ATHLLC2507205702

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.840 | - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,

00:00:06.120 | a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:00:09.080 | I'm your host, Chris Hutchins,

00:00:10.320 | and today, in honor of it being the season of giving,

00:00:13.080 | I wanna share one of the most interesting

00:00:15.000 | and inspiring stories I've ever heard

00:00:17.400 | and talk a bit about water

00:00:19.480 | and how helping the one in 10 people

00:00:21.560 | who don't have access to clean water

00:00:23.780 | might be one of the greatest hacks

00:00:25.620 | we'll ever discuss on this show.

00:00:27.620 | Why?

00:00:28.460 | Well, when it comes to health,

00:00:29.720 | diseases from dirty water kill more people every year

00:00:32.680 | than all forms of violence, including war.

00:00:35.360 | And every day, women and girls

00:00:37.060 | who happen to be responsible for water collection

00:00:39.460 | in eight of 10 households around the world

00:00:41.980 | spend an estimated 200 million hours

00:00:44.980 | collecting water each day.

00:00:46.860 | That's time taken away from education,

00:00:48.900 | work, community development, and family.

00:00:51.820 | Providing clean water is more than a solution

00:00:54.340 | to just drinking water.

00:00:55.580 | It is a key to unlocking potential

00:00:57.900 | and fighting poverty around the world.

00:01:00.380 | But don't take that lesson just from me.

00:01:02.400 | Listen to this conversation with my friend, Scott Harrison,

00:01:05.740 | the founder of Charity Water,

00:01:07.460 | who after a decade of indulging

00:01:09.560 | in the darkest vices as a nightclub promoter

00:01:12.620 | turned everything about his life around

00:01:15.020 | and has since raised almost a billion dollars

00:01:17.420 | and helped over 17 million people

00:01:19.840 | get access to clean water in 29 countries around the world.

00:01:23.980 | He'll not only share that story,

00:01:25.700 | but we'll talk about evaluating charities

00:01:27.820 | the power of storytelling, setting personal goals,

00:01:31.060 | gratitude, and a lot more.

00:01:33.220 | This may not be a typical All The Hacks episode,

00:01:36.020 | but I promise it's one you'll remember.

00:01:38.360 | In fact, even though I've known Scott

00:01:40.060 | and Charity Water for years,

00:01:41.620 | this conversation was so impactful

00:01:43.860 | that Amy and I decided we wanted

00:01:45.460 | to get more involved this year.

00:01:47.100 | So we're running a campaign through Daffy

00:01:49.500 | to raise $10,000, which is what it takes

00:01:52.540 | to fund a water project in one community.

00:01:55.220 | And Amy and I are personally gonna match

00:01:57.460 | the first $5,000 we raise to help get to our $10,000 goal.

00:02:01.780 | Or maybe we can go past that goal

00:02:03.620 | and do two, three, or even more projects.

00:02:06.380 | Who knows, but we are excited to see what's possible.

00:02:09.220 | So if you wanna consider giving to the campaign,

00:02:11.760 | you can go to allthehacks.com/water.

00:02:14.420 | And like I said, we're doing this whole campaign

00:02:16.800 | through our partner Daffy,

00:02:18.280 | which is the platform Amy and I have been using for years

00:02:21.020 | to do all our charitable giving more efficiently.

00:02:24.020 | They do that by helping you set up

00:02:25.460 | a special tax-advantaged account

00:02:27.300 | called a Donor Advised Fund, or DAF,

00:02:29.380 | which works whether you're giving a few hundred dollars

00:02:31.480 | to charity each year, or even hundreds of thousands.

00:02:34.540 | Now, to participate in this fundraiser,

00:02:36.360 | you don't need to set up a Donor Advised Fund at Daffy.

00:02:39.320 | You can contribute directly.

00:02:40.940 | But if you wanna set up a Donor Advised Fund

00:02:42.700 | with Daffy first, you can get an extra $25

00:02:45.740 | to donate to this or any other cause

00:02:48.120 | once you make your first contribution

00:02:50.300 | at allthehacks.com/daffy, D-A-F-F-Y.

00:02:54.380 | And once you're all set up,

00:02:55.540 | you can head back to our campaign

00:02:57.460 | at allthehacks.com/water to contribute and get your match.

00:03:02.220 | Both those links are in the show notes.

00:03:04.060 | Thank you so much for your support.

00:03:06.040 | Let's jump into the episode right after this.

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00:04:33.580 | (upbeat music)

00:04:35.500 | - Scott, thank you so much for being here.

00:04:37.540 | - Hey, it's good to be here, Chris.

00:04:39.040 | I've been looking forward to this, it's gonna be fun.

00:04:40.980 | - Yes, for so many people, they've seen you,

00:04:43.540 | they know Charity Water, but they don't know the story.

