Perhaps unsurprisingly, almost half of all nonprofits and public charities end in failure. This is due to a lot of different factors – lack of planning is a common mistake – and for nonprofits working in the world’s poorest countries, a common pitfall is a fundamental misunderstanding of the target population.

One Seattle-based public charity, Literacy Bridge, uses a combination of clever technology and a continuous feedback loop to maintain a genuine understanding of its target population’s needs. The organization began developing an information-sharing device called the Talking Book in 2007, and has now reached around 200,000 of the world’s poorest people.