Opinion: Fluid philanthropy — from water charity to venture builder

How do you turn drops into dollars? This was the question that Dick and Terri Greenly, founders of Water4, asked themselves in 2008 when they set out to create a charitable nonprofit organization. Capital might seem counterintuitive to charity at first glance. Typically, and especially in the context of modern culture, charity is seen as altruistic while capitalism is greed; service of others versus service of self. Water4 was founded on the belief that charity and capital, or profit, actually go together.

Anyone who has experienced the water crisis firsthand feels a sense of urgency — something that charity doesn’t seem to offer. In the water space, charity offers temporary alleviation, but cyclical reliance. Thus, Water4 was also founded on the belief that those who are charitable are not seeking to pour money down a bottomless well, they want to offer financial resources to be a part of the solution, not the perpetuation. A successful water charity must find a way to deliver on its promise to end the crisis, digging deeper and striking the root of it altogether. This, the Greenlys knew, would mean that from day one Water4’s focus would be on profitability rather than endless philanthropy. A charity to end the need for charity.

Innovating technology

At its inception, Water4 manufactured hand pumps and worked with small-scale entrepreneurs and technicians in Africa as implementers. Knowing that pump failure is the reason for broken hand pumps laid waste across the continent, the organization innovated its own technology, making it affordable and easy to maintain in order to scale as many pumps as possible with a private enterprise approach for continuous maintenance and operations. As Water4 grew, so did its understanding of the water crisis and the avenues to lasting impact, which dictated that hand pumps would not be the solution to end the crisis. In 2017, this led Water4’s CEO, Matt Hangen, to pivot away from hand pumps as the solution and instead pioneer an aspirationally branded, rural, piped water approach, called NUMA, that leveraged existing customer behavior, rather than seeking to change it.

NUMA is composed of piped water networks that distribute treated, safe water at varying quantities and scales aligned with the aspirations of the community. It is currently scaling across Ghana, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Zambia, and is quickly becoming a recognized and trusted brand across sub-Saharan Africa. NUMA comprises several different types of water points: The NUMA Nexus is the core treatment and delivery system for the network and is also utilized as community walk-up kiosks and NUMA Nows are extensions of the Nexus into homes, schools, clinics, businesses, and institutions. And, as innovation typically spurs further innovation, the NUMA NowForBusiness is a household connection built for the private reselling of water. At each water point, prepaid meters ensure the businesses are paid so they can continue to build, own, operate, maintain, and reinvest revenues in capital expenditures.

Moving beyond infrastructure

Over time, and through this novel approach, Water4 has naturally morphed from a water charity into a venture builder, taking an innovative and sustainable approach that moves beyond infrastructure to developing a market-based, governmentally aligned model, starting, scaling, and owning profitable, safe water businesses across sub-Saharan Africa. Water4 uses philanthropic seed capital to install the initial water infrastructure, ensure best practices, provide technical training for employees, and pilot innovation in order to continuously iterate and create economic opportunities for the communities our businesses serve.

We challenge the notion that the water crisis can be solved by aid and instead choose to raise and invest funds in businesses that will last, ensuring continued safe water service provision in perpetuity. This approach puts the solutions to local problems in the hands of local people and ensures that safe water access is sustained by local resources for lasting impact. To date, Water4 and our business partners have installed 10,897 water points, bringing safe water to over 2.2 million people — and counting.

Now let’s turn back to the question posed at the beginning of this piece, “How do you turn drops into dollars?” Our answer is that if you let the market dictate the demand, even in emerging market contexts, consumers will vote with their wallets. With just a few pennies each day, our customers clearly communicate to our businesses that they are willing to pay for the service because of three main factors: reliability, convenience, and aspiration. And yes, like all businesses, a water utility in rural Africa can — and will — become a profitable business by providing excellent customer service, innovation, and visionary leadership that rejects the belief that the solution is a dusty-footed walk to unsafe water sources. At Water4, we’ve moved past broken systems and swapped the status quo for creative disruption.

Charity creates beneficiaries in a dependency relationship, but Water4 is proving that capital — or profitable businesses spurred by philanthropy — creates sustainable businesses and empowered customers, fostering a dynamic relationship where individuals and communities own the solution, take an active role in their own development and evolve into independent architects of their own destinies.

For more information on Water4, please visit water4.org