Rethinking hydro-philanthropy

Guest blogger Ned Breslin is CEO of Water For People, a nonprofit international humanitarian organization that supports the development of sustainable safe drinking water resources and improved sanitation facilities in developing countries. In October 2009, Water For People announced an investment from the Case Foundation to accelerate and expand its efforts to provide innovative, sustainable water solutions in Africa.

The water sector is dominated by pictures of happy children drinking water from a tap. This is of course the goal, but is it the reality? Sadly not.

The picture above of a failed handpump is more representative of the reality that litters the African countryside. It’s not good enough. I am convinced that a significant philanthropic change is needed if we are to truly eliminate water poverty worldwide. Key to that is rethinking how we define success and how we make future water sector investments.

In a recent article I authored, titled "Rethinking Hydro-Philanthropy: Smart Money for Transformative Impact," I offer a few ways in which philanthropists can push the sector to be more effective, which I would also like to quickly share here:

• Water and sanitation sector agencies need to improve their work in the field or the goodwill that the sector currently enjoys will erode.
• New philanthropic giving strategies could play a significant role in eliminating water and sanitation poverty by basing themselves on a robust set of sustainability metrics. Success will require less single-minded focus on the absolute number of people without access to water and sanitation facilities and more focus on the serious questions around long-term impact and sustainability. So that years after the cameras have left, the donor reports have been filed, and the press release circulated, the community is not forgotten.
• A new partnership between philanthropists and development agencies would focus less on how much money the sector supposedly needs to solve global water challenges and more on how creative philanthropic giving can be used as leverage to instill financial responsibilities for improved water supply and sanitation on communities and governments in developing countries … sector agencies need to be pushed considerably harder so that African, Asian and Latin American women never need to walk past that broken handpump, rightly grumbling, on their way to collect unsafe water. This can be done in creative and constructive ways through new partnerships between philanthropists and nonprofits.

It’s time to rethink philanthropy and our best path toward long-term success. Read more at http://www.waterforpeople.org/hydrophilanthropy.