Apolis Activism

Profile: Rod Arnold, Chief Operating Officer
Organization: charity: water
Location: New York, New York
Date: 23 March 2010

At Apolis, we recognize that authentic results come from daily partnerships. Each season, we feature a modern activist whose work represents our vision to empower people and communities.  This spring, we acknowledge Rod Arnold at charity: water for partnering with us to create the Restore Haiti Initiative and this is the story of how it all began.

On January 12th, in the face of Haiti’s crisis we received word from our good friend Scott Harrison, founder of the New York non–profit charity: water.  Harrison shared with us his plans for the Unshaken campaign and instantly we wanted to be involved. Since charity: water’s inception we have been advocates of their uncompromising design and commitment to providing clean drinking water to all corners of the world. Shortly after our conversation with Harrison, Apolis released a sub–division for the Haiti campaign. We titled the sub–division NAME, supporting our philosophy that every human has the right to be named and known. NAME has provided Apolis with a new opportunity of creating long term resources for non–profit organizations. The results of our first NAME project with charity: water speak for themselves, and we can think of no better way to thank charity: water for all their tireless work than to document why we consider charity: water today’s best philanthropic communicators. Beginning with their standard for marketing that goes beyond the non–profit realm and competes against mainstream for–profit players. As the main–stream world invests in marketing and long term infrastructure, charity: water has broken the mold and has begun to think outside of the mentality of “helping the most people with the least money.” Instead, charity: water chooses to impact as many people as possible while acknowledging that with responsible risk comes great reward. While critics attempt to point out flaws with this model, Apolis points to charity: water’s effectiveness in the global environment. Today charity: water is responsible for providing over one million people with clean water. They have raised more than $19 million which has funded 2,524 projects in 16 countries. While people focus on the non–profit model of yesterday we are excited to partner with an organization that understands the non–profit model of tomorrow. Begin »