Some problems have answers. Most just lack execution.

The case

Clean water is the highest-impact intervention in global health. The data is unambiguous: every dollar invested in safe water yields four dollars of economic and health return. Yet 771 million people still don’t have reliable access. Most well-drilling programmes have a one-decade failure rate above 60% — the well is built, the funder leaves, and within ten years the pump breaks and the village is back where it started.

Non-profit & Charity demo exists because that doesn’t have to be the outcome. The engineering is solved. The hard part is committing to maintain what you build.

What we do differently

Every well we drill is a 10-year contract. We train a local maintenance cooperative before the well is finished. We pay them annually. We send a senior engineer back every quarter for the first three years and twice yearly after that. We test water quality monthly and publish the results.

We don’t install in a village until we’ve been working with the community elders for at least nine months. The community contributes labour and locally-sourced materials. The well is theirs. We’re long-term partners, not contractors.

What we believe

• Lasting change requires lasting commitment. Most nonprofits fail because they leave too early.
• Beneficiaries are partners, not recipients. Every programme is co-designed with the communities it serves.
• Transparency is non-negotiable. We publish where every dollar goes — full audit, line-item, no PR spin.
• Boring is a feature. We don’t chase headlines or pivot to whatever’s trending. We do one or two things, well, for decades.

Founders’ note

Non-profit & Charity demo was founded in 2011 by Dr. Amal Reyes (formerly with Médecins Sans Frontières) and David Owusu (formerly with the Hilton Foundation). They started with one well in Northern Ghana — their own funds, their own labour. Fourteen years later, the work has grown but the principle hasn’t: do the work yourself, see the people you’re serving, stay long-term.