Growing Impact

Small footprint, big impact

Many water and sanitation organizations remain focused on the wrong indicators of success. They demonstrate impact by counting the number of beneficiaries—people helped—by a new well or latrine at the inaugural ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Water For People knows there’s a better way.

Counting beneficiaries at the moment water begins to flow doesn’t lead to growing impact. Instead, we count beneficiaries after they have had sustainable water and sanitation for 3, 6, and 10 years.

That’s when we know—and you’ll know—that these people have a solution that works into the future.

Many funders, donors, and others still want to know how many people we’ve started to help in a single year. In 2009 we started to help over 325,000 beneficiaries. We’ll continue to report this number, but the true “impact” numbers come when we can verify that people are still being helped at 3, 6, and 10 years after the solution was created. Now that’s impact!

So, when Water For People talks about “Growing Our Impact”, we’re focused on three things that we are incredibly proud of in the context of long-lasting solutions and increased impact: Total Coverage, Scale, and Replication.