I’m a BIG fan of Charity: Water.
But then I saw this video, reporting on what they have accomplished to date and hope to achieve next.
The 2011 September Campaign. Our 5-year-anniversary video from charity: water on Vimeo.
The video itself is great. It tells an inspiring story about what average donors — raising money in every way from lemonade stands to birthday gifts to dance marathons — can help accomplish, and shows the concrete results in dramatic fashion. Lives improved in so many ways from the simple step of providing clean local water.
Excellent program and superb fundraising.
But then I reflected a bit on the message.
Part of it featured a Ethiopian — described as a national hero — who has been painstakingly bringing freshwater to his fellow Ethiopians, one well at a time, constrained only by the fact that his team has only three drilling rigs … and most of the country to go.
Charity: Water wants to get him one more rig … so they’re asking donors for the $1.2 million required to purchase and fully support one mobile drilling rig.
All of a sudden, it occurred to me that this request of lemonade stand donors bordered on the obscene.
The very request for $1.2 million of charity money simply underscores the total failure of the international development community — from the World Bank on down, and including national governments, both rich and recipient. These entities have squandered literally billions on failed development projects for decades.
Then a tiny, by comparison, charity comes along and shows everyone how important — and relatively simple — it is to improve millions of lives by meeting a fundamental human need … clean, easily accessible drinking water.
Here they are, begging for your lemonade stand proceeds to buy one rig, when some incompetent, probably corrupt, bureaucracy could write a check for a hundred of these rigs in a nanosecond.
Don’t you find that upsetting, even obscene?
I don’t ask that to denigrate the program of Charity: Water. I’m glad they’re showing the world how to get the job done. And maybe by doing that, they’ll embarrass some dripping-in-money development institution to make a first-ever meaningful contribution to alleviating the water problem.
I guess someone needs to fill the vacuum and get done the practical work of drilling water wells.
But the other need is for well-financed policy advocacy designed to force development institutions to either get the job done, or shut down and stop pretending. Unfortunately, as cause fundraisers know, it’s a lot tougher to raise the funds for advocacy than it is to raise money for ‘on-the-ground’ projects.
Is there some group out there as smart about raising advocacy money as Charity: Water is about raising funds for drilling rigs? Nominations, please!
Tom
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Your article touches a nerve with me. More often than not and far too often charities, tragically, are part of the problem. The reason is that as legal “charities” rather non-profit organizations [in the US 501(c)(3) vs. 501(c)(4)], organizations are unable to effectively advocate the public policy, legal changes, or government changes necessary to alleviate many problems. Effective advocacy usually requires the acquisition and application of political power and promoting or opposing politicians (the policymakers) in elections and other political venues. Charities are barred, by law, from effective political actions in most countries.
Charities can clean up some of the mess and tend to a few of the victims of poor public policy, but often this just gives legislators an excuse to favor those who benefit from the harmful policies and ignore those who suffer from it who are being tended by the charities. And of course, the legislators and those who benefit from poor public policy can and do “buy” the acquiescence of many charities with grants–cheap PR, indeed.
In my view, most organizations could do more to address their causes and help people, animals, and the environment better if they abandoned charitable status and shifted their programs from the never-ending futility of aiding victims to stopping root causes and to directly confronting those who benefit from them. Doing the latter two entails becoming politically aggressive, very aggressive.
For those who disagree with me, consider this: with few exceptions those issues which charities address are generally getting worse, not better. And where issues are improving, it’s usually due to the campaigns of organizations that are not charities.
Because of a false credibility afforded by charitable status, charities are often a major part of the “problem”. They command most of the public and financial support and are therefore often barriers to solutions.
Tom: you ask for the nomination of “some group.” Although not a registered charity in Canada, I nominate Greenpeace. I think they’re not a registered charity in the US either, although they do enjoy official charitable status in some European countries, I believe.
I think I can rightly nominate them for all the reasons put forward in the earlier comments from Stephen Best. Greenpeace refuses big, corporate dollars and government funding; and its charity status in Canada was revoked years ago (yes, they did have it at one time). By virtue of their self-imposed policies they are categorically removed from the list of potential beneficiaries of some of the largest pots of money anywhere.
However, they continue to succeed in bringing change to corporate and government policies in their areas of interest, namely environmental.
While they have often been criticized for their sensationalist stunts, their supporters continue to stand behind them because they know of no better way to peacefully bring the positive change this “group” stands for.
I’m curious to see if someone will nominate some other “group” – and if anyone can think of a successful one that actually is a registered charity. Otherwise, only individuals come to mind – the “big ones” from recent history: Karamchand Mohandas Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. – but there are very few in that category of the cream of humanity!
While I agree that in a big-picture-way it can be disheartening to observe that charities are often incapable of doing more than addressing symptoms of larger, systemic problems. I still think most charities deserve support for their work to alleviate the suffering that the symptom-problems cause. I think that will (unfortunately) always be needed.
But as donors become more sophisticated and educated or perhaps even cynical, then maybe they will gravitate to “groups” like Greenpeace who are able to stand apart and refuse the political and financial influence which can sometimes (often?) hamstring other charities. Will donors move away from government registered charities in search of a way to address root causes rather than symptoms? Or will the government stamp of authentic, “registered charity” continue to be the measure of a “legit” cause?
