A Charity Adds Design Expertiseto Its Small Staff for Big Results

A Child’s Right, which provides clean drinking water to schools, orphanages, and hospitals in developing countries, has a compelling story but didn’t always feel the organization was telling it well enough to gain support. The group’s solution: adding a graphic designer to its small headquarters staff, a move some charities might consider a luxury.

“The message of clean water for kids is pretty easy to wrap your head around,” says Eric Stowe, the charity’s founder. “But trying to delineate all the complex pieces that go into that is really, really tough to articulate, and pictures just don’t do it justice.”

Since joining the group, Boone Sommerfeld has focused on revamping the organization’s Web site and creating infographics—documents that combine key facts, anecdotes, and imagery—to describe the group’s work simply and vividly.

Says Mr. Stowe: “It’s incredible to see how quickly he can churn things out and take a ton of information and condense it down into an absolutely palatable form.”

Keeping It Simple

The need for clearer communication was a key factor in the charity’s decision to hire a graphic designer. A Child’s Right seeks to provide donors with detailed information about its water projects, but in 2010 the group started to hear from supporters that its documents were too complex.

“For a lot of people it’s just really hard to hear that we’ve got a 0.015 micron filter and it removes anything below a 0.2 micron biological contaminant,” says Mr. Stowe. “A graphic can show those same things and impart that same message with a level of depth that still retains the technical knowledge but isn’t so wonky.”

Another reason the charity hired a designer: keeping up with the competition. The emphasis that fast-growing Charity: Water has placed on graphic design has set a high bar for water organizations, says Mr. Stowe. “All of us realized our Web sites were fairly lame in comparison,” he says with a chuckle.

Design has been an integral part of Charity: Water’s approach from the beginning, says Paull Young, its director of digital engagement. He says that when the group was getting started, its first hire was a water program officer and its second was a graphic designer.

“Amazing design really stops people and draws their attention,” says Mr. Young.

A Child’s Right was surprised that it had a deeper pool of candidates for graphic designer than it did for finance director or bookkeeper, positions the charity was filling at roughly the same time. Applications for those positions trickled in, but the group received between 15 and 20 applications in the 24 hours after it posted the position of graphic designer.

As the charity was considering the position, it was “repeatedly” advised to work with a freelance designer instead of hiring one full time. But Mr. Stowe says he feels strongly that for the designer to be effective, he needs to have an intimate knowledge of the organization’s mission.

“The conversations here are just so robust, and it’s crucial that he’s a part of it,” says Mr. Stowe. “When his hand touches pad, he already knows where we’re going, what we’re thinking, what we need.”