It’s been almost two years since my family and I left Haiti under extremely unpleasant circumstances. Our intention was always to work our full careers in Haiti, continuing and building the biosand filter project. As Haiti continued to get worse and our family became more and more isolated, the thing that really kept us going was the loyalty we felt toward our workers. Why should we leave Haiti when our staff can’t? Also, even if things continue to get more dangerous, then our staff would, at the very least, be watching out for us. We had always been the people who stayed, especially when things got hard, and couldn’t imagine that changing.

In October 2022 we uncovered a fraudulent scheme that a group of our workers were using to steal funds from Clean Water for Haiti. It was very discouraging for me, even heartbreaking. Any worker who wasn’t participating in the scheme pretty much had to know about it, and chose to look the other way. The nicest thing I can say about this is that Haiti is a poor country, and poverty will often cause people to worry about themselves to the exclusion of everything else, and the difference between right and wrong can become very blurred.

When I realized we couldn’t count on our staff in the way we thought we could, I felt that Haiti had become too dangerous to continue to risk my family, and Leslie and I made the incredibly difficult decision to leave. Was there any way to save Clean Water for Haiti? If there was any way to save the organization with us leaving, I wanted us to figure out how. I had only one idea, and that was to ask my good friend, Johnson Alexandre, to take my place as director.

I met Johnson Alexandre (who prefers to be called just “Alexandre”) back in 2009. We suffered a terrible arson attack and received a written death threat, and the police and judicial system in Saint Marc refused to be of any help to us. A missionary friend of ours introduced me to Alexandre. Alexandre was both a Christian and an honest, high-ranking police officer. I brought him the dossier I had assembled on the group of men who were harassing us, and explained how we had been blown off by the police investigators in Saint Marc. He said, “This is not right!” and slapped his hand on the table. I thought that just maybe he could get the justice system moving and help us to be safe again. A few weeks later he arrested one of the suspects. He spent many hours helping us to navigate the baffling and corrupt Haitian justice system as we worked through our problems. 

I learned many things from my new friend. Alexandre speaks four languages, and is very well educated. He is also very patient with foreigners who don’t understand a lot of what is actually happening. My Creole improved very much over the next months and years, just from talking to Alexandre and asking him question after question. 

Alexandre and I happened to be together driving across Port au Prince when the Jan 12, 2010 earthquake hit. It turned out that his office collapsed and many police officers died inside, so it was fortunate I came to Port au Prince that day. After the earthquake, Leslie and I needed Alexandre’s help more than ever, as we were struggling to complete the adoption of our daughter, Olivia. We spent many hours fighting through the system. It was very important to us that we not pay any bribes as we completed the adoption, and Alexandre was the only one with the connections, knowledge, skill and sheer persistence to make it happen. His desire to fight corruption where he could was something we connected over.

Over the years, Alexandre became an indispensable aid to our work in Haiti, and if I’m honest, probably one of the main reasons Clean Water for Haiti has been able to be so successful. He joined our Board of Directors for our Haiti branch of the organization, and was the person who took care of all of our really, really tough problems, especially anything that required navigating the bureaucracy. When I realized we had to leave the country, I knew that Alexandre was the ONLY person I would trust to take our place and take over my job of leading the work in Haiti. 

Alexandre retired from the police several years before, but he had always lived in Port au Prince and I had no reason to believe he would be willing to give up his life there to run Clean Water for Haiti. When I told him we were leaving, I asked him if he would consider taking over the project, even though it would mean leaving his home in Port au Prince. He stated that if we had asked six months earlier he would have refused, but now that bandits had taken over the city, he didn’t have much to stay for. To stay safe, he spent all his time at home except when he went to church on Sundays and Wednesdays.  He had come to care about CWH just like I did. I was so relieved to think that the project I had spent 20 years of my life building up and fighting for would be in good hands.

Alexandre has done an amazing job. I have to admit I’m surprised at how well he’s done because he had no experience with the day-to-day operations, but I really shouldn’t be. He’s extremely intelligent, and served as a police investigator and commander for most of his career. That is to say, he knows people. He’s also a dedicated Christian, and genuinely cares about people – especially the poor. He was exactly the person CWH needed to take charge of the workers, root out the corrupt elements and hire new staff to keep the project on track. So far, he has exceeded all expectations. 

