Survival Of The Fittest?
NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof just wrote the fascinating story of Scott Harrison, a fundraiser and skillful marketer who, as Kristof puts its, is making clean water sexy.
Some important fundraising lessons here.
Scott is a 33-year-old ex-nightclub promoter who "got religion" while vacationing in South America, then deepened his epiphany by doing a volunteer stint on Mercy Ships.
He decided to focus on bringing clean water to those in need in Africa and Asia, and founded a new organization, charity:water. Three years later, his group has raised $10 million from 50,000 donors (most in the last year), claims 500,000 Twitter followers, and most importantly has brought clean water to one million people.
Kristof notes three precepts that underlie Harrison’s success:
1. He promises all new donors that their gift will go entirely to projects in the field. 500 of his most committed donors fund all administrative costs. A great prospecting incentive if you can pull it off. Any Agitator readers out there able to make that claim?
2. He shows donors very specifically the impact of their contributions, even granting naming rights to wells. He posts photos and G.P.S. coordinates so donors can look up their wells on Google Earth. Fabulous … can you beat this for knowing where your money went?!
3. He makes creative use of social networks. Reports Kristof: "This spring, charity: water raised $250,000 through a “Twestival” — a series of meetings among followers on Twitter. Last year, it raised $965,000 by asking people with September birthdays to forgo presents and instead solicit cash to build wells in Ethiopia."
Harrison sounds like a pretty smart marketer.
Indeed, perhaps he should strike fear in the hearts of other nonprofit executives. Because the other reality this story underlines is how anybody (that is, anybody with passion, marketing skills, and a certain amount of tech savvy) can launch a cause these days. Obviously there are other, older, more established, and effective charities working to bring healthy water to needy people in the developing world.
Is charity:water adding to the pot, attracting new interest and donors? Or is this new organization cannibalizing the existing clean water/humanitarian market? If the latter, is that worrisome, or should a "better" approach prevail … survival of the fittest? In how many areas of the nonprofit world is this sort of potential "displacement" occurring?
Opinions?
Tom
5 responses to “Survival Of The Fittest?”
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I serve national non-profits with logo-imprinted products to enhance fundraising. I find that the inertia in these organizations is immense. The pressure on staff to conform and the politicized infrastructures make nurturing a new idea virtually impossible. If not death by committee for a new idea, then death by lawyers. Great staff people often don’t survive.
This guy didn’t just see through the clutter, or think outside the box. He doesn’t even know there is a box. He simply addressed the problem, and the major concern of donors. His story puts air back in the room. God bless him!
Katrina
CEO, Turnkey Promotions
While I admire everything about Scott Harrison and charity:water, I would point out two “but’s.” First, the whole notion of selected donors paying for administrative costs is pure sleight-of-hand. Those donors would certainly have made the same gifts to “operations,” so the percentage of total gift revenue committed to water and wells remains the same. I cannot find a way to admire this sleight-of-hand.
2nd, charity:water has the advantage of potential donors knowing immediately that human lives will be saved with their gifts. Most charities need to make the case for the rightful place of their charity in the world’s pecking order of needs. Scott is such a creative and capable guy, I suspect he could manage this challenge quite well.
Two thoughts:
1) Charity:water, as the excellent name suggests is a pure charity. It’s taking money from people and turning into clean water.
This is different from big swaths of the social sector in that they do no advocacy or attempt to change the things that are making people unable to provide water for themselves. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s a bit awkward for organizations like mine (Global Integrity) when people ask “how much of my money goes to programs?” We’re incredibly lean, but the question makes little sense in an advocacy organization: you’re not buying a product, you’re supporting a movement with non-linear progress and non-obvious strategies. I can’t give a GPS location of a slightly better freedom of information bill.
2) It’s hard to argue that charity:water using Twitter to fundraise is cannibalizing existing revenue streams, as Twitter didn’t exist a few years back. More importantly, the donor profile is different: I don’t think any UNICEF (or whatever) donors got on Twitter and suddenly quit giving to UNICEF. More likely, a new generation of donors, with new expectations and preferences, is growing up and starting to give.
On question one, my pro-bono client, the Boys & Girls Club of Bisbee, received a $3 million grant from an individual to allow its creation and to cover all admin costs in perpetuity. So we tell people that every dollar goes entirely for program and it is true. Without that grant, the Club could not exist in what is the smallest community served by a B&GC.
Student Conservation Assn could make that claim since the fee-for-service partnerships do cover most admin costs. There are some bureaucratic reasons that we do not make the claim. The old system was that the National Park Service provided 75% of the total program costs and SCA was obligated to raise the rest. Back in 1997, I repackaged that as a 3:1 Challenge. Every time the leadership changed, we had to explain our re-interpretation of the arrangement. As of today, the NPS flipped the arrangement and it is now a true Challenge grant arrangement.
By the way, in searching for charity:water ratings, I ran across this take on a similar claim by Smile Train: http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/smiletrain.html
What Scott has achieved is incredible no matter how you look at it. I work for a charity based in the UK and every year volunteer’s work in rural Kenya building sand dams. What strikes me most is that if you give people the resources they need to improve their lives they will do it. This summer’s group started on Monday in Munathi, they had over 50 local volunteers working with them on Monday and on Tuesday they were joined by another 70 volunteers from a community 10km away. The dam was finished by Wednesday – an incredible achievement that will bring clean water to 100’s of people. These volunteers raise funds to buy the supplies used to build the dams, 100% of this goes to the projects – they see not only the results of their hard work, but also of the money they raised.