Poverty Mentality

Poverty Mentality

Third, Scott wanted to build a “beautiful” brand. He felt that most charities had a “poverty mentality” around their marketing, with most still using direct mail to solicit donors. He believed direct mail would be replaced by digital transactions and developed his business plan accordingly. Instead of using stories, images, and language intended to illicit guilt like other charities did, Charity: Water tells stories focused on hope, opportunity, and fun. Scott promotes the idea that giving should be an opportunity and a blessing, not an obligation or a debt. Charity: Water offers a “grand invitation” to join the effort in creating a world where every person has clean drinking water.

The last prong is to use local partners in the countries where Charity: Water has its projects. For the work to be sustainable and culturally appropriate, it should be led by local people. Charity: Water’s role is to “raise awareness, engage people in an issue that does not directly concern them, and then raise the money to make it happen and then go out and vet and grow the capacity of the local organizations to deploy that capital and lead their communities and their countries forward”. The locals would be “the heroes,” receiving the money and using it to bring clean water to the community.

When Charity: Water began, it was at the start of a major world financial crisis, but still managed to raise $1.7 million in its first year. Donations grew 490% in the first three years of operations, while net giving in the United States dropped by 8% during the same period. Charity: Water now has raised more than $300 million, with more than 1 million donors from more than 100 countries. Charity: Water has provided more than 9 million people around the world with access to clean water, with 35,000 projects in 27 different countries