charity:water - could they not do more?

I've been doing more and more thinking recently about the water crisis that affects many parts of the world, and the charities that are there to assist. charity:water is one of those charities (I discussed it earlier a few posts back). Although charity:water is providing thousands of people worldwide with access to clean water they did not have before, I feel like there is so much more that could be done.

If people were only aware of this crisis that is happening in other parts of the world, I feel like so many more people would reach out to help by donating their time and/or money. When I say this I mean that I believe the main problem is the lack of awareness people have of the situation.

I think charity:water could do so much more if they put more emphasis on informing the masses of this epidemic. Also, it seems to me that there are so many obvious, simple routes of doing this that charity:water has yet to explore. Sure, widespread advertising campaigns would cost money, but also they would bring in revenue to make up for it, and certainly in the long term they would have more resources to use to help people. The charity does campaign and advertise, but from what I've gathered those campaigns are poorly marketed and usually relatively small and/or only realistic for certain people to participate in (due to the location of the campaign, which many times is a dinner or special fundraising event).

One obvious route the charity could take is to hook up with a news texting service such as ESPN or the New York Times. When one subscribes (free of charge minus standard texting rates) to these services, they will receive personalized text updates. These texts include sports scoring updates and breaking news.

When the disaster in Haiti occurred, for around a month every time I received an ESPN text update at the bottom it would say "text the word HAITI to ##### to donate X amount of dollars." I feel like if charity:water took advantage of something this simple, they would be able to accomplish so much more.

Before this English class I had never even realized that there was a severe water crisis in undeveloped nations throughout the globe, and I certainly hadn't heard of charity:water. They could do things as simple as commercials or ads in newspapers and magazines. They could put up billboards or recruit people to hang informational pamphlets in different places. The internet is also a huge avenue for advertising, and I haven't seen a single ad for charity water, anywhere on the internet, ever. Better yet, I haven't seen an advertisement for charity:water in my life anywhere, ever.

I guess this post was more of a rant, and I'm not saying at all the charity:water is doing a "bad" job. It just doesn't make since to me why they aren't taking advantage of such obvious ways to spread awareness, and in turn receive more donations that would help them better accomplish their mission...