Our story.
UT GivePower is a student-led organization at The University of Texas at Austin dedicated to advancing clean energy and clean water access worldwide. We unite engineers, business students, designers, policy advocates, and communicators to raise awareness, fundraise, and send Longhorns on treks to build solar-powered systems.
Together with the GivePower Foundation, our members join work that has powered 2,426+ schools across 32 countries, impacted 2.66 million lives, and distributed over 500 million liters of safe water.
Foundation figures per givepower.org, August 2026
We're the UT Austin chapter of the GivePower Foundation, a 501(c)(3) headquartered right here in Austin. That proximity to the global HQ gives our members direct access to the engineers deploying Solar Water Farms across 32 countries.
It also puts us minutes from the Foundation's manufacturing facility in South Austin's St. Elmo district, where Solar Water Farms are built and tested before shipping out around the world. Our members get to see the systems come together in person — the same hardware they'll later stand next to in the field.
What started as a small group has grown into an organization spanning engineering, research, fundraising, and service — building micro-grid prototypes on campus and contributing to desalination membrane research in the Kumar Lab.
Every member, technical or not, contributes to real installs in the field.
Real research, real impact.
Through our partnership with Dr. Manish Kumar's Environmental Engineering Lab in the Cockrell School, students contribute to peer-reviewed research on desalination membranes and water-purification technology — then carry it into deployments all across the world. It turns undergraduates into practitioners.
Where your gift goes.
Give here on givepowerut.org and your gift is processed by the GivePower Foundation — a 501(c)(3) — and designated to our chapter fund: 75% sends Texan students on Treks, and 25% goes straight to clean water, where $1 gives one person safe water for a year.
Prefer to support the Foundation's global work directly? Give at givepower.org, where 100% funds projects — GoodLeap, the founding GivePartner, covers all administrative costs.