Greenpeace’s model isn’t new. Are they just ahead of their time, or will their example never really catch on in a main-stream way?
Tom,
I think you’re on target with your point about advocacy. What I didn’t understand was your concern about Water: Charity’s appeal to fund a rig being an indictment of the entire international development sector. Isn’t there a gap in every sector between the magnitude of the social need and a small subset of donors who COULD more than meet that need? I’ve worked in international conservation and the same kind of gap existed. That doesn’t mean a school group couldn’t play a small role in protecting an endangered habitat by holding a car wash. The proceeds could amount to the equivalent of an acre of habitat preserved, when pooled with other small donations. And yes, there are corrupt governments in bed with illegal loggers who look the other way while forests are clear-cut, instead of enforcing the existing protection laws. Which comes back to the role of advocacy and citizen activism to help hold authorities – local, national, and international – accountable. I guess I didn’t understand the origin of your concern. Wouldn’t the same concern – the same disparity between large and small contributors, the same complaint about lack of funding for advocacy – apply to cancer research or the phenomenon of homelessness? Somehow I wasn’t able to connect all the dots of your argument.
“I have a dream” that one day registered charities will rise up and demand the right to fully and aggressively engage in politics (while offering their supporter tax relief) and expend their sometimes considerable human and financial resources confronting the systemic causes of the issues they are ostensibly trying to resolve.
It’s hypocritical that in some countries, Canada for one, that politicians who deny organizations that engage in politics and changing public policy the benefit of offering their supporters tax relief, while they themselves give generous tax deductions for political donations. What’s the rationale for allowing a political party the right to issue tax receipts but not a charity? Both are private organizations.
As for my dream, I’ve yet to come across a sector more cowardly at exerting and demanding its rights than charities. Some of them are trying to do so much, but they hamstring themselves by caving in to every government initiative to limit their effectiveness and burden them with ridiculous financial requirements.
Much could be accomplished if charities–desperate like hard core coke addicts to cling to their charitable status–weren’t such pathetic wimps. Pardon the strong language, nothing stronger came to mind.
I loved Charity:Water’s video – its was big, bold, emotional and showcases an ability to address a real problem on the ground with an ambitious but achieveable solution. Its fantastic that Charity:Water have reached 2 million more people with clean water. But the difference between this and the 800 million people without clean water around the world makes me impatient to do far more.
This is where advocacy comes in. Using the story of the Ethiopian hereo in the video, putting in the rig just won’t be enough. The Ethiopian governmet have already set themselves ambious targets for clean water coverage, and they need to provide what is needed in equipment and also more water engineers, better planning by civil servants to keep the improvements going, and health workers to enable this water to be used for better sanitation and saving lives. Accorss the world governments need to take urgent action to address the water and sanitation crisis – progress is just too slow currently.
There should be national organisations of ordinary people joining up to demand their right to clean water from their government – and there are! There are many fantastic campaigners making big changes. There should also be more joined up advocacy at an international level too, to support national campaigns with international change and increase the impact of all these action by people in so many countires. And again there is! The End Water Poverty campaign is a powerful movement for global change. 350,000 people Walked for Water in March this year, and events and lobbying happens all year round.
But it needs to go further and needs all people and organisations and charities working together and having the same kind of energy that Charity:water has but applied to political solutions. So, the ‘some group’ is there, lets see if we can go further together.
I’m a little behind in my reading so please pardon the late response. I couldn’t agree more that increased advocacy is needed — (1) to pressure the government to take direct responsibility for addressing a range of issues through increased funding and legislation, and (2) to pass more progressive tax policies that will generate more revenue and begin to close the staggering wealth gap that exists in the United States. Private philanthropy will never be able to have the impact of government programs. However, this doesn’t seem to be a problem specific to water rigs or international development. In my experience, this gap exists in virtually every nonprofit cause.
You asked for a nomination of an organization raises money for advocacy around policy issues, as compared to the on-the-ground work of digging wells and pipelines. But it doesn’t have to be a choice between one or the other—we can do both.
In my work at MADRE, I’ve seen how invaluable this combination is. We partner with grassroots women’s organizations worldwide. We work with women leaders in their communities to meet urgent needs, including the need for clean water, in places like Nicaragua and Kenya.
And we engage in human rights advocacy at the international level. We can use spaces like the United Nations to create opportunities for those same women leaders—who have direct, on-the-ground experience—to convey their expertise to global policymakers. In this way, we can improve international laws and practices.
These two aspects of our work with our partners reinforce each other. If a woman does not have enough water to drink, she can’t be thinking about international advocacy strategies. She won’t be thinking about how to change the policies that affect her. But if we don’t pressure our governments to prioritize rights like clean water, we’ll continue to fall short of the goal of clean, safe water for all.
By helping the communities of our partner organizations survive and thrive, and by partnering with them to raise their voices before government leaders, we make progress on multiple levels. We can connect the vital contributions of our supporters to both urgent needs and long-term policy change.