Celebrates $1 Million mark

Blue Foundation Run Celebrates $1 Million in funded projects

When the dust cleared at the end of the 2006, the Blue Planet Run Foundation had funded over $1 Million in water projects around the globe. This was a great achievement for the Foundation, but we are only getting started.

We are optimistic that by the end of next year, with the completion of the first-ever Blue Planet Run 2007 proudly sponsored by Dow, we will have 1 million people donating $25 or more toward water projects. If you do the math, it means over $25 million in funding for next year. While this will help give our partners the confidence to leave the fundraising to us, it only solves half the problem. The other is how to spend these funds effectively and efficiently. To do that, one needs to consider: How do you grow from funding successful projects in 10 villages to 10,000 villages? How do you scale up to spend $25 million when you've been spending a fraction of that?

Our answer: the Peer Water Exchange (PWX).

For those unfamiliar with PWX, it stands for Peer Water Exchange and is one of our efforts of which we are most proud. Rajesh Shah, who oversees our water projects, is currently in India meeting with partners and building the PWX.

In order to solve the global problem of lack of access to safe drinking water, we, as a global community of problem solvers, need to come up with a better way to fund, select and monitor projects. One major improvement would be for our implementing partners, the implementers, to greatly reduce their resources and energy spent on fundraising and focus on what they do best, implementing sustainable water projects.

PWX is a web-based program that we developed, in partnership with Sapient (who developed the first release pro-bono) to utilize the expertise and experience of those implementing water projects. Until now, Rajesh selected and monitored all BPRF's water projects. In spending $25 million we would need a building full of Rajeshes. Does the world need another bureaucracy?

So this year, we asked our partners to use the internet and through PWX help Rajesh by reviewing each others applications. Given the deep experience in our partners, Rajesh's got a large number of field experts to help him do the work and allow BPR to focus on what it does best - organize an event and raise money.

As a member of PWX, in addition to receiving funding for their own water projects, an implementer would review grant proposals, monitor projects and nominate other implementers for funding. That may sound like a lot of work, but it is not nearly as much work as raising money and its much closer to their current skills in implementing water projects. And most of it is done via the internet.

The other advantage of PWX is that it fosters communication and cooperation amongst implementers, who can learn from each other. As an example, rainwater harvesting is a widely utilized method in India, but less well-known in Latin America. Further, because implementers aren't competing with each other for funding, they can share knowledge of success, as well as failure so that we can all work in a concerted fashion, duplicating what works while avoiding making the same mistakes twice.

Finally, PWX increases transparency as you can go to the website and see all the partners, applications, and projects - all on a map of the world. The software and the process is still in beta stage, however, the results surprised even us.

When a donor gives to BPRF, we want them to feel not only that their money is well spent but that they've invested in a more efficient model for giving: 100% directly towards water projects; implementers empowered; communication and cooperation fostered; issues of scale addressed.

We recognize that the better job we do at spending the money, the easier it will be to raise the money. Thanks to PWX and our partners, we are on the way to creating an exemplary track record thus far with 500,000 dollars in water projects that we funded this year.