Frequently Asked Questions

Absolutely not. Sharing your story is completely optional. The $50 is a gift with no conditions. You can use it, enjoy it, and never visit this website again. That's perfectly fine. We only invite you to share if you want to, and there's no judgment if you don't.

Stories are reviewed before being published to ensure they're appropriate and maintain the respectful, calm tone of the project. Once approved, your story is published anonymously on the Stories page. We may edit stories slightly for clarity, but we'll never change the meaning or substance. You can request that your story be removed at any time.

That's completely valid. There's no "correct" way to use the $50. If you need groceries, if you want to treat yourself, if you use it for something personal, go right ahead. The gift is yours to use however you believe will make your world (and by extension, our world) a little better. Sometimes taking care of yourself is exactly the right thing to do.

Recipients are chosen completely at random. There's no application process, no criteria, no judgment. Once a week, an envelope is given to a random stranger in a random place. The randomness is intentional. It removes bias and creates space for genuine human response.

No. We don't track recipients. We don't collect personal information. If you choose to share your story, it's completely anonymous. We won't contact you, follow up, or verify how you used the money. The gift is given and that's where our involvement ends, unless you choose to share your story.

According to evidence from the Canadian "Mincome" experiment conducted in Dauphin, Manitoba, which was the first large scale social experiment in Canada and the largest basic income experiment in the world, it doesn't. There was an initial concern that if you began a guaranteed annual income, people would stop working. What happened was exactly the opposite. Young adults postponed getting married and birth rates dropped. School performance improved. The Mincome cohort studied harder and faster. Total work hours only notched down 1% in men, 3% in women. Hospitalizations decreased by as much as 8.5%, domestic violence was also down, as were mental health complaints.

Data has found no increase in expenditure on tobacco, alcohol, or gambling. This is consistent with a substantial body of research on the effects of cash transfers, which has found that, if anything, recipients spend less on alcohol and tobacco after receiving cash transfers (Evans and Popova, 2016). A major study by the World Bank demonstrated that in 82% of all researched cases in Africa, Latin America and Asia, alcohol and tobacco consumption actually declined. In Liberia, an experiment was conducted to see what would happen if you give $200 randomly to the poor. Three years later, data shows they spent the money on food, clothing, medicine, and small business. If these people wouldn't throw away free money, who would? (Blattman and Niehaus, "Show Them The Money")

"The big reason people are poor is because they don't have enough money, and it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that giving them money is a great way to reduce that problem" ~ Charles Kenny

Unconditional cash disbursements are correlated with reductions in crime, child mortality, malnutrition, teenage pregnancy, improved school performance, economic growth and gender equality, resulting in stronger, more prosperous communities and a better world for all.