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23
Nina was stillin turmoil when she followed Jason down the hall to the WFAI conference room three days later. Her nervousness wasn’t all about the project Jason had said he wanted to discuss with her in more detail. It was a moment of truth: she’d been able to avoid making a decision about South Africa because she’d been waiting to weigh the trip with Liam against the WFAI project. After today, she would have all the information she needed — or all the information available to her — to make a decision, one way or theother.
Robin was waiting for them in the conference room, a stack of coffee-table books stacked on thetable.
“Hey, you!” Robin stood to embrace Nina. “So glad you’rehere.”
“Me too,” Ninasaid.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Jason said, taking the chair at the head of thetable.
She sat to his left, across from Robin. Now that she was closer to the books, she could see that they were photography books spanning a variety ofsubjects.
“Thanks for coming in, Nina,” Jason said. “We’re really excited about this new project, and we’re hoping you’ll be excitedtoo.”
“I’m already excited,” Ninasaid.
He smiled. “You saw the short film at the fundraiser,right?”
“Idid.”
“What did you think?” heasked.
“It was powerful,” she said. “A really innovative tool for making your mission personal, which I would imagine is hard to do in a city with some of the richest people in the world, none of whom have to worry about cleanwater.”
“Boy, is it,” Robinsaid.
“That’s always been the challenge,” Jason said. “The countries with the most severe hygiene problems and water deficiencies are so far removed from American life that many of our donors don’t feel any sense of urgency in supporting ourmission.”
“I take it that’s why you worked crises like the one in Flint into the film?” Ninaasked.
“That’s exactly why. We certainly don’t have the kinds of widespread problems with access to clean water here in the States as in countries like Africa or India, but there are places like Flint with clean water crises, and entire stretches of off-the-beaten-track land where it’s not at all uncommon not to have runningwater.”
“Like Appalachia,” Robin volunteered. “We’ve increased our outreach and work there over a hundred percent in the last two years, and that will continue to increase overtime.”
“Is it hard to sell projects in other places to Americans with places like Flint and Appalachia suffering water crises of their own?” Nina asked. “Are American philanthropists hesitant to get involved in India, for example, because they’d rather have you put more of WFAI’s money into Americancommunities?”
“Not really,” Jason said. “To be honest, most of our American investors don’t care much where the moneygoes.”
“They’re in it for the tax write-off,” Robin volunteered. “And the optics of their benevolence, which is usually more about the amount of money they donate and less about where itgoes.”
“For a long time, we fought the battle on our terms,” Jason said. “Preached about our mission, threw statistics at our donors in the hopes they’d bemoved.”
“I take it they weren’t moved?” Ninaasked.
“Some of them were. I don’t want to misrepresent them. Most of them are good people who want to help, but their donations to WFAI are just one donation among many they make to offset their tax burden. They just don’t have time to dig through theparticulars.”
“Which is where this new project comes in,” Robinsaid.
Jason nodded. “The short film has been a huge success, not just at the dinner you attended, but online. It’s had millions of views on YouTube and has been passed around social media millions of times. We’re even looking to license it to some of the more popular streaming platforms. Add to that the fact that it’s featured prominently on the website on our donor page, and we’ve recouped our investment a million timesover.”
“That’s fantastic,” Ninasaid.
“We’ve learned a lot from the experience and are leveraging it in our outreach going forward, expanding our online footprint, adding more digital content. It also inspired us to think even further outside the box, which brings me to our new project.” He glanced at the stack of books. “Abook.”
“A book on WFAI’s mission?” Ninaasked.
“In short: yes,” Jason said. “But we’re hoping to make it more engaging than amanifesto.”