We talk on the phone every week or two, and I’m always amazed at the vast array of problems he’s faced and dealt with. As proud as I am of the work I did in Haiti, seeing what he’s been able to do since he took over leadership, I’m sure that Clean Water for Haiti now needs Johnson Alexandre more than it needs Chris Rolling.  

Of course, Leslie is now serving in the role of Executive Director for the USA and Canadian parts of the organization and it’s a role she’s ideally suited for, but really I miss my work with Clean Water for Haiti. Fundraising is tough right now, so I’m hoping I want to help out where I can. I always enjoy the opportunity to talk about the work we did and continue to do, so if you have a group that would like to hear about our work, please contact me, even if it’s just a few people to meet with over coffee. 

After neglecting this blog for years, I finally made a few posts with the intention of making one post per month. I wrote another post for June, but it ended up being way too long. It also wandered from point to point and had a lot of numbers and metrics in it that would cause most readers to lose interest. I love numbers and metrics, but most readers don’t! I’ll try to do better this time around.

Why is cost per filter important to us? Well, we have chosen to do a single thing and do it really, really well. We build and install biosand filters, and include an education and follow up program which ensures most filters get used and taken care of for many years. Since we only do one thing, we can take our total expenses, divide that by our number of filters installed, and see exactly how efficient we are. That’s important! It means something! And it should be something our donors care about.

For over a decade now, we have advertised that for $100, we can provide a filter to a family in Haiti. In reality, that number changes every year. Clean Water for Haiti, like Haiti itself, has good years and bad years. Here is the data for the past several years:

Year Total filters Admin Costs Cost Per Filter
2018 3033 9.6% $103.80
2019 3270 7.3% $106.53
2020 1974 N/A $134.57
2021 3308 N/A $77.20
2022 2311 9.3% $78.09 *Jan-Jun 2022 only

The cost per filter is found simply by dividing our total expenses (minus program-derived revenues such as co-pays) in any given year by the total number of filters installed. It includes all expenses, not just here in Haiti, but in the USA and Canada too. Since Clean Water for Haiti only has one program, it is relatively straightforward to work out the numbers.

Why is there so much variation? There are large, one-off expenses such as the purchase of a delivery truck that can significantly add to the cost per filter for a certain year. Also, some of our supplies are purchased in quantities that will last 12 months or more. That also involves large chunks of money, spent more in some years than others. Having to rebuild an engine or a transmission in a delivery truck can cost a lot of money, too. In 2020 we had a surprising amount of vehicle related expenses, for example.

Apart from one-off expenses, the biggest single thing that affects our cost per filter seems to be how many filters we install over time. Generally speaking, the years with high production are also the years with the lowest cost per filter. The best strategy for making Clean Water for Haiti run efficiently, then, is to push production and installation of filters and make sure there are no interruptions to the machine.

Lately more than usual, I’ve been trying to anticipate anything that might slow down our work and act in advance to have a solution ready. On the weekend, two delivery trucks full of cement were stolen by bandits and the drivers kidnapped. We quickly bought cement to fill up our own depot, thinking that there might be a shortage. For good measure we bought plenty of paint, too. Last year we started stockpiling fuel in containers for the times when there are fuel shortages due to Haiti’s various problems. It was a good decision – there has been a shortage for over a month now and we still haven’t had to halt deliveries.

This year we’re on track to exceed 4000 filters installed – much higher than our previous record set in 2021. If you consider inflation, we’re on track to have our lowest cost per filter, too! I hope that in the future, we will be able to exceed 5000, or even 6000 filters in a year. If the trend continues, we would become an even more efficient organization as we continue to increase production. For that, though, donations would have to increase substantially. We need to have more money available in order to save more money! The more we spend, the more we save.

My latest blog post may be a bit boring for the most people. So why am I writing about how Clean Water for Haiti is governed? Well, there are certain donors, who tend to be larger donors or people representing foundations or corporate entities, who realize just how important it is for an organization to be governed properly. This post is for them. It was a lot of work to set up Clean Water for Haiti’s solid foundation, so this is where I’m going to celebrate that and brag about Clean Water for Haiti’s Joint Charitable Activities Committee and the good governance they’re committed to.

