WaterAid
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"Up" is the number of experts who agree that the nonprofit has had the most impact in the
field. "Down" is the number of experts who disagree that the nonprofit has had the most impact in field.
Headquarters Location: New York, NY
Founded: 1981
Mission: WaterAid transforms lives by improving access to safe water, hygiene and sanitation in the world's poorest communities. We work with partners and influence decision-makers to maximise our impact.
Tags:
water, hygiene, sanitation, local partnerships, policy, rural areas, urban areas, appropriate technology, hygiene education, research
This organization has offices located worldwide. As the majority of our users are based in the U.S., the donation link is connected to the U.S. office.
This organization has offices located worldwide. As the majority of our users are based in the U.S., the donation link is connected to the U.S. office.
Summary
Stories
Expert Reviews
Leadership
From the Nonprofit
Leadership
David Winder.
David Winder became WaterAid's CEO, America in January 2010. Dr. Winder’s career has spanned the non-profit, foundation and academic spheres. He started his career in international development as a United Nations volunteer in Chile and then managed graduate programs, taught courses in public administration, social development planning and rural development policy and planning, and conducted research at the University of…
See full bio.
Financial Data for US Office
Overhead Ratio:
20.73%
Total Revenue:
$4,904,544
From the Nonprofit
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Contact Info
Website:
E-Mail:
inquiries AT wateraidamerica.org
Phone:
212-683-0430
Facebook:
Address:
315 Madison Avenue, Suite 2301
New York, NY 10017, USA
Twitter:
Story:
Forty year old mother of six Suzanna Tuwan lives in Takkas, in Nigeria’s mountainous Plateau state. WaterAid and local partner organization COWAN have helped her community to dig a well fitted with a handpump, construct latrines and learn about good hygiene.
Previously, Suzanna and the other women of Takkas had to collect water from a river nearly an hour’s walk away. In the dry season, they would have to dig into the riverbed to find water. Between water collection and caring for children frequently sick with diarrhea, life was tough.
Suzanna appreciates WaterAid's approach of providing water, sanitation and hygiene, as she described:
“Before we had the well it used to take at least two hours just to collect water from the river. Now it takes less than 30 minutes to fetch water.”
“Since we received hygiene education I make sure that we always wash our hands before and after we eat and after we defecate. I make sure the children clean themselves properly and that the house and grounds are swept. Before this diarrhea was common with the children, now we almost never see it.”
“With the extra time I have and the money we save now that we are not always having to buy medicine for the children, I felt able to take advantage of a small business loan from COWAN. I used the money to buy cement to start building latrine slabs for people in the village. I built the slab for our own latrine."
“I would like to see everyone in the village get a latrine, because it is so much better to use a latrine than to go to the bush. That is the main reason I decided to learn to build slabs and get our own latrine – to stop my children using the bush. It is not healthy.”
Expert Reviews of WaterAid
Evidence of Impact Summary:
WaterAid effective water and sanitation programs and advocacy has raised awareness among local governments about the importance of clean water and sanitation. They use evidence-based data to guide their work and is a leader in publishing their field research and advocacy papers. They have also helped tens of millions of people gain access to clean water and sanitation facilities.See expert comments.
Organization Strengths Summary:
WaterAid is a leader in advocacy locally and internationally. Because of this they have had impact beyond the project level. In addition, they are a learning organization and also share their lessons learned and best practices widely with others. They have strong personnel including staff and board members. They are very capable in fundraising and have diverse funding sources.See expert comments.
Areas for Improvement Summary:
WaterAid can expand their program by population type (to urban poor) and geography. They can improve on their monitoring and evaluation. In particular they can be more engaged on the field and evaluate how sustainable their work is. They can re-evaluate their program strategy and focus less on direct service delivery and investing in infrastructure and more on advocacy and analysis. Other areas they can also explore are hygiene education and natural resource management. They can be more open with partnering with other organizations and help build local capacity.See expert comments.
