The statistics are sobering. More than 780 million people around the world lack access to clean water and 2.5 billion live without adequate sanitation, according to the United Nations. More than 3.4 million die each year from water-related diseases—and the global water crisis is only worsening.

Population growth and migration to urban areas in Africa, Asia and Latin America are further straining water resources, prompting bleak forecasts on water availability in the developing world over the next several decades. The annual U.N.-sponsored World Water Day on Friday, March 22, is designed to focus attention on the importance of fresh water and sustainable management of water resources.

Two non-profit organizations running NetSuite to manage their operations are making a difference in alleviating the water crisis. Both are grantees of the NetSuite.org (opens in new tab) donation program for charities and social enterprises. Healing Waters International and Water For People have been better able to focus on their core missions since moving from disparate on-premise applications to the NetSuite cloud.

Healing Waters International

Healing Waters International (opens in new tab), based in Golden, Colo., supplies water treatment and filtration systems in communities in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Guatemala and Mexico, with expansion planned in the African nations of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Swaziland. Working with local leaders and faith-based organizations, Healing Waters also provides health and hygiene training and instruction on treatment system usage and maintenance to the communities.

“One of the key aspects of our model is we want to empower the community to take ownership of the treatment system,” said John Correa, Healing Waters CFO.

Upgrading from QuickBooks in 2007, Healing Waters has improved its efficiency, productivity and focus on its mission by using NetSuite for financials and reporting, inventory management, time and expense reporting, and payroll. The NetSuite OneWorld global solution enables management of field operations with multi-currency conversions.

“NetSuite has been able to accommodate everything we need on a global basis,” Correa said. “I can report with a high degree of confidence on each project as to how funds are used. The flexibility that NetSuite gives us as a cloud-based system has been incredible.”

Water For People

Water For People (opens in new tab), based in Denver, Colo., helps improve quality of life by supporting the development of locally sustainable drinking water resources, sanitation facilities and hygiene education programs in entire districts that hold many communities in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, and India.

“Our goal is clean water for everyone, forever by bringing people together in a collaborative and sustainable structure,” said Crystal Huish, Water For People Controller.

Running NetSuite since 2008, Water For People uses NetSuite to manage donors and donations, tying its financials to individual projects with drill-through to transactional details. The organization uses NetSuite OneWorld’s multi-currency and multi-lingual capabilities to manage its global offices on three continents.

“The ability to have all of our country offices on the single NetSuite system and do global financial consolidations has been extremely valuable,” Huish said. “We have great visibility and reporting with NetSuite to see more clearly how funds are coming in and how they’re spent.”

Water For People is among 22 organizations taking advantage of the new NetSuite.org
SuiteVolunteers pro bono program
, through which NetSuite employees volunteer their time and skill to assist grantees. The SuiteVolunteers are helping Water For People manage their international transactions and get a deeper understanding of the way the platform can work with their multi-currency operations.

World Water Day may be observed just once a year, but for NetSuite.org grantees Healing Waters, Water for People, Charity:Water, The Adventure Project and millions of people around the world, every day is water day. We at NetSuite applaud the efforts of these two organizations, and are gratified that our technology helps them to better channel their resources into bringing safe, clean water to communities in need.

We encourage you to visit their websites and learn more about the amazing work they are doing to help bring clean water to everyone, everywhere.

To learn more about NetSuite.org, please visit www.netsuite.org (opens in new tab) or find us at @NetSuiteOrg.