20 Liters
Top Clean Water Nonprofit
Impact: $4 provides clean water to a person for a year. Read More
Clean Water Initiative meets the benchmark for high cost-effectiveness. The nonprofit's cost to provide clean water is less than 75% of the local costs.
Note: The impact of this program may not be representative of the entire operation of 20 Liters.
Governance: Passes checks
Mission
The purpose of 20 Liters is to create awareness, activists and funding to provide clean water through simple cost effective solutions, especially for those living in poverty.
Donations processed by the nonprofit.
Rated Program
Program
Clean Water Initiative
Activities
20 Liters distributes water purification systems to beneficiaries.
Program Type
Water Purification
Beneficiaries Served
People living in poverty
Geography
Rwanda
Outcomes: Changes in people's lives. They can be caused by a nonprofit.
Costs: The money spent by nonprofits and their partners and beneficiaries.
Impact: The cost to achieve an outcome.
Cost-effectiveness: A judgment as to whether the cost was "worth" the outcome.
Outcomes
Outcome Metric
A year of clean water provided to a person.
To calculate impact, we estimate how many outcomes the nonprofit caused.
Data Source
Output data collected during the program. 20 Liters publicly reports data on how many purifiers it distributes and how many people a purifier serves, which we use to calculate how many person-years of clean water a nonprofit provides.
Time Period of Data
July 1, 2016, to June 30, 2017
Ratings are based on data the nonprofit itself collects on its work. We use the most recent year with sufficient data. Typically, this data allows us to calculate direct changes in participants' lives, such as increased income.
Method for Attributing Outcomes
We estimate the number of person-years of clean water the nonprofit provides by comparing the person-years actually achieved to the person-years that would have been achieved even in the absence of the nonprofit (the “counterfactual”). Some beneficiaries might have accessed clean water from other providers or on their own; these counterfactual successes must be netted out of the successes we observe. Otherwise, we would be attributing a change in a person’s life (gaining clean water) to the nonprofit when it would have happened anyway. Few nonprofits estimate the counterfactual themselves, so we construct our own counterfactual estimate based on research and publicly available data. We research the average rate with which clean water access is increasing year over year in that location, and assume that, if the nonprofit had not intervened, that trend would have continued.
We don't know if the observed changes were caused by the nonprofit's program or something else happening at the same time (e.g. a participant got a raise). To determine causation, we take the outcomes we observe and subtract an estimate of the outcomes that would have happened even without the program (i.e. counterfactual outcomes).
Cost
Data Source
Cost data reported by 20 Liters and data and assumptions about partner and beneficiary costs.
Cost Calculation
$350,029 program costs + $0 partner costs + $0 beneficiary costs = $350,029 total costs
After estimating the program's outcomes, we need to determine how much it cost to achieve those outcomes. All monetary costs are counted, whether they are borne by a nonprofit service deliverer or by the nonprofit’s public and private partners. In-kind donations, of labor or supplies, are not counted.
Impact
Impact Calculation
$350,029 total costs / 109,025 person-years of clean water = roughly $4 provides clean water to a person for a year.
Numbers may not divide precisely due to rounding and time discounting.
We calculate impact, defined as the change in outcomes attributable to a program divided by the cost to achieve those outcomes.
Rating
Benchmark for Rating
Impact ratings of water purification programs are based on the cost to provide clean water relative to the market cost that a person incurs to buy water in that country. Programs receive 5 stars if they provide water for less than 75% of the estimated market costs, and 4 stars if they do so for less than 125%. If a nonprofit reports impact but doesn't meet the benchmark for cost-effectiveness, it earns 3 stars.
Determination
The nonprofit's cost to provide clean water is less than 75% of the local costs.
Why We Could Be Wrong
We welcome your suggestions for improving our methodology. Our methodology section includes explanations of how we mitigate these issues.
- The outcome could oversimplify total impact. Using “person-years of clean water” as the metric of analysis does not capture differences in the water quantity, reliability and ease of access.
- There could be multiple important outcomes not captured in our analysis.
- 20 Liters may be spending additional money in order to serve harder-to-reach and/or particularly valuable populations.
- In the absence of better data, we assume uniform counterfactual rates for programs, at the risk of masking variation across nonprofits.
- Our estimates rely on data made public by 20 Liters on its website, annual reports, financial statements and Form 990s.
- We only analyze programs that meet our criteria. As a result, this report may not fully reflect the impact of 20 Liters.
- We do not assess what explains the nonprofit's cost-effectiveness.
We assign a rating to the nonprofit using the rubric:
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There are indications of governance or financial health issues at the nonprofit.
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After being given an opportunity, the nonprofit chose not to publish impact information.
We are not yet issuing this level of star rating.
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The rated program does not meet our benchmark for cost-effectiveness.
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The rated program is cost-effective.
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The rated program is highly cost-effective.
Nonprofit Comment
Not provided. This may be because we lacked contact information for 20 Liters or it chose not to comment. If you are a representative of this nonprofit, contact us to review and comment on your rating.
Before publishing, we ask every nonprofit we can to review our work, offer corrections and provide a comment.
Analysis Details
Analysis conducted by ImpactMatters and published on November 22, 2019.
An ImpactMatters analyst searched the Form 990s, annual reports, audited financials and the website of 20 Liters to calculate impact and rate cost-effectiveness. A second analyst conducted quality control.
We welcome corrections. If you are interested in exploring applications of ImpactMatters data, contact us at partnerships@impactmatters.org.
Governance Check
20 Liters passes our governance check.
Overhead spending is reasonable (<35% of total spending)
Charity Navigator has not issued a fraud or mismanagement advisory
20 Liters itself has not reported any material diversions of assets
20 Liters itself has not reported any excess benefit transactions
Source: 20 Liters Form 990 and Charity Navigator
How We Calculate Impact
This rating is based on ImpactMatters analysis of the impact of Clean Water Initiative relative to costs. Impact is the change in the social outcomes of people served by the program, net of the change that would have happened even without the program (the “counterfactual”); divided by cost. Learn more.
Rating is a complex exercise and we urge you to read our frequently asked questions for details of how and why we issue these ratings.
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ImpactMatters does not take money from nonprofits for ratings or recommendations.
20 Liters
