On this episode of the Charity Charge Show, host Stephen Garten sits down with Dave LeVan, CEO of Water for Good, to talk about how a faith-based water nonprofit doubled its reach without doubling its budget. The conversation covers mergers, decentralization, technology, fundraising, and a mindset shift that most nonprofit leaders never make. Charity Charge builds financial tools for the 501(c)(3) organizations doing exactly this kind of work, which is why these operator-to-operator conversations sit at the center of the show.
Quick Summary
- Water for Good delivers water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programs in some of the hardest-to-reach communities in sub-Saharan Africa and Cambodia.
- Its three-year "Healthy Village" model has kept 92% of water points flowing and cut childhood diarrhea by 90% over the past decade, per LeVan.
- The organization moved roughly 90% of its 280 staff in-country and gave frontline teams live data, which flattened the hierarchy and reduced burnout.
- Water for Good was formed by merging two healthy nonprofits, a rare move that let each contribute its strengths instead of hiring to fill gaps.
- LeVan's north star: solve the problem and put the organization out of business, not protect it.
Who is Dave LeVan?
Dave LeVan is the CEO of Water for Good, a faith-based nonprofit that transforms lives through access to safe water, improved sanitation, and hygiene. The organization works in difficult places, including the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Cambodia. LeVan spent most of his career in the for-profit world, including a transformation role at Walmart, before joining the organization first as a donor, then a board member, then chief executive.
How big is the global water access problem?
Roughly 697 million people worldwide lack basic access to safe water, meaning they cannot collect it and get home within 30 minutes, the World Health Organization's threshold for basic access. LeVan's figure aligns with the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme's 2025 estimates, which show more than two billion people without safely managed drinking water and hundreds of millions still relying on unsafe or unimproved sources.
Beyond the raw count, LeVan describes a second, hidden cost: women and children spend an estimated 100 million hours a day walking for water. The problem is twofold, he explains: the time it consumes and the fact that the source at the end of the walk is usually unsafe.