Expert Comments: Evidence of Impact
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High Profile |
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They are focused, high profile, and achieve a lot. | ||
Strong Partnerships |
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WaterAid achieves well by getting people into countries and communities. Individuals interact and partner excellently to achieve effective and efficient outcomes. | ||
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They have long-term country partnerships, they experiment with different service delivery models, they are willing to engage governments to improve their capacity and hold them accountable for their planning and investments. | ||
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They have strong intersectoral partnership from CBO and national NGOs to local government. They equip and train CSOs to implement programs. They have excellent long-term strategies with impact monitoring, and are pioneering CLTS in Africa. | ||
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Water Aid has a deep commitment to working in partnership with local organizations and they have stressed the organizational and empowerment fundamentals to more lasting water programmes. This has led to positive results and legacy in many countries. | ||
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The organization is specialized in water and sanitation issues. They work very seriously in promotion, lobbying, and project implementation. They have a very wide network of local offices with very wide geographical coverage. They developed traditions of long-term serious presence in the water and sanitation sector in the developing world. They collaborate excellently on the field with a number of other organizations working in the water and sanitation sector. | ||
Effective Advocacy |
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WaterAid uses practical and local solutions to provide clean water, safe sanitation and hygiene education to the world's poorest people. They play strong and consistent advocacy role both nationally and globally being voice of the poor while empowering citizens. | ||
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They do excellent work on advocacy to create systemic change in the Water/Sanitation/hygiene sectors at the national levels in multiple countries. | ||
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WaterAid's advocacy and demonstrations of service delivery has helped to raise the profile of the WASH sector among Governments and donors resulting in it having a higher priority. | ||
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They are strong in advocacy and working with the government. | ||
Influential in Raising Awareness about WASH |
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They produce strong work in specific countries and work with partners in all areas of WASH, including working on implementation of increased/improved services, research and policy. They have had strong impact on the sector overall internationally, in terms of attention to/funding for WASH, and impact in country in terms of funding direct implementation. They have improved work through dissemination of research findings and influence work with government and other stakeholders. They are the first organization that people think of Internationally in terms of work in the sector. | ||
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WaterAid has had a massive impact in terms of raising awareness of WASH issues and holding the UK government - and other public bodies - to be accountable in terms of their investment support for WASH and on improving pro-poor strategies. In addition, WaterAid also has direct implementation programmes to improve access for millions of people. | ||
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WaterAid is certainly a major player in the sector; they have been a major reason the water and sanitation issue finally has some attention being paid to it in general. This I would quantify as a form of impact. The question is what happens with that awareness. They are certainly also directly involved with seeing that millions of people gain access to water and sanitation. The question is whether this access will be sustainable. | ||
Affected Large Number of People |
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WaterAid has helped tens of millions of people to improve their water, sanitation and hygiene. | ||
Publish Leading Research |
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Having seen their programs in multiple countries in Africa, I am impressed with how WaterAid works at both the policy and the community level. They are able to bridge a gap that many organizations do not try and bridge. Also, they manage to effectively combine community development and research that they make publicly available. | ||
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I am less familiar with the field impact of WaterAid, knowing them more for their publication of research and sector tools. They have released a number of studies revealing that many of the sector's (and their) strategies have been largely ineffective, and have moved quickly toward models that show more promise. | ||
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I have used their research data and materials and consider their data to be some of the best and most accurate. They have strong programs globally and are highly respected. | ||
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They are a global leader in published field research and advocacy papers with both elements of their work (implementation / advocacy) very strongly linked. | ||
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They have excellent research, and good autonomy at country level. | ||
Strong Analysis and Evaluation |
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They have a good analysis of outcomes and impact, their results drive changes in their programming, and they are forming an evidence base for advocacy. | ||
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WaterAid International is committed to self evaluation of their performance within the WASH sector. They have consistently conducted sustainability assessments to ensure the services they are working to provide with their in country partners continues at least through the design life. | ||
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WaterAid is committed to creating an evidence base and programming from there. | ||
Effective Programs/Projects |
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They have had a number of successful projects, worked in a number of areas, and done a variety of work. | ||
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I wanted to choose Water Aid-UK so hope that comes through. Water Aid is moving towards becoming a data-driven organization with its work on water point mapping and other monitoring initiatives. The only way to assess an organization on impact is if they can demonstrate it. To me, organizations that measure success as only "new pumps installed" or "new people helped this year" are not taking impact seriously. Water Aid is not one of those. | ||
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Water Aid in Ethiopia wash program is very strong ... WA it is very well connected with all key local stakeholders that makes them an excellent contributor to the sector. They also work through local partners which have achieved considerable capacity because of the support from WA. | ||
