What’s the Big Deal About charity:water Anyway?

#1 Thing You Need to Learn from this Post:
To stay relevant in this Interconnected Age, your cause will need to make it easy for others to tell a simple, compelling story, have a radical commitment to transparency, and maintain lean, networked operations.

A More Detailed Examination:
Ever since last year’s Twestival, it’s been pretty hard to ignore charity:water and its founder, Scott Harrison. They have become a prominent player within the social media realm and built quite an online movement, having just reached 1 million followers on Twitter.

While I had followed from afar, it wasn’t until the Mashable Social Good Conference that I had the opportunity to meet Scott Harrison. Following that conversation, we arranged a time to meet between his birthday and wedding (congrats on both!) at the new charity:water office in Manhattan.

An Inside Look
With large, backlit photographs of villages who received their help adorning the walls, he and his team were still unpacking boxes and getting settled. If I hadn’t known what they did, I might have mistaken the operations for a technology start-up given their open floor plan, clusters of computer stations throughout, and a small number of people huddling together intent on their work.

While the office space was respectable, Scott made a point of emphasizing that it was due to the generosity of their landlord, furniture supplier, and computer supplier – all of whom who have struck generous terms because of their belief in the organization. In fact, their new space was much larger and at a lower rent than their previous space.

Why They are a Big Deal
The more we visited, the more I realized why Scott and his team are worth tracking and learning from. Like many innovators, Scott does not come from a career in the cause industry and isn’t stuck in the orthodoxy of non-profit endeavors.

When you break down their success, most of it comes for obvious fundamentals. But, some is quite revolutionary and should scare those non-profits who are serving a cause, not solving it.

He’s made it his main objective to build a non-profit capable of breaking thru the cynicism his generation (he’s 34) has for large, bureaucratic non-profits.  To do so, he knew he had to take a different approach that was more transparent, lean & hungry, and leveraged its inherent strengths.

Lesson #1: Help Others Tell Your Simple Story
Getting clean, reliable drinking water to 1 billion people is quite complicated. But, you’d never know that from charity:water’s website and marketing collateral. In fact, they’ve made it simple for anyone who wants to spread the message by giving them this digital assets section of their website.

I’m still amazed at how many causes make it so hard to understand their story, let alone ask others to tell it for them.  Scott and his team have mastered the art of visual storytelling.  Here it is:

Or, if you want a harder hitting story, try this:

As I type this, the Born in September Campaign is coming to a close and has been fueled by a wide variety of people who have agreed to donate their birthday (ask other to donate in lieu of giving birthday gifts).  All of it is made possible by a community platform that gives everyone from elementary school classes to elderly women the digital tools to raise money for them.

Lesson #2: Radical Commitment to Transparency
Just as important as telling the story of why they need support, Scott and his team are devoted to showing the direct impact each donor makes. Every time a new well is drilled, a digital photo is taken, GPS coordinates are recorded, and the data is linked to a Google map proving the results to the donors who made it possible. Following Twestival, they sent a team to Africa to videotape and post daily recaps of one of the wells being drilled thru the money that had been raised.

Scott and his team want to demonstrate how each person’s gift is making a direct impact on the lives of others.  They also want to show how they stretch every dollar that comes thru the door.  No one  is getting rich off this cause or  living off the perks of the job. This is their answer to those jaded by the scandals at larger non-profit institutions.

Lesson #3 Dedication to a Lean, Networked Operations
When Scott started charity:water, he used the Robin Hood Foundation as his model (minus the billionaire benefactor).  That means 100% of gifts received go directly to fund their work on the ground, unless that gift is explicitly directed to their operations fund.

This 100% promise forces Scott and his team to focus their resources on what they do best and find partners to help them in areas they are not as good.  It is a powerful competitive advantage in my mind, because it cultivates an entrepreneurial culture.

Two things surprise most people who hear me talk about charity:water. First, charity:water didn’t conceive and run Twestival. Second, charity:water doesn’t drill the wells themselves.  The former was led by volunteers and the latter is done by partner organizations with decades of experience.

Wait a minute! Isn’t that scandalous? Actually, it’s quite smart. Scott knows his team’s strength is in telling the story and making it easy for others to raise the money.

Why only equip paid staff to raise money when you have a growing army of champions?  Or, why build up a large implementation team from scratch when you can contract with organizations that have been around 20-30 years and are quite familiar with each country and culture they help? Of course, they have professional fundraisers on staff. Of course, they also send their operational staff into the field to work with their partners and keep them accountable.

In case you were wondering, all of their marketing is done in house.  Scott and his team travel with digital still and video cameras everywhere they go.  Most of the stunning visuals are shot by Scott himself (he says if anyone shoots 1,000 photos, at least one will be a powerful image).  At the controls of the charity:water marketing dynamo is his new bride, who designs all their digital and print collateral, including their website.

With just a few people armed with easy-to-use tools, they are producing powerful images and stories that multiple the gifts already received.

Mostly because of travel costs to and from the villages they serve, charity:water has an operational overhead of 20%. That means for every $1 million raised, Scott and his team need to raise $200,000 in donations specifically earmarked for the operations fund to keep their staff employed and lights on.  Because they don’t work from an endowment draw, this makes for an interesting ongoing challenge.

To help achieve scale, charity:water has formed a new inner circle giving society called The Well.  These donors pledge to give at least $1,000 to the operations fund every month for an entire year. For their commitment, charity:water asks them to serve as stakeholder advocates, keeping Scott and his team accountable thru monthly conference calls, an annual in-person summit, and two social events.

Final Thought
Whether your cause is a large incumbent or nascent upstart, you will need to figure out how to stay relevant. Certainly you can learn from charity:water and its three lessons.  How you do is up to you.

So is charity:water Really a Big Deal?
Am I just another infatuated admirer of Scott and his team? Do they really represent the model for causes in the Interconnected Age?

Find Me on Twitter:
@scottyhendo