Charity Water no comments
© Flowery *L*u*z*a*
There is a recent online charity that has been getting a lot of attention in the last year or so. They simply call themselves Charity: Water. Charity water is a nonprofit who aims at creating clean drinking water. They use one hundred percent of their public donations for wells and clean water in developing nations.
I was introduced to Charity Water through Twitter. Twitter did a worldwide tweet-up that specifically gave money to charity. Charity Water is who they picked to send all the proceeds from these tweet-ups to. This event was called Twestival. 202 cities participated, and over $250,000 was raised. This money went to building a well in Ethiopia. Video footage was taken so twitter-ers could see what was done with their donations. It made connecting through social media so much more real for me. Not only could I form worthwhile relationships online, but those relationships could be used to help people all over the world.
Charity Water is a relatively young organization. Started in 2006 by Scott Harrison. Harrison started the project after being a photo-journalist for Mercy Ships in Liberia. After seeing the living conditions, particularly the state of the drinking water there, Harrison began Charity Water two years later.
The website is worth checking out just to read the stories of the people that work there. They also document all the large events they've done to raise money, and of course all the clean water they've brought to developing countries. Charity Water is a great example of what a non-profit can do with online mediums. With all the video, pictures and social media presence they've created a name for themselves in a very short time.
I think businesses can learn from successful charities, just like this one.
Have you ever learned from a charity lessons for your business?