Many fundraising appeals for water charities are very compelling. For example:

Almost 1 billion people don't have access to safe drinking water. Every day, nearly 6,000 people die from water-related illnesses, and the vast majority are children.3

However, after investigating this cause, we believe that building wells often fails to reduce water-related illness, and that there are better options for donors looking to change lives.

Why wells may not work

Diarrhea is caused by bacteria, which can be passed through water, but can also be transmitted through hand to hand contact, by flies, or through food.4

In the best case scenario, clean water addresses only one of the many ways diarrhea could be contracted.

But water infrastructure projects may fail even to provide clean water. Wells can break down if not maintained; a recent World Bank survey found that more than one third of rural water infrastructure in South Asia wasn't functional. (For details, see our detailed, fully sourced report on water.)

Second, even if water is clean while it's in the well, it can become contaminated before an individual eventually drinks it.

Evaluations of the success of water quality programs at reducing diarrhea deaths have confirmed the existence of these problems, presenting a history of unsuccessful projects. (For details, see our full report on water programs.)

What programs should you support?

1. If you're committed to reducing water-borne illness, you should consider programs such as point-of-use water purification (i.e., purifying water immediately before drinking it) and hygiene education. Though we have not completed formal writeups on these interventions, sources including the Copenhagen Consensus5 imply that they can be more cost-effective than focusing on water infrastructure.

2. If you just want to help people as much as possible, we recommend our top-rated charities.
3. Finally, if you're committed specifically to providing clean water, we recommend that you contact charities and ask them:
   • How far is the closest water source for the people you serve before you start digging? If it's less than half-a-mile away, it's probably not a good decision to support them. (For more on why this is the case, see our full report on water.)
   • How do you ensure that the wells you construct remain operational over the long term? How long do you do this? If they don’t have a convincing process for monitoring, or they only keep it up for a few months, you're probably better off looking elsewhere.
   • Do you address other sources of waterborne disease? Do you track the impact of your programs on disease incidence and prevalence over time and can you share technical reports on this impact?

   We considered 13 water-related charities, and we would recommend you start with:

   • Water for People, which provides some monitoring and evaluation reports that its water systems remain in use over time.
   • WaterPartners International, which publishes some monitoring and evaluation reports assessing the use of its wells over time.

Full list of water charities we considered

The table below shows the 13 water-related charities we considered for our 2008-2009 report. Most of them focus on providing infrastructure improvements, such as wells.

Note: While two organizations below provide some long-term monitoring that infrastructure they build remains in use, none of the organizations below provided monitoring and evaluation information that meets the criteria set forth in our Guide to Impact Analysis.

1. 1.

   http://www.givewell.net/international/diseases#Diarrhea

2. 2.

   See our full report on water infrastructure programs at http://www.givewell.net/international/technical/programs/water-infrastru...

3. 3.

   http://www.waterforpeople.org/site/PageServer, accessed 7/8/09.

4. 4.

   The image below comes from UNICEF's website at http://www.unicef.org/voy/explore/wes/explore_1929.html, accessed 7/16/09.

5. 5.

   See http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=1150, accessed 7/15/09