00:04:46.240 | And I think there's a lot of things I wanna dive into

00:04:48.340 | that mean going back to the beginning

00:04:50.260 | and understanding where you came from

00:04:51.620 | because it's not the same story

00:04:53.620 | that most people go through.

00:04:55.100 | - Well, I think act one is a pretty bizarre childhood.

00:04:58.620 | When I was four, I was born in Philadelphia,

00:05:01.180 | middle-class family, dad was a business guy,

00:05:03.700 | my mom was a writer,

00:05:04.900 | and we moved into this really ugly gray house

00:05:07.700 | at the end of a cul-de-sac in the dead of winter.

00:05:10.060 | My parents were gonna have a big family there

00:05:12.620 | and it was close to my dad's job,

00:05:14.380 | so we had a small commute.

00:05:15.620 | These were all the concerns at the time.

00:05:17.980 | And the house was advertised as energy efficient,

00:05:22.060 | which was great,

00:05:22.900 | except the house came with a carbon monoxide gas leak.

00:05:26.000 | So we move in and we all start getting headaches.

00:05:29.460 | And on New Year's Day, 1980,

00:05:31.940 | my mom walks across the bedroom and she collapses

00:05:35.540 | and she crumples to the floor.

00:05:37.300 | So she's the canary in the coal mine,

00:05:39.740 | which leads to a series of blood tests,

00:05:42.480 | which leads to the discovery of carbon monoxide

00:05:45.100 | in her bloodstream, which then leads to the leak,

00:05:48.380 | which was in the basement

00:05:49.400 | and it was this faulty heat exchanger.

00:05:52.580 | And I remember my dad ripped it out with an HVAC guy

00:05:55.540 | and he threw it on the sidewalk,

00:05:57.300 | but unfortunately the damage was just done

00:05:59.940 | specifically for my mom and she just never recovered.

00:06:03.900 | She never bounced back from that.

00:06:05.760 | My dad and I bounced back from our symptoms,

00:06:08.460 | but what happened to her was her immune system

00:06:11.580 | was irreparably destroyed

00:06:13.640 | and her body was no longer able to process chemicals,

00:06:17.260 | process anything toxic.

00:06:20.100 | So I think the best way to describe it from this point on,

00:06:22.340 | she just lived in a bubble.

00:06:23.900 | She lived in one room, isolated.

00:06:26.820 | She wore a 3M mask, like an N95,

00:06:31.420 | really for the rest of her life.

00:06:33.300 | And family planning stopped.

00:06:35.500 | So I grew up this only child,

00:06:38.540 | very quickly now in a caregiver role,

00:06:41.460 | helping to cook for mom, helping to clean,

00:06:44.280 | helping try to make her as comfortable as possible.

00:06:48.380 | And maybe just to give everybody one story

00:06:50.840 | that I remember as a kid.

00:06:52.040 | I remember mom, she was a writer,

00:06:53.400 | so she loved to read and she was so frustrated

00:06:56.880 | that now the ink from books would make her sick.

00:07:00.600 | So as a kid, I would either bake her books in the oven

00:07:04.640 | to try to get that smell of new print out,

00:07:07.280 | or I would put them out in the backyard

00:07:09.360 | and flip the pages throughout the day

00:07:11.100 | so that the sun would kind of bake them.

00:07:13.480 | And then I would walk up to the second floor

00:07:15.720 | and she was living in a bathroom

00:07:17.600 | that was covered with aluminum foil.

00:07:19.600 | She slept on a cot that had been washed

00:07:21.960 | in baking soda 20 times.

00:07:23.960 | And I remember she would open the door

00:07:25.280 | kind of with this crinkle sound,

00:07:27.880 | and she would be wearing her mask and her glasses.

00:07:30.560 | She'd be wearing cotton gloves.

00:07:32.720 | She would take the book from me

00:07:34.440 | and she would put it inside a cellophane bag,

00:07:37.140 | shut the door, and then she was able to read.

00:07:39.560 | So just weird, Chris.

00:07:41.580 | My parents were devout Christians,

00:07:44.180 | kind of non-denominational Christians,

00:07:45.700 | so they had a really authentic faith

00:07:47.540 | that they would certainly attribute

00:07:49.300 | as the only way that they stayed married

00:07:50.880 | and kept the family together.

00:07:52.700 | And I was actually actively raised in the church,

00:07:54.780 | so I would go on Sundays and I would play piano

00:07:57.900 | in Sunday school.

00:07:58.940 | And I was just a good kid growing up.

00:08:00.400 | I didn't smoke, I didn't drink, I didn't sleep around.

00:08:04.380 | I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up,

00:08:06.260 | and I was gonna cure mom and other people I'd met

00:08:09.420 | like her.

00:08:10.260 | So that was kind of act one.

00:08:11.520 | Act two was a big detour from that.

