charity: water Reviews 12

TrustScore 3.5 out of 5

3.6

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Company details

  1. Charity

Written by the company

charity: water is a non-profit organisation helping bring clean and safe drinking water to everyone on the planet


Contact info

3.6

Average

TrustScore 3.5 out of 5

12 reviews

5-star
4-star
3-star
2-star
1-star

Hasn’t replied to negative reviews

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Rated 4 out of 5 stars

Room for small improvement

After 2 years of donating to Charity: water, they come across as a genuinely dedicated and honest organisation / group of people. I've had no problems changing the monthly donation to a lower amount. Even though I understand the strategy probably pays out (for the good cause), the number of emails has been at an "annoying level" for a while. Looking at the negative reviews this seems to be one of the biggest issues people have with C:w. Keep up the good work!

10 December 2025
Unprompted review
Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Great ethos and lovely newsletters

Love donating to this charity. I donate a small amount each month. I love reading their newsletters and seeing the impact the donations make. I like their model of donors money going to clean water and different donors money going to core spend. I work for a charity myself and its wild how so many people expect workers to work for free or earn pittance. Love charity waters ethos and enjoy reading the different updates. I dont ever feel hounded by asking for more money.

28 May 2025
Unprompted review
Rated 5 out of 5 stars

I trust this organization

I trust this organization. Besides, the work they do truly helps people survive in harsh conditions without access to clean water. And if someone needs to pause their donations, it’s easy to do through their personal account. I went through a difficult financial period myself and paused my payments during that time. Now I’ve resumed them because I really want to help others.

22 May 2025
Unprompted review
Rated 4 out of 5 stars

H2GO

charity: water has faced some past criticism, but my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. They’re incredibly transparent, providing GPS coordinates & photos besides impact reports for every completed project.

9 October 2024
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Came across this company on social media, and wanted to donate

I came across this company on social media. I have seen the commercial a couple of times, and it is pretty impressive. It was also very emotive. I had started to complete the standing order, then thought let me read the Trust Pilot reviews on the company, as I hadn’t heard of them before. There are so many charities that do not fulfil their objectives!! I was disappointed to read that other subscribers had had a poor experience with constant emails and making unauthorised requests for payments. This is not a good introduction to the company. Even one review with this issue would be a very big red flag for me. I decided not to set up any payments.

28 December 2023
Unprompted review
charity: water logo

Reply from charity: water

Hi Jacqueline, firstly, apologies for the delay in responding to you. Secondly, I am so sorry to read that you have had a bad experience when donating to charity: water. I've checked our donation system to be sure we've resolved any issues for you and refunded any donations you would like returned. However, I can't find you in our system by name alone. Would you be happy to share your email address with me, so I can look into this properly? My email is: ellie.scouller@charitywater.org - thank you. I can promise, that although you were disappointed by the donation system, 100% of every single penny given funds sustainable, long-term water projects. You can read more about our finance model and audits here: charitywater.org/uk/our-approach/100-percent-model and here: charitywater.org/about/financials . Thank you, and I hope to hear back from you to investigate the donation payments further. Best, Ellie

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Impressed

I'm impressed that every penny donated is spent on clean water projects. They've helped so many people!

8 September 2022
Unprompted review
charity: water logo

Reply from charity: water

Thank you, Belle! We appreciate the feedback.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Leeches!!

If they ever get hold of your bank details for a debit order, they will not stop drawing money from it, no matter how many times you tell them to stop. I sent several emails to them asking them to stop drawing money from my account but they neither acknowledged my emails nor stopped trying to get money from my account. Luckily my bank listened to me and blocks their attempts to draw money from my account. Two years later, and they are still trying, EVERY F***ING MONTH, and continue to ignore my emails asking them to stop trying!!🤬😖🥶

21 November 2021
Unprompted review
charity: water logo

Reply from charity: water

Hi R.W. Saks Sakoane, firstly, apologies for the delay in responding to you. Secondly, I am so sorry to read that you have had a bad experience when donating to charity: water. I've checked our donation system and saw that your Spring membership was cancelled with the help of Kathy from our support team on 27/09/21. I can promise, that although you were disappointed by the donation system, 100% of every single penny given funds sustainable, long-term water projects. You can read more about our finance model and audits here: charitywater.org/uk/our-approach/100-percent-model and here: charitywater.org/about/financials . Thank you for your donations - clean water changes everything and we appreciate your support. Best wishes, Ellie

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Terrible ethics

Terrible ethics, when it comes to signing their pledge.
Basically means you’re giving them your email address, so they can constantly hound you for money.
A couple to a few emails from them per month, they say.
Hmm received three within a couple of days.

Spoke to their customer service about them deleting my details and explaining to them that I didn’t appreciate their policy of instantly bombarding people with emails.
Nothing. No acknowledgement of anything other than them saying they’d detail my details.

21 April 2022
Unprompted review
charity: water logo

Reply from charity: water

Hi David Gatherer, firstly, apologies for the delay in responding to you. Secondly, I am so sorry to read that you had a bad experience when signing the Clean Water Pledge. We aim to share the important work our local partners do to bring clean water to some of the most rural communities on the planet. To be able to support, we need people to give, but we appreciate you didn't want these communications. I've checked our system and it looks like you were successfully unsubscribed. But please let me know if you've had any issues since posting this. Best wishes, Ellie

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Awesome

This is probably the best charity in the world since they put a lot of effort in it, it is very transparent and all the money donated goes directly to the projects. The overhead is paid for by sponsorship. They send you very detailed information about the projects. All comunication is through mail (no expensive postage costs s well).

12 September 2013
Unprompted review
charity: water logo

Reply from charity: water

Thank you so much, Peter! We appreciate your support. Clean water changes everything and we couldn't impact the lives of 1.5M people without the generous support of our donor community. Best wishes, Ellie

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