{"id":248548,"date":"2026-08-26T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/?p=248548"},"modified":"2026-08-26T12:07:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T16:07:13","slug":"mostly-i-listen-twenty-years-in-non-profit-fundraising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/community\/2026\/08\/26\/mostly-i-listen-twenty-years-in-non-profit-fundraising\/","title":{"rendered":"Mostly, I Listen: Twenty Years in Non-Profit Fundraising"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is an installment in the \u2018Still Reading the Handbook\u2019 blog series featuring new members of our team<\/em>.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

“Welcome to the team!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I must have heard it a dozen times my first weeks at The Water Project. From colleagues. From the teams on the ground in Kenya and Uganda and Sierra Leone. Even from our supporters. Always that same phrase. Welcome to the team!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Thank you,” I would reply. A little humbled. A little dumbfounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn’t a coincidence, I don’t think, that I heard that same phrase over and over. It’s culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I’d been welcomed before. Twenty years in this work and three other organizations: a university, a faith-based non-profit, a global relief organization. I knew what it usually meant. An org chart, a strategic plan, spreadsheets and goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I Don’t Build<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re curious where I sit on TWP’s org chart, my title is Senior Major Gifts Officer. In reality, my job is to help people fund water that lasts. But mostly I listen. Someone tells me what they care about, and I go looking for a place they will never see but where they can help the water flow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The happiness clean, safe and reliable water brings!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What I don’t do is build any of it. Not a sand dam, not a borehole, not so much as a hand pump. The water this organization can point to was surveyed, drilled, hauled, and maintained by someone else. Mostly by people who live where it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So when someone on the Kenya team said welcome to the team, my honest first reaction was to feel like a guest, someone who showed up after the hard part and got handed a nametag. I carried that feeling through my first weeks here. Nobody else seemed to share it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 5 A.M. Call<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took me three weeks to learn what the phrase actually means at The Water Project. I’m not sure I ever knew what it meant anywhere else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lesson came over a video call I woke up at five in the morning to join, a mid-afternoon call for the people on the other side of the world. The Sierra Leone team was teaching the rest of the network how they drill, and one of their engineers mentioned a site where they’d put four holes in the ground before the fifth found water. Robert, who runs operations there, didn’t smooth it over. Not every well is successful, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Emma, on our side, asked what a failed drill costs. Robert took the question straight. The survey work, already spent. Bentonite, shipped in from India. Fuel. Casing they can usually pull back out of the ground, and sometimes can’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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All the hard work for this moment<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A failure, an honest price tag, and nobody flinching. Nobody was performing for the new guy, either. That was just how they talk to each other, and I happened to be on the call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stopped feeling like a guest that morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who Was Already on the Team<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had it backwards. I assumed “Welcome to the team” was aimed at me because I was the one arriving. But our supporters said it too. People who have been giving to this work for years, since before I’d heard of the organization. They weren’t welcoming me into something they were standing outside of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither are the people the water is for. Tabitha, a farmer and mother in Kitui County, Kenya, carries her family’s water by hand. “With water,” she says, “we can plan for the future and live with dignity.” And her community isn’t waiting for that water. They’re building it, and they’ll run the committee that keeps it flowing. The hardest-working members of this team live where the water is. The rest of us are helping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’ve funded a well, or a sand dam, or the repair of one that broke, you didn’t join anything by reading this. You were on the team before I got here, right alongside Tabitha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you for welcoming me to the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Written by: Gabe Brannan<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senior Major Gifts Officer<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Water Project<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another installment in the ‘Still Reading the Handbook<\/em>‘ blog series will be available next week!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read our “Stories of Impact” here: https:\/\/thewaterproject.org\/stories\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The previous installment in the ‘Still Reading the Handbook<\/em>‘ series:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My Experience Joining the Non-Profit World<\/a><\/blockquote>