Water For People Launches Re-Imagine Reporting Platform Created by EffectiveUI

DENVER, April 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Recognizing that traditional philanthropic reporting processes often miss an opportunity to show the full picture of an organization's activity, outcomes, and impact, Water For People, an international nonprofit dedicated to providing access to improved water and sanitation systems and services in developing countries, today announced the first-version launch of its Re-Imagine Reporting platform. Designed and developed by EffectiveUI, a leading user experience agency, the online reporting platform is a new approach to reporting that provides an interactive, visually compelling way for donors, stakeholders and the public to understand the organization's progress and outcomes while also allowing for analysis and review of initiatives for programmatic improvements.

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Water For People is dedicated to creating a long-term impact through its "Everyone Forever" development approach, which ensures that every household, school and clinic attains full water and sanitation coverage for everyone with solutions that last forever. While most nonprofits also aim for ongoing, longstanding achievements, the sector still widely relies upon a traditional financial reporting process in order to provide accountability and justify continued funding. These reports—generally long, written documents—focus on inputs and outputs, offering little insight into an organization's holistic process, progress and actual long-term impact. In addition, traditional reports often provide minimal opportunity for organizations to create engagement with stakeholders and their contribution to the results.

The Re-Imagine Reporting platform is an interactive window into Water For People's progress over time, showing the organization's successes and challenges, while giving stakeholders a comprehensive understanding of the effectiveness of Everyone Forever versus a spreadsheet with line items and figures. Re-imagine Reporting:

• Visualizes financial data, partnership assessments and yearly country program analyses in a way that makes the information meaningful and easy to understand
• Displays the totality of ongoing work, allowing stakeholders to see the overall impact as well as the ability to drill down into regions, countries, and districts
• Allows donors and the broader development community to see the breadth of outcomes and impact
• Provides a place for local/regional staff and partners to reflect on organizational data and insight, and make informed decisions to adjust on-the-ground operations as needed

"We sat back and thought, nobody likes reporting—not us, not donors—because people are overloaded with data. Reports don't tell the full story of what we're doing and what we are able to accomplish," said Ned Breslin, CEO, Water For People. "It's time for nonprofit organizations to change the way they think about reporting and sharing their outcomes. Our hope is that the Re-Imagine Reporting platform is a catalyst for other organizations to do the same."

From a design standpoint, EffectiveUI created the platform to be easily managed and understood by staff and partners in 10 countries while also telling the story of the organization's work and progress. The platform design delivers the familiar visual elements of an online report, addressing the need for donors to see their financial impact to the organization, but also supplements the data with videos, photos, social media and stories to create a connection with the results their contributions are helping to achieve.

"Water For People has taken the right approach to creating this platform. They are combining the power of technology with human needs, creating an engaging, emotive experience," said Rebecca Flavin, CEO, EffectiveUI. "There is a real opportunity for nonprofit organizations, as well as private sector enterprises, to look at the way they convey information to their stakeholders using technology in a meaningful way."

EffectiveUI selected Liferay, a Java-based open source portal solution, as the backbone of the Re-Imagine Reporting platform. "When we evaluated technology platforms, Liferay was a natural fit; the company espouses a strong desire to impact the world community, and the Liferay Portal boasts a rich open source heritage along with great functionality," said Ken Guiberson, CTO, EffectiveUI. "The portal provides a real-time content management system (CMS) editing capabilities, as well as the ability to upload financial and program data and build custom application elements."

In order to create the most immersive experience across multiple devices for stakeholders and field staff, the Re-Imagine Reporting platform also incorporates HTML5, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript. Charts and graphs were rendered in Highcharts, a rich JavaScript charting library.

The platform continues to undergo enhancements as more data continues to be added from all of the geographic regions where Water For People works. Future versions of Re-Imagine Reporting will provide the ability for donors to receive specific reports, as well as additional customization features.

About Water For People
Water For People is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to providing access to improved water and sanitation systems and services in developing countries. By working with local governments, the private sector, and partners, Water For People ensures that Everyone in a specific region has these basic needs met Forever. This innovative approach reaches every family, every school, and every clinic, catalyzing transformative change for better health and economic development to occur. Learn more at www.waterforpeople.org. Join us on Facebook and @waterforpeople.

About EffectiveUI
Founded in 2005, EffectiveUI is a full-service user experience agency that simplifies complex experiences, bringing value to people's lives. By researching and articulating user needs, our team of customer insight, design and technology services experts create digital products and solutions that improve interactions and enhance emotional engagement with a company and brand. EffectiveUI works with some of today's top companies—including American Greetings, Boeing, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, CenturyLink, eBay, Kaspersky Lab, National Geographic, NextGear Capital and Water For People—to provide a strategic vision and to increase revenue, brand awareness, customer loyalty and usability. EffectiveUI is a WPP company (NASDAQ: WPPGY). WPP is the world's largest communications services group.

To learn more about EffectiveUI, visit www.effectiveui.com, send an email to [email protected] or call 888-310-5327.

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SOURCE Effective UI