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They have constructed water and sanitation facilities through their partner organizations and promoted good governance and accountability in the sector. | ||
Sustainable Outcomes |
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They work on 100% sanitation coverage with no subsidy, and securing sustainable outcomes. | ||
Strong Work |
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They are doing good work. | ||
Leader in Sector |
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They are the most important name in the water and sanitation sector, and have the clout that all others would love to have. They have earned that. | ||
Expert Comments: Organization Strengths
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Foundation Professionals (F)
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Researchers and Faculty (R)
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Nonprofit Senior Staff (N)
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Other (consultants, journalists, policy makers) (O)
Leader in Advocacy |
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Leadership, advocacy role at national, regional and global level, and partnership arrangements. | ||
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Advocacy capacity at the local ; US and international level. Highly competent local staff | ||
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WaterAid is an advocacy leader. It creates documents that are important, and they influence the sector's work. They are, perhaps, the prime example of knowledge sharing. | ||
Willingness to Learn |
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Their strengths are their long experience, learning organization, focus, experience, and commitment. | ||
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Strong in-country presence, organization learns from previous projects and changes. Excellent program support materials. | ||
Global Impact |
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WaterAid endeavors to work beyond a project level, leveraging advocacy from the community to the international level. They expend serious effort on research and have great staff. | ||
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Presence in 2 dozen plus countries, / promotion of low cost, sustainable technologies / evidence -based messages. | ||
Support Local Capacity Development |
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They support CSOs, local capacity development, and governance. | ||
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They focus on building capacity at national and local levels for the government to do its part, rather than use an NGO model where no lasting capacity stays past the end of the project. They do not engage in service delivery to try to increase access, but rather test and document innovative new models for improving and expanding access for unserved and underserved populations. | ||
Leaders in the Sector |
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Strong leaders of the sector internationally with an increasingly strong overall presence through country offices in the South supported by WaterAid UK initially, then more recently also WaterAid Australia and USA - growing in amount of funds raised within each of these countries, also strong governance and management systems. | ||
Strong Personnel |
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Good leadership with good, solid goals. Very practical application for water development and community involvement. | ||
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It has a strong, clear set of values that underpins all its work. It consistently attracts strong professionals to govern and manage it. | ||
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Reputation, approaches, staff. | ||
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High level professional staff, working at government and community level. | ||
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Good leadership and some exceptional staff. Their marketing in the UK is impressive. | ||
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Multi-country presence; strong regional staff; focus on poor and vulnerable; working at multiple levels - on the field, policy. | ||
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WaterAid has highly knowledgeable staff, financial and programme management systems are very strong, it has its operations in a large number of countries where people are suffering due to lack of safe and sustainable water and sanitation services, WaterAid is really excellent in communicating and projecting its achievements and in disseminating its learning. | ||
Strong Fundraising Capabilities |
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Dedicated funding from several different sources, multiple country partnerships. | ||
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This nonprofit has strong fundraising capabilities, which enable it to stay well resourced. It also has a strong advocacy staff particularly in Washington DC | ||
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Staff and financial resource mobilization are their strengths. | ||
Leader in Self Assessment |
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WaterAid is a leader in the area of self assessment and monitoring and evaluation of their programs. | ||
Focused Approach to Work |
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Have a focused approach to their work which leads to success - fairly low administration costs. | ||
Share Lessons Learned with Others |
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Their work has been tested and shared to the community sector for greater learning and peer review. | ||
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Good in sharing lessons and best practices across and globally. | ||
Educate Donors |
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Strong educational component with donors via their website. Strong development ethos that is carried out in the way HQ establishes field offices and works with those field offices. | ||
Been in the Field for a Long Time |
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Leadership in the past | ||
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Deep country experience and a global network of country programmes allow for lesson learning and comparative analysis of key themes and issues within the sector. | ||
Strong Operations |
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They have excellent field operations. They emphasize on sustainable water and sanitation projects and focus on good operation and maintenance practices. Their cost-recovery mechanisms and community participation are also their strengths. | ||
Great Information Source |
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They are a great data and information source. | ||
Good Projects |
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What I know is they have done several projects on water which are on standard. | ||
Expert Comments: Areas for Improvement
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Foundation Professionals (F)
X
Researchers and Faculty (R)
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Nonprofit Senior Staff (N)
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Other (consultants, journalists, policy makers) (O)
Partner with More Regional Organizations |
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Organisation currently links well with national aid organizations, but would benefit from partnering closer with regional organizations. | ||
Increase Monitoring |
