Charitable aid and grants

Preview a saved audience, document unconditional aid and request independent approval for M-PESA disbursements.

Charitable grants pay an equal amount to eligible people in a saved audience through your organisation's existing M-PESA disbursement account. They are separate from messaging credit, donations and campaign-worker allowances.

Before you start#

• Your role needs wallet.manage for the campaign and every recipient's geographic area.
• An operator must configure and activate your organisation's M-PESA disbursement account, with funds available for the transfers and provider charges.
• A different authorised user must approve the grant. This applies at every amount.
• Prepare a saved audience and a documented charitable purpose and eligibility basis. Aid must not be conditional on voting, registration, campaign attendance or political support.

Preview a grant#

1. Open Finance › Payouts › Charitable aid & grants. Alternatively, open Messaging › Audiences and choose Create charitable grant on an audience.
2. Select the saved audience and enter a whole-KES amount per recipient.
3. Choose Preview audience grant.
4. Review the eligible and excluded counts, total principal and up to five masked contact examples. Provider transfer fees are additional.

The batch limit is 500 eligible recipients. Narrow an oversized audience before continuing; Sauti does not silently pay just the first 500. The configured M-PESA minimum and the form's maximum amount apply.

Request approval#

Enter a grant title, purpose, eligibility basis, disbursement account and optional budget line. Confirm that the aid is unconditional, then choose Submit grant for approval.

This does not send money. It creates a fixed recipient snapshot for review. A changed audience or destination requires a fresh preview before submission, and repeating the same submission does not create another batch.

The other authorised user opens the batch in Finance › Payouts and chooses Approve and send, or rejects it with a reason. Author and approver must have the required campaign/geographic access. Decisions and payment changes are audited.

Follow the outcome#

The batch shows pending, paid and failed lines, amounts, attempts and available receipts. Use the existing payout reconciliation and retry controls. A timeout is uncertain: do not resend it until the provider statement confirms whether money moved.

Before each transfer, Sauti rechecks that the person is active, the approved destination has not changed, and the contact has not withdrawn permission or become suppressed. STOP restrictions still win. Voter verification and registration are not required. New supporters joining the audience later do not join an approved grant automatically.

Which balance pays?#

The money comes from your selected organisation M-PESA B2C disbursement account, not the Sauti prepaid messaging wallet or Sauti's wallet-top-up collection account. A messaging-wallet balance does not prove that the disbursement account is funded.

The workflow is built and simulator-tested. Live transfers require a configured, funded B2C account and independent approval; publishing this guide does not activate a payment channel.