2014
A look back

At charity: water, our mission is to bring clean drinking water to people in developing nations. In 2014, our team grew stronger, our supporters hit it out of the park and we brought clean water to more people than ever before.

Our Team

Our team grew in lots of ways. Most notably, we added 21 new team members.

Now our team is truly global, collaborating from Colorado, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington DC, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and (of course) our headquarters in New York.

We spent four days filling Post-It Notes and asking “What if?” during our inaugural Hackathon.

We traded stories over one pancake breakfast, two Waffle Wednesdays, and an incredible Friendsgiving Feast.

And across 7 days and 7,000 miles, we took 30 staff members to see Ethiopia for the first time.

Our Supporters

Fundraisers did all kinds of crazy things for clean water. The Challenge 21 team climbed 19,340 ft. up Mt. Kilimanjaro, fundraising with every step...

See the campaign.

...a Super Bowl champion used his birthday to raise $22,141 for clean water...

(Needless to say, we’re pretty big fans of Kam Chancellor.)


See the campaign.

Donors gave generously all year, including a 4-year-old who mailed us a letter and $1 gift.

It made us smile, so we shared the story on Instagram, where 8,200 other people decided it was smile-worthy, too.

Amazing volunteers helped us mail out over 4,100 tax receipts, write 700 thank you notes, and prepare 1,000 gift bags.

The members of The Well supported us in all kinds of ways. One even raced a Ferrari in charity: water yellow and black.

And he won first place!

Learn about the 100% model.

And with all this amazing support, we raised more than $27.9 million for clean water.

That’s $53 every single minute!

Our Work

We developed a low-cost, high-tech sensor we couldn’t be more excited about.

When it rolls out, it’ll give us real-time data that lets us see when a well is broken so we can quickly get the water flowing again. Soon we’ll install these incredible sensors in thousands of water points in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Learn more about our sensor.

We launched Pipeline, an innovative program to keep water flowing at charity: water projects around the world.

And 364 generous supporters joined our Pipeline monthly giving program to support all this awesome innovation and sustainability.

Learn more about Pipeline.

Tyler drank 38 cups of coffee while filming The Journey.

If you haven’t seen this little series yet, take a look! It’ll give you a first-hand look at our work in Ethiopia.

Watch The Journey.

We funded water projects in 12 different countries...

...including two new ones, Mali and Niger, who 2,574 fundraisers helped through the September Campaign.

And thanks to all our supporters, over one million more people will get clean water!

Our Financials

In 2014, we raised $43.4M.

That includes $27.9M for clean water and $15.5M for operations.

We invested $8.7M in operations using donations from private donors.

Our operational costs are covered entirely by the generous private donors of our membership program, The Well, as well as a handful of corporate partners. Their support makes it possible for us to keep our 100% promise; we’ve never used public donations to pay for operations, and we never will.

  • 67% Staff Salaries
  • 11% Professional Fees
  • 7% Travel
  • 5% Events
  • 4% Office Equipment & Supplies
  • 3% Credit Card Fees
  • 2% Rent & Utilities
  • 1% Shipping, Printing & Postage
  • 0% Marketing

...and all the while, our board members supported us along the way.

  • Michael Wilkerson, Chairman
  • Brant Cryder
  • Brook Hazelton, Secretary
  • Chi-Hua Chien
  • Gian-Carlo Ochoa, Ph.D., Treasurer
  • Shannon Sedgwick Davis
  • Scott Harrison, charity: water founder and CEO
  • Valerie Donati

All told, we’ve now funded more than 16,000 water projects, bringing clean water to more than five million people!

2014 was our biggest year yet. Thanks to every single one of you who helped make it all possible.