Clean Water for Haiti uses something called Policy Governance, sometimes known as the Carver Model. The most simplified explanation of Policy Governance is that the board supplies the “ends” not the “means”. The board states what the goals of the organization are and the Executive Director is responsible for finding the means to achieve those goals. Here is Clean Water for Haiti’s “end” goal:

“Clean Water for Haiti US [Clean Water for Haiti Foundation, CWH Foundation Canada] exists so that the people of Haiti will have access to clean water at a high level of cost effectiveness.”

The end is very specific; the means are not specific at all. This provides two things which are absolutely key for the director to have: empowerment and responsibility. The director is empowered to get safe drinking water to the Haitian people, and has the responsibility to get it done. How is this important? Maybe someone who has never worked in the director’s role might not see what a big deal this is. To illustrate, here are two examples:

I’m talking with a friend – the director of another organization in Haiti. He has a problem that I’ve seen before. I say “Why don’t you talk to _____ and arrange for _____ and _____?” The response is “Yeah, that would make sense, but the board wants me to ______.” I have had this conversation, with different friends and different details, many times. In each case, they suffer from a lack of empowerment. The upside, if there is one, is that the director isn’t responsible for decisions since it’s actually the board coming up with plans and giving specific direction. The board is directly responsible, whether they will admit to that or not. This is a case of no responsibility on the part of the director.  

But aren’t the people ultimately in charge the ones who should be making the decisions? Yes, I suppose so. But wouldn’t it be better to delegate those decisions to someone who has the knowledge and experience required to do the job properly?

Next, a director friend has a minor breakdown at his facility and needs a new widget to fix the problem. He calls the chair of his board to ask for authorization to buy the widget. The chair asks a large number of questions, long distance, while work is stopped, then states that they will have to get approval from the board. Two days later, nearly in tears, my friend gets authorization to buy the part. He was going to need the part anyway, no matter how many committees and sub-committees were put to work on the problem. This is a case of no empowerment of the director. For a talented individual who wants to take responsibility and get to work, lack of empowerment feels bad – suffocating. In this case (again, one I’ve seen multiple times) my friend decides it’s time to get another job, one where he can actually perform his job as director. This is a case of no empowerment of the director.

I LOVE my job. With Policy Governance, I have the freedom to use all of my experience and creative energy to achieve our mission. The responsibility that comes with it is sometimes (most of the time) a source of stress, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. There is a lot more involved in job satisfaction than just the salary and benefits. I think I would find it very hard to take a different Director’s position with an organization that runs in a similar way to what I’ve described above, even if it came with a massive salary.

So if the board isn’t telling the director what to do, what is the purpose of the board? Accountability, and clearly setting the limits. In addition to the “ends” that I mention earlier, we has a number of “shall not” policies. Here are a few examples from the top of the list:

Further, without limiting the scope of the foregoing with this enumeration, he or she shall not:

4.2.1    Allow assets to fall into an unreasonable amount of disrepair.

4.2.2    Expose himself or the organization to liability claims unless it is impossible to do so.

The board builds a “fence” by setting the limits down as policies. Once the “fence” is known, the executive director has the freedom to work within those boundaries in whatever way is most effective.

So how does the board ensure responsibility? The board requires regular reports from the director. Measuring success is key to policy governance, so we came up with key metrics that the board can use to determine success (or failure). At Clean Water for Haiti, it helps that we focus strongly on just one intervention: the biosand filter. The metrics we use are (1.) How many filters we install, (2.) How many filters continue to be in use after 1 year and 5 years and (3.) How much each filter costs us to build, deliver, install, provide user education, follow up with and repair if necessary. The board will analyze the results, ask questions, and decide what action to take. If the metrics and overall health of the organization are all looking good, I might even get a raise. If results are bad, or reports are incomplete or especially if one or more policies were to be broken by the director, then the board should consider looking for a new one.

That’s all I have to say about Policy Governance. Clean Water for Haiti’s situation is a little bit more complicated than what I’ve described because most of our work is done via our “Joint Charitable Activities Committee” which is a combination of the members of three different charities, the USA, Canadian, and Haitian organizations. In all the important ways, however, things work as I have described.

We would like to recruit more people to our board, especially folks who live on the Canadian side of the border. From our perspective, the best recruits are people who support Clean Water for Haiti already and would like to be actively involved in various things that need to be done in Canada and the USA, such as raising funds. Board members are required to support Clean Water for Haiti both financially and with their time. The Joint Charitable Activities Committee meets once per month via Zoom except in December, and we meet in person each January in Florida for the annual board retreat.