and rural households whose per-capita income falls below locally set poverty lines. Launched in Shanghai in 1993 and rolled out nationwide (urban by 1999, rural by 2007), it is the world's largest social assistance program by number of recipients. It is funded and administered jointly by central and local governments through the Ministry of Civil Affairs and local civil affairs bureaus, with payment amounts set to close the gap between household income and the local Dibao line. As of the end of 2024 it covered roughly 39.87 million people nationwide.

Thailand

The Digital Wallet Scheme was the Thai government's flagship one-time cash handout, giving eligible Thai citizens aged 16 and older a 10,000 baht (about US$275-300) payment intended to stimulate the economy after COVID-19. It was administered by the Ministry of Finance and distributed via PromptPay-linked bank accounts (originally envisioned as a closed-loop 'digital wallet' app with spending restrictions). It was funded entirely through Thailand's national fiscal budget (2024 and 2025) plus a contribution from the state-owned Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives. Only two of three planned phases (welfare card holders/disabled, then seniors 60+) were completed before the program was officially shelved in mid-2025 due to economic and fiscal pressures.

United States

Dignity Fund is a program of the San Francisco-based nonprofit Miracle Messages that provides $300 per month in unconditional cash for 12 months to individuals experiencing homelessness who are long-term matches in the organization's Miracle Friends phone-buddy volunteer program. It is funded through private philanthropic support and pairs cash assistance with an existing volunteer relationship rather than formal case management. It is one of two active 'Miracle Money' basic income funds Miracle Messages currently supports (alongside the California-focused Thriving Community Fund) and, while closed to new enrollment as of 2026, continues supporting current recipients through 2026. Program findings are shared publicly through the organization's 'Basic Income and Belonging' Issue Brief series.

United States

Direct Cash for Altadena Fire Recovery is a guaranteed income pilot created by the National Council of Jewish Women Los Angeles (NCJW|LA), in partnership with the survivor-led Altadena Tenants Union and Altadena Community Land Trust, to support renter households displaced by the January 2025 Eaton Fire. The program provides 30 randomly selected, income-eligible households with $36,000 in unrestricted cash over 24 months, plus optional wraparound supportive services. It is funded privately through philanthropic sponsors, including the Diane & Guilford Glazer Foundation via FireAid LA, with roughly $1.5 million raised to date. The University of Pennsylvania's Center for Guaranteed Income Research (CGIR) serves as research partner, measuring impact to inform future disaster-recovery models. Organizers intend to expand to at least 300 families as additional funding is secured.