In 2022, Shamarra Woods, now 31, was about to leave Atlanta, frustrated by her high rent and low pay as a logistics team trainee at a cardboard box company, a job it had taken her a year to find.

A single mother (her daughter Memri was born in March of that year), she couldn’t see her way to making ends meet.

Then in late May she received a phone call with some welcome news: Someone from the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity (GRO) Fund, an Atlanta nonprofit, told her she had been chosen by lottery to participate in “In Her Hands” — a pilot program giving an average of $850 per month for two years to 654 women, no strings attached. The GRO Fund runs the program in partnership with Give Directly, a New York-based nonprofit.