Basic Income Platform - The Logical Foundation

Giving people a foundation of basic income empowers them to get what they need.

The Logical Foundation’s Basic Income Platform enables you to spend money more impactfully – to their specifications. Any location, any population, starting with a minimum program budget of $90,000, we will deliver at least 80% of your money directly to human beings while conducting rigorous research to understand the impact of basic income better.

Why we should give everyone a basic income | Rutger Bregman (unaffiliated)

How do you maximize the impact of your money?

Aid programs should be designed to bring as much value as possible to people in need. Conventional aid programs help beneficiaries by providing them with goods and/or services.

Unfortunately, it’s expensive to provide goods and services. Paperwork is usually an undignified hassle, and beneficiaries rarely get exactly what they need most. Oh, and many interventions are ineffective or harmful.

Basic income is architecturally superior to other forms of aid.

People in need are great at knowing what they need, far better than any nonprofit “expert” or government bureaucrat. For example, if someone needs a car repair and the aid program provides food stamps, they must launder their food stamps to get the cash for their car repair. Basic income empowers people with liquid aid.

We are building a platform to take on poverty in America.

We will publish “The Logical Foundation’s Basic Income NetPlatform work Whitepaper” when ready. If we can reach scale, this system will enable us to unleash the massive anti-poverty potential of basic income.

Frequently asked questions

Can I apply to receive money?

At this time, we can not accept applications. Our software development team is hard at work building an application process that is streamlined and accessible.

Can I choose which person receives my donation?

As a donor, you cannot choose an individual recipient. Funds directed to specific people constitute gifts according to IRS rules. We would risk being regulated as a money transfer service and losing our charitable status if we allowed personal gifts.

It would also violate our commitment to randomization of participants into test groups and control groups and impair our ability to conduct rigorous research. Of course, if you fund a universal basic income experiment, everyone in the location you pick would receive a basic income.

Where can I fund basic income?

The Basic Income Platform is a cash delivery system. We are currently headquartered in Phoenix and can easily distribute basic income anywhere in Arizona. We currently require a minimum program budget of $90,000 to deliver basic income anywhere in the U.S. Our capabilities will improve with scale and time, so eventually you will be able to fund basic income anywhere humans live.

Don’t donations go further overseas?

Objectively, a dollar will have more impact on a Kenyan living on $1.5/day than an American living on ~$40/day. However, most people want to make a difference in their local community. Charity starts at home, or so they say. We enable funders to cost-effectively combat poverty in their backyard, or wherever they want. We will enable funders to provide basic income to the poorest people in the world and to crisis situations through a partnership with GiveDirectly.

Can I make a permanent program?

Through a basic income endowment, we will enable funders to build permanent basic income programs. You can make a program permanent by donating 25 times the annual cost of running the program. Given our current $90,000 minimum, the smallest permanent program we can currently run would require a $2.250 Million gift.