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What people, apps, websites and venues are your favorite means of discovering amazing new music?

One of the biggest challenges in the non-profit world is connecting a donor to the impact that their investment made. At least it’s a challenge if you choose to do this with integrity. It’s beyond complicated to allow donors to choose where their money goes (although donorschoose.org does a remarkable job) because of the accounting restrictions placed on that donation. Furthermore, not all global issues lend themselves to the input of an eager but uneducated donor.

“Unrestricted” donations present a unique responsibility to a donor. In a similar way as one approaches an investment broker, the donor must really ask themselves, “Do I really trust Organization X to invest this money wisely?” When the answer is yes, the response from the recipient NGO should be, “Thank you! This is how we spent your money, and this is your return.” The ROI in this instance isn’t measured in a dollar amount, but in lives changed (or trees planted, etc). The turnaround time between a donation and its return can be anywhere from days to years, depending on the issue and the project. But as much as is possible, this give-take-give relationship must be cycled through to completion in order for the donor to come back to the table with new (and hopefully increased) investment.

For a non-profit, it can be tempting to cut a few corners in this process… accounting gets fuzzy, letters from “adopted” children go out from an orphanage after years of actual investment and numbers get very elastic in the race to report back on impact. The reality is… It takes time to report back with integrity. Sometimes an uncomfortably long time. Donate at the beginning of a grant cycle and your money may not even make it out of the bank for a few months. But that’s reality. A new demand for transparency from NGOs have made it very difficult for the old-guard social sector to comply. Younger NGOs that were started with transparency in mind are way ahead of the game with the new generations of givers.

My (not-so-secretly) favorite non-profit, charity: water recently was able to close the loop with their donors from this year’s September campaign. All-in, they raised almost $1.5 million (nearly $300k beyond their goal). With that money, they purchased their first drill rig, had it delivered from Italy and drilled the first well in Ethiopia. 

They recently released this video thanking campaigners and donors for their hard work. It’s just one example of how they’ve really innovated around closing the loop. Last year, they sent thank you videos to individual campaigners for their 5th birthday. And they match every dollar from their online fundraising platform to the project it funded.

Thankfully, charity: water isn’t the only organization doing this well. But a big congrats to them on another milestone.