Almost Basic

Room to Breath for Everyone

Community + Cash = Magic

Study after study has shown that unconditional cash transfers are among the most efficient ways to address poverty.
While we wait for big solutions like Universal Basic Income, we can make real progress right now—by unlocking generosity in the context of community.

Poverty Makes All of Us Poor

  • We hoard more than we really want to, afraid we might slip.

  • We stop encouraging our kids to dream, far sooner than we’d like.

  • We fear innovations that could make our jobs unnecessary.

  • We spend precious time micromanaging people who fall behind.

  • Our neighbors can’t bring their best ideas forward when they’re scrambling just to survive.

Cash transfers could ease each of these pressures. And the dignity of saying “I trust you” has a multiplying effect—its return on investment is huge, whether you’re giving or receiving.

Community is key

But if this works so well, why don’t we already do it?
Because we’re afraid:

  • We might be taken advantage of. The current system rewards those who game it best.

  • We might do more harm than good. People don’t always make the best decisions.

  • Dignity gets in the way. Pride keeps real needs from surfacing.

That’s where community steps in.

Strangers can game a system. Friends can’t.
People usually make wise choices when trusted with cash—but community adds wisdom, support, and feedback.
And within community, honesty becomes safe.

That’s our model: cash + community = magic.

Three Ways to Engage

Are you part of a community trying to engage people who might have a financial barrier to participating? Let’s solve it together. We can engage in a variety of ways. In all of them the goal is three-fold: Tell the story that unconditional cash is powerful; iterate best practices; and grow your program.

  1. Story Grants
    Almost Basic grants funds to your organization. You identify recipients that might be held back from engaging due to financial barriers. You help us collect stories that demonstrate that unconditional cash makes a difference.

  2. Bandwidth Grants
    If you’re willing to explore converting some of you conditional aid to unconditional, Almost Basic may be able to grants funds to your organization to create the bandwidth to do so well. If exploring community development through unconditional cash costs something, we want to help defray those costs.

  3. Infrastructure Grants
    If you already believe in unconditional cash, are willing to jump in, and don’t need bandwidth to do so, let us make it easier for you: Storytelling with dignity. Cash transfer technology. Donor network support. Whatever it is, we want to make it easy.

Almost Basic

Almost Basic is building the tools and partnerships to make these models work anywhere.
Cash transfers delivered with dignity, fueled by generosity, and extended through community can fill the gap our current systems leave behind.

We already have everything we need:

  • Abundance, too often hoarded or wasted on luxury and addiction.

  • Communities, spending time on the basics instead of deeper needs.

  • Human potential, locked away by poverty.

What’s missing is strategy and infrastructure—dignity by design, progress on purpose.

You can find a summary of what makes Almost Basic different here.

Join us. Help unlock what’s Almost Basic.