Taking Stock of Jack Dorsey’s Support for Water Equity in Africa

Parsing the intentions of major donors is keeping nonprofits busy these days, even when broader objectives are well-known. That’s true with MacKenzie Scott’s giving, and is certainly the case with Jack Dorsey.

What, then, can be made of Dorsey’s recent $4.7 million donation to Water.org? The gift is tagged as COVID-19 relief, and alleviates an acute public health need. The support will help Africans living in poverty access small, affordable loans to solve home water and sanitation challenges at a time when tapping public sources has turned dangerous. But on a macro level, does it also signal an interest in the women and girls who bear the brunt of water inequity? Or an interest in water issues? In the continent as a whole? Or all of the above?

Starting small

The co-founder of Twitter and Square, Dorsey stepped up during the pandemic, creating a public fund for global COVID-19 relief. Last April, he moved Square equity valued at $1 billion–roughly a third of his wealth at the time–into a limited liability company called Start Small. Nearly a year later, Start Small’s value has mushroomed above $3 billion, even as Dorsey quickly got $355 million out the door.

Organized as an LLC, a tool more often used by corporations, Start Small has made an effort to address the usual issues of disclosure that come with LLC giving, and appears to fund in a completely transparent way. A spreadsheet tracking all activity is just a click away. The only trick for fundraisers is finding a fit and catching Dorsey’s eye.

Dorsey’s overall intentions have been clear from the get-go. First, Start Small will work to “disarm” the pandemic. After that, the focus will shift to girls’ health and education, as well as universal basic income (UBI). In an April tweet, Dorsey said he sees both areas as “the best long-term solutions to the existential problems facing the world.” UBI is a “great idea” that needs “experimentation,” he wrote, while girls’ equity will provide a necessary balance to advance human rights.

Supporting Water.org

Water.org is a global nonprofit that brings financial solutions to the delivery of safe, accessible and cost-effective water and sanitation. Co-founded in 2009 when the actor Matt Damon met the water pioneer Gary White at an international summit on poverty, the organization reported 2019 revenues of roughly $24 million.

Dorsey’s $4.7 million investment is among the largest he’s made to date. And Start Small likely didn't have to do much due diligence before writing the check. Water.org consistently earns high marks for accountability and transparency, and has already impacted a reported 33 million lives.

Dorsey’s support will help Africans living in poverty access microloans that can be used to address water and sanitation needs in their own homes. Francis Musinguzi, Water.org’s regional director in Africa, described domestic needs before COVID as appalling and widespread. Now, the problem has tripled. Sixty percent of Africans lack safe water to meet in-home basics like cooking and sanitation.

The problem has also exacerbated the spread of a deadly virus, knocking against the basic tenets of combating COVID-19—handwashing isn’t possible without running water. But walking to public standposts increases exposure, and congregating around public water sources is at odds with social distancing. All the while, proper sanitation and hygiene are critical to good health under stay-at-home orders, which Musinguzi said are still in effect in some places.

A women’s crisis

To be clear, the water crisis is a women’s crisis. Dorsey’s gift draws a straight line between his short-term goal of pandemic relief and stated long-term priority of supporting women and girls.

Daily, women and girls devote a collective 200 million hours to the task of collecting water for their homes, time they’re not spending at school or work. Water.org says children miss an estimated 443 million days of school per year, either collecting water or suffering the ill effects of unsafe sources. The majority of them are girls.

A full 87% of Water.org borrowers are expected to be women. Microcredit is lauded for empowering low-income women to make their own financial decisions, gain an understanding of financial systems and overcome cultural resistance to seeking credit. Each borrower has the agency to determine the best solutions for their home—including installing rainwater harvesting tanks and connecting to city systems—and to determine the terms of repayment.

Lending partners large and small need not worry about the safety of their bets. Like microlending to women in general, Water.org reports very high repayment rates—a full 99% globally—on an average loan size of $366. Repaid funds then become available to the next women in line.

Work in Africa

Africa has drawn the support of a number of major philanthropies for years, work that has accelerated during a pandemic that could cause 1 billion COVID cases and 2.5 million deaths worldwide. Water.org’s work alone has attracted funding from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Giorgio Armani and the British consumer goods multinational Reckitt Benckiser.

In addition to his contribution to Water.org, Dorsey’s other COVID relief work on the continent has also tended toward support for women and girls. For instance, Start Small made a $2.48 million investment in the Lebawi International Academy in Ethiopia to see it through the school year, and a $725,000 commitment to Kakenya’s Dream in Kenya to support change initiatives for women and girls. In April of 2020, it also made a $333,000 gift to Medecins Sans Frontieres for work in countries including South Sudan, Mali, Ivory Coast, Senegal and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Additional support spanning the categories of COVID relief and girls’ health and education includes Start Small’s largest gift in Africa, a $5 million commitment to CARE to support safe learning for 300,000 students in East Africa, and financial recovery for their families. Dorsey also made a $1 million commitment to IDEO.org’s Billion Girls CoLab, to support adolescent girls’ health.

In March of 2021, Smart Small also made a cluster of significant commitments to girls’ education in Africa that may evolve over time. They include a $750,000 contribution to Asante Africa Foundation to educate and empower 20,000 girls, and additional gifts of $750,000 apiece to the WISER Girls Secondary School in Kenya; the Women’s Global Education Project (WGEP) in rural Senegal and Kenya; and AGE Africa, which gives an educational leg up to adolescent girls in rural Malawi.

Good news for water equity organizations

Besides the support for water.org, nonprofits working on water issues in the U.S. and abroad should be encouraged by accumulating evidence that Dorsey considers water equity an integral part of community-building.

In May 2020, Dorsey invested $1 million in DigDeep’s Navajo Water Project, which connects indigenous homes to running water, building resiliency for the Navajo Nation during the pandemic. And in July 2020, Start Small made a $1 million investment in 501CTHREE to advance a mission of promoting water, energy, food and shelter solutions that sit at the intersection of environmental and racial justice in Detroit.

Organizations working in Africa, with women and girls, or to advance water safety are well-advised to consider Dorsey as a funding prospect—and begin tweeting their $cashtags to @Jack.

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