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More emphasis on evidence based publications and advocacy; greater field level interventions to obtain primary data rather than only working through partner organizations and relying on their feedback | ||
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It needs to be related more with results and transparent monitoring. The market based approach from iDE is relevant for getting such approaches. | ||
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Continue to develop responsive methodologies to evaluate program activities. | ||
Stronger Technical Training |
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They can improve their staff capacity, in particular have stronger technical training for field staff, and also improve on their focus. | ||
Decrease Direct Delivery of Services |
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WaterAid probably still engages in too much direct delivery of services, something that runs the risk of creating aid dependency. | ||
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My impression is that parts of the organization are overly focused on growth in service delivery when they might be more influential if they focused on implementation that generates evidence, on analysis, and on advocacy. | ||
Increase Localization |
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More localization | ||
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More work at grassroots level. | ||
Reevaluate Program Strategy |
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Need to look beyond WASH to multiple uses of water and more support to community based natural resource management of resources which involves investment in resource management, e.g. catchment protection. | ||
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They did not include hygiene training. They assume that the village/community can fund the project and they loan the capital money to get the project started. Often times, the village/community cannot repay the loan. | ||
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WaterAid needs to balance the contradiction between its need to raise funds - and thereby make unrealistic promises regarding the impact of their investments - with their own knowledge about how limited simply investing in infrastructure really is in the long term. | ||
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Their shift over recent years to a greater focus on advocacy over programming has hurt their actual field work overseas which is unfortunate. | ||
Expand Program |
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It could encourage the creation of WaterAid entities in more donor countries. It could expand to work in more developing countries. | ||
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Leverage additional private and public financial resources to expand WASH access. Expand to include areas with greatest need. | ||
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Insufficient attention to needs of urban poor. | ||
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Expand in Latin America with other innovative approaches. | ||
Greater Field Level Interventions |
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Could do more research and could get engaged more deeply in the field. | ||
Increase Creativity |
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Seem to be constrained creatively, haven't adapted for awhile despite being one of the leaders in the sector. | ||
More In-Depth Messaging |
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Although their advocacy work is powerful, it usually can be summed us as "more money is needed for x work." I think they are a sophisticated enough organization that they could move beyond these simple advocacy messages to suggestions for better investment. | ||
Increase Partnership with Others |
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Setting more realistic targets; and improving their flexibility on their approaches and strategies to allow better interaction ; dialogue and collaboration with peer international organizations. | ||
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They have been less eager to partner than I would expect for a group that prides itself of advocacy and knowledge sharing. | ||
More Consistent Funding |
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WaterAid tends to move funding around after 3 or 5 year funding cycles. The resulting vacuum of funding for local implementing organizations undercuts continued effectiveness. | ||
Increase Sustainability |
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The areas of improvement for WaterAid is the need to make sure that their work is sustainable. They need to improve their monitoring and evaluation to ensure that their work is sustainable over time and to learn from what is working and not working. I don't think they can answer the question: what is the status of your programs that you have implemented in the past 10 years? They also need to expand their view of impact beyond beneficiary counting. Right now this is the benchmark that they are using for success of their work. But this approach drives programming to deliver numbers vs. deliver impact. For example, if you are driving to reach 40,000 people with sanitation and want to get the number in a years time (which you shouldn't do), you'll probably highly subsidize toilet construction, which will lead to toilets being constructed but not necessarily used, cleaned, or sustained. We can certainly try to reach numbers, but we should use approaches that might take more time, but that reach those numbers sustainably and in a way that has replication potential as well without subsidy. WaterAid is certainly thinking about this nuanced approach, but it is far from standard practice organizationally. Another area for improvement would be to ensure that advocacy is not being done for advocacy's sake (this is directed towards London Office vs. DC office). There are a lot of very "heavy" reports coming out of London, the relevance of which should be questioned. How relevant are these reports on the local level where the change is needed. They should think of influence and advocacy related to program approaches that will work and be sustainable, because their voice has weight and they should use it carefully. While WaterAid might be too big to take risks programmatically that could be game changing they need to keep in mind that there is a need for new thinking and approaches that look at life-cycle costs, full (country-wide, historical) monitoring and evaluation, finding ways for local, commercially viable business to fill service gaps (able to attract local loans and financing (not external donor-driven subsidy), and working at scale (district, regional, municipal). If they could consider these issues and facilitate an organizational culture shift, they could greatly improve their impact. | ||
Share Information more Widely |
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They can improve sharing of information. | ||
Improve Management |
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They have variable capacity at country level though. Program management and DFID constraints drain the time of their good people and make them focus on the wrong things. They need to sort out their accounting. | ||
Re-Focus |
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But are so big they sometimes lose focus. | ||
Leadership
David Winder
CEO, America
CEO, America
From the Nonprofit
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