Case Study: Charity: Water achieves real-time water-point monitoring and faster repairs with Pivotal

charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations

charity: water is a New York–based non-profit that funds water projects globally (over 13,000 projects and 4.4M beneficiaries). They needed a real-time system to combine on-site survey responses and remote sensor data, reconcile changing survey questions and evolving hardware, and provide global visibility plus a ticketing system to prioritize and manage field maintenance.

Pivotal Labs built Dispatch Monitor, a Ruby on Rails web app with a simple dashboard and Google Maps that aggregates survey and sensor inputs, determines water-point status, and automatically generates tickets for field teams. The tool enabled faster response to broken water points, improved donor transparency, fit into charity: water’s tech stack for continued development, and delivered positive field feedback while helping the team adopt agile practices.

Charity: Water