Where Does My Money Go?

The ins and outs of donating to a water organization

With my finger hovering over the donate button, I paused.

It was more of a hesitation really.

Those last minute questions were running through my head. Was this the best use of my money? Could I trust this water charity? How much of my money was going directly to make an impact?

It was a large organization that I deeply admire but I still found myself hovering my finger.

It’s very natural to wonder where your money is going and how it is spent. In fact, that curiosity helps keep charities like ours accountable to our donors as well as the people we are partnering with to bring sustainable water to.

We continue to plan on spending your donations, in 3 basic ways:

  • Designing water systems

  • Building water systems

  • Monitoring / Maintaining water systems

From labour to supplies to monitoring and repairing, this is where most of the money is spent. This has the most direct impact on the people we serve and is the reason we exist. If you give us $1, we’ll send about 70 cents of it here.*

  • Raising Money – Hosting events, sending emails, meeting new doors, newsletters, and marketing materials. It costs something to raise something and we hope we can build a broad base of support to have an even greater impact on the water crisis in Uganda. From that same dollar, about 17 cents goes to help ensure we’re around for the long haul.

  • Operating Expenses – From Accounting to Insurance, Governance to Travel, Office Supplies to Legal. We try to keep these low, but we also want to govern and operate to the highest standard which requires some unavoidable costs. About 13 cents from your dollar goes here.

One of our values is  “We treat every dollar as being hard-earned, and selflessly given by the donor for us to steward on their behalf. It’s an act of trust. No gift is taken for granted and our posture of gratitude motivates us to work hard to achieve this impact.”

That means when you donate to our water organization, we work hard to stretch each dollar to have the biggest impact so that more people will receive a clean, accessible and reliable water in their lifetime.

A couple years ago, we found some new ways to stretch each dollar. We leveraged new technology like mWater to better track our water systems performance. We utilized more volunteers and we’ve focused our programs. All of this means for every dollar you sent us, 30% more went to the field last year than the year before. This makes us so excited.

So did my finger ever hit the donate button? That day it did. I’ve seen what that organization did in the past and trusted them with the future.

I hope to build the same level of trust with you. If you’ve ever hesitated to donate to Acts for Water, I want to invite you to email me (jeff@acts.ca) directly.

Because without your trust, the water stays dirty.

– Jeff Golby, CEO at Acts for Water

*PS – If you want 100% of your gift to go to programs – just ask, we don’t mind at all.

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