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Clean or dirty - water is good for Unicef USA

Clean or dirty - water is good for Unicef USA
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Clean or dirty - water is good for Unicef USA

Fundraising | Celina Ribeiro | 29 Jul 2009

I love the Tap Project. Let me just put that out there. This is not a cool, removed journalistic analysis of a fundraising campaign. Not at all. I am enthusiastically biased. 

The Tap Project makes me want to pay for water in a restaurant. It’s that good.

It works like this: two years ago, Unicef USA got a few major restaurants in New York on board to ask customers to pay $1 for water which they normally receive for free. That money is directed to Unicef’s water projects. Since then it has spread to hundreds of US cities involving thousands of restaurants.


It is overwhelming in its simplicity. Its power is in getting people to donate meaningfully but flippantly. Philanthropy has become part of the dining experience at these thousands of restaurants as much as tipping.

And it got better.

Last month the charity then plonked a vending machine in the centre of New York, charging $1 for bottled dirty water. What had been a rather sterile, pretty campaign remained pretty but suddenly became much more tactile. Challenging people in New York to drink what others around the world are forced to drink everyday, briefly and cleverly connected those two worlds. And in that connection, Unicef also gave the New Yorkers easy and fun ways of donating. 


It’s just good.

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Celina Ribeiro

Celina Ribeiro is the editor of Fundraising magazine and daily contributor to CivilSociety.co.uk.

Follow Celina @Celina_Ribeiro_

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