800
Employees
30
Countries
GiveDirectly operates in
24
Oyster hires
39
Months
using Oyster

at a glance

Based in New York, GiveDirectly is a nonprofit that fights poverty by enabling direct cash transfers to those who need it most. Since 2009, GiveDirectly has delivered $900M+ to over 1.7 million people in 15 countries.

GiveDirectly partnered with Oyster in order to scale their team in countries where they don’t have direct entities. Thanks to Oyster, GiveDirectly has seamlessly onboarded talent in 17 countries and become a remote-first organization while ensuring local compliance, simplifying HR admin, and reducing costs.

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Key results
  • GiveDirectly has hired 24 team members in 17 countries
  • Onboarding talent is fast, compliant, and hassle-free
  • GiveDirectly has become a remote-first organization

The challenge

As a nonprofit focused on relieving poverty, GiveDirectly has uplifted families and communities by distributing $900M+ in cash transfers to over 1.7 million people across 15 countries. Whether it’s a refugee in Kenya, a single mother in Malawi, or a hurricane-impacted family in Florida, these cash grants empower people to improve their lives and break the cycle of poverty.

Carrying out this transformative work is GiveDirectly’s globally distributed team of 800+ team members across 30 countries on 6 continents. While their field operations staff need to be based in the countries they serve, other teams—like research, data, engineering, and growth—are fully remote and location-agnostic.

However, building a global team was a challenging process, especially in countries where GiveDirectly didn’t have their own entities. For their People Ops team, hiring cross-border talent meant painstaking and time-consuming research on employment regulations, navigating a bureaucratic maze of compliance requirements, and keeping up with constantly changing labor laws.

“It’s impossible to know every single law, which means being constantly anxious about whether you’re being fully compliant when hiring in new countries,” says Saidi Juma, Senior People Operations Manager at GiveDirectly. In addition to compliance headaches, it also requires managing multiple vendors like payroll services, benefits providers, accounting firms, and more—which lead to fragmented processes and a high admin burden.

For a lean nonprofit with a small People team, this wasn’t always feasible, which limited their access to talent. “There was a disconnect between our hiring team and the people operations team,” Saidi recalls, “because they would come to us and say, ‘Can we hire in Australia?’ and we’d have to say ‘No, we can’t.’”

These are some of the challenges GiveDirectly needed to overcome in order to become a remote-first organization that welcomes mission-aligned talent regardless of location.

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Being able to expand into new geographies with agility has unlocked immense value for us. Oyster has enabled us to build a diverse and high-performing global team without getting stuck in legal or bureaucratic red tape.
Saidi Juma
Senior People Operations Manager at GiveDirectly

The solution

GiveDirectly eventually chose Oyster as their global employment partner in March 2022 because it came highly recommended by fellow HR professionals and because of the strong mission alignment between the two companies. “Oyster’s mission really resonated with us because our values are aligned. We both want to create a fair and equal ground for global talent to access good jobs,” says Saidi.

With Oyster, GiveDirectly is able to seamlessly onboard talent without the admin or legal hassles of cross-border hiring. After a team member is hired, Saidi’s team can count on streamlined HR admin, payroll, and benefits thanks to Oyster managing every aspect of the team member’s employment.

“Oyster’s onboarding process is seamless—just a few clicks on our end, and everything is sorted by Oyster. That frees up our time to focus on more strategic priorities since we don’t have to worry about the administrative burdens of contracts, compliance, payroll setup, or benefits administration.”

Even before onboarding a new team member, Saidi’s team relies on Oyster’s suite of self-serve global employment tools to research local laws, understand employment costs, and benchmark salaries.

“The country guides give you a snapshot of what you need to know to hire in a particular country, which previously would have taken a lot of time to research on our own. With the cost calculator, we get a full picture of what it costs to hire someone in a particular country, including taxes and social contributions. And the Salary Insights tool lets us see median salaries for various roles, which helps us validate our internal benchmarks.”

In addition to the self-serve tools, Saidi also appreciates the country-specific knowledge and guidance that the Oyster team provides, which ensures ongoing compliance even when the laws change. “It’s challenging to keep up with all the laws and regulations, so it’s great knowing that Oyster will help us stay compliant and we don’t have to worry about it,” he says. Whether it’s superannuation contributions in Australia or obtaining visas to relocate team members, the GiveDirectly team can rely on Oyster to keep them up-to-date and simplify bureaucratic processes.

If any issues arise, Saidi knows he can count on their dedicated support team, which hasn’t been the case with other EORs. Working with a dedicated team ensures high service quality since they’re working with the same people consistently.

“One thing that’s unique about Oyster is that we have a dedicated account manager and customer success manager assigned to us, which was not my experience with other EOR providers. They check in with us during monthly meetings to make sure everything is going smoothly. I like that personal touch, and if I have any urgent issues, I know I can reach out to them anytime.”

The results

By partnering with Oyster, GiveDirectly is now able to quickly and compliantly hire global talent without geographical limitations, which has been a strategic advantage as they’ve scaled. They’ve hired 24 team members across 17 countries and become a remote-first organization.

“With Oyster’s EOR services, we’re able to compliantly hire in countries where we don’t have a legal entity. Being able to expand into new geographies with agility has unlocked immense value for us. Oyster gives us a strategic edge in talent acquisition and allows us to walk the talk when we say that we’re a truly global and inclusive employer.”

When it comes to day-to-day operations, Oyster handling the HR admin for their global team members means that GiveDirectly’s People team saves a lot of time and effort. This enables them to operate efficiently as a lean team and focus on their core priorities.

“Oyster has reduced our internal workload, so we’re able to focus on our strategy. Spending less time managing multiple vendors or looking up regulations in multiple countries—that’s been amazing. Otherwise, we would need an HR team that’s 5 or 6 times our size.”

For Saidi, the biggest impact of partnering with Oyster is having peace of mind regarding compliance. “Thanks to Oyster, we’ve reduced our legal and compliance risks,” he says. “We don’t have to worry about knowing every single law when hiring in new countries because we know that Oyster handles it legally and compliantly.”

Hiring globally with Oyster also unlocks significant cost savings for GiveDirectly, which is headquartered in New York. “The U.S. is not particularly affordable since the cost of labor is high. Being able to hire outside of the U.S. has allowed us to pay competitively while still saving on costs,” Saidi explains. It enables them to reduce operating costs and maximize the cash aid they deliver to people in need.

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Oyster gives us a strategic edge in talent acquisition and allows us to walk the talk when we say that we’re a truly global and inclusive employer.
Saidi Juma
Senior People Operations Manager at GiveDirectly

The future with Oyster

Looking ahead, Saidi is excited about hiring talent in new countries as GiveDirectly continues growing. He sees it as an opportunity for positive impact—by extending opportunity to deserving candidates regardless of location.

“Hiring globally isn’t just about expanding. It’s about making things fairer and giving everybody a real shot no matter where they’re based. Oyster makes global hiring straightforward and fair, so we can focus on building a team that truly reflects the world we live in.”

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