01 GIVING DATA COLLECTORS—AND DONORS—A REAL-TIME RUSH
SENSOR PROJECT
Charity: Water
Most philanthropic galas are designed to celebrate the year’s accomplishments and generate a new round of donations. But for Charity: Water’s annual Charity: Ball last December, CEO Scott Harrison had something unique planned. “There is a big binary risk,” he said as he watched attendees who had paid $2,500 per ticket stream into New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I’m either going to look very stupid in front of 400 people or maybe make them cry.”
At the sound of a gong, minglers made their way from the entrance hall to a glass atrium containing the dimly lit ancient Temple of Dendur, candle-topped dining tables, and dozens of neon-yellow jerricans, used to carry water in the developing world (and the company’s logo). At each place setting sat a preloaded, locked iPad, displaying the name and photo of a single, custom-selected resident of Adi Etot, Ethiopia, a community of around 500 people in desperate need of clean water.
Charity: Water’s mission, since its founding in 2006, has been to raise money to help local organizations in the developing world drill wells and pursue other water-pumping and -purification projects. So far, the group, which operates on a $40 million annual budget,
