water4
Our safe water businesses help rural Africans who want to have the convenience and health of safe, reliable, water by linking their needs to the incentives of the marketplace. (Unlike traditional charities).
Redemptive Opportunity
In an era of electric cars and space travel, 2/3 the world should not be drinking unsafe water. As God's people we are not being creative enough if we don't see our potential to end a water crisis with the loaves and fishes of local markets.
Business Model
Water4 starts, equips, and scales water businesses in Africa to do the work of market creation in areas usually considered too poor to change. Businesses that drill, install and then maintain water sources from customer revenue are incentivized to provide quality, sustainability and ensure solutions meet customer desires, desires that lead to greater opportunities and economic growth for families. Water4 acts to de-risk the failure of water projects for donors through accountability with businesses and de-risks the failure of the businesses by backing their ventures work of rural market innovation.
Biggest Organizational Need
We need resources to scale to prove that charity can be used to end the need for charity by making a global need an emerging market for businesses. We need capital, influence, and expertise to join us as we make the world's largest problem an opportunity for countless many.
Capital/Funding Plan
Our businesses survive on high volume, low margin water sales in rural African markets. This means we need enough revenue to capture large market segments that pay $.03 a day for their water, with 100,000 clients generating $1M a year that way. To do so, we provide access to entire counties, at a cost of $5M in infrastructure, and begin rolling profits forward for infrastructure expansion from year 7 and beyond.
Matt Hangen
As CEO, Matt Hangen's personal story highlights the power of opportunity, faith, and personal responsibility--three things he adds to the recipe alongside safe water at Water4. As a self described "redneck", well driller and philosopher/theologian, Matt brings a unique, hopeful, and pragmatic vision to solving the world's water crisis--one in which charity has an exit strategy through local businesses through the power of markets to ignite personal agency, incentivize responsibility and create economic opportunity for all involved.
Contact: matt@water4.org
Rich Klopp
Rich, Water4’s CRO, has been part of starting and managing social change organizations for the past 25 years, where he has successfully combined academic rigor with practical management for the creation of sustainable solutions to pressing challenges and opportunities found around the world today. Through his own consultancy, AVENIR Consulting, has focused on fundraising, organizational startup, turnaround, management, as well as blended value structures ranging from nonprofit earned income programing to inclusive social business strategies. Rich is a graduate of Laval University, Québec City, Canada, and holds an earned PhD in Philanthropic Studies from the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, USA.
Contact: rklopp@water4.org