00:08:14.320 | At 18, I start acting out this cliche

00:08:19.320 | prodigal son rebellion story,

00:08:22.120 | and I grow my hair down to my shoulders,

00:08:24.040 | I join a rock band, and I move to New York City.

00:08:26.680 | And the band immediately breaks up

00:08:28.720 | because we all hated each other,

00:08:30.340 | but I stumble into this occupation

00:08:33.560 | in New York City nightlife.

00:08:36.280 | And I realized that if a person wanted to rebel,

00:08:39.560 | you could rebel in style as a nightclub promoter.

00:08:43.280 | And all you had to do was get the right,

00:08:45.040 | beautiful, famous people inside the club

00:08:48.000 | alongside people with money,

00:08:49.960 | and then you could sell them a $25 cocktail

00:08:52.540 | or a $1,000 bottle of champagne that cost you only 40.

00:08:55.800 | And act two, that was the next 10 years of my life,

00:09:00.160 | running around New York City packing nightclubs.

00:09:03.200 | I wound up working at 40 different nightclubs,

00:09:06.440 | really to the horror and sadness of my parents,

00:09:09.560 | who saw their good, virginal Christian kid

00:09:12.840 | now out there smoking 40 cigarettes a day,

00:09:15.320 | doing drugs, going to strip clubs, drinking problem,

00:09:19.480 | just a total hedonistic mess.

00:09:23.080 | And it was really at the end of that 10 years

00:09:27.320 | where I realized, wow, I'm a mess.

00:09:31.400 | And I've really become emotionally bankrupt,

00:09:36.400 | come spiritually bankrupt.

00:09:38.120 | I've come so far from this real foundation

00:09:42.080 | that my parents had tried to lay for me in my childhood

00:09:45.280 | as helping others, this idea of being a doctor.

00:09:49.060 | I'd served nobody but myself for 10 years.

00:09:52.360 | And that really led me to this moment

00:09:55.420 | of cathartic self-discovery and saying, I need a change.

00:09:59.480 | This is not working out.

00:10:01.760 | And I've got to go not find a pivot here.

00:10:05.200 | I need to explore 180 degree change.

00:10:08.800 | What's the opposite of everything

00:10:10.540 | I've been doing for 10 years?

00:10:11.740 | What's the opposite of everything

00:10:12.880 | I've been thinking and speaking?

00:10:15.820 | And being a pretty radical guy, I had this one idea.

00:10:20.080 | What if I sold everything I owned

00:10:22.560 | and I volunteered for one year on a humanitarian mission?

00:10:27.200 | What if I gave back one year of the 10 years

00:10:30.080 | that I'd selfishly wasted and could I be useful?

00:10:33.880 | So it was pretty quick.

00:10:35.000 | I remember from the dial-up internet cafe,

00:10:37.960 | putting in all these applications

00:10:39.280 | to the famous humanitarian organizations

00:10:41.800 | I had tangentially heard of, the Save the Children's

00:10:45.080 | and Oxfam's and Doctors Without Borders

00:10:47.480 | and World Visions and Red Crosses of the World.

00:10:50.480 | And then I put in my 10 applications and I waited.

00:10:53.320 | And maybe no surprise to anybody listening,

00:10:55.760 | I'm denied by all 10 organizations.

00:10:58.160 | Turns out they are not looking for nightclub promoters

00:11:01.400 | or ex-nightclub promoters to work alongside.

00:11:05.260 | And I just remember being so sad,

00:11:08.560 | so disappointed that I thought I was ready for change.

00:11:12.560 | I take this first step and nobody will have me.

00:11:16.120 | Well, I was very fortunate that there was one organization

00:11:18.560 | that actually at first denied me

00:11:20.000 | and then they were about to start their mission

00:11:21.960 | and they couldn't fill that position.

00:11:23.400 | So they went back through the rejected resumes

00:11:26.520 | and they called me up and said,

00:11:28.320 | if I'm willing to pay them $500 a month

00:11:31.000 | and if I'm willing to go live

00:11:32.960 | in the poorest country in the world,

00:11:34.720 | a country called Liberia in West Africa,

00:11:37.680 | then I could join their humanitarian mission.

00:11:40.720 | And the role that they had for me was a photojournalist.

00:11:43.760 | Now I was technically not a photojournalist

00:11:46.120 | but I had gone to NYU part-time,

00:11:48.360 | I'd gotten a communications degree

00:11:50.400 | and I was a pretty decent photographer

00:11:51.840 | and a pretty decent writer.

00:11:53.600 | So my life changed so dramatically as I left nightlife

00:11:58.600 | and set foot in the poorest country in the world,

00:12:03.720 | a country with no electricity, no running water,

00:12:06.400 | no sewage system, no mail system,

00:12:08.880 | a country that had just come out of a 14-year civil war.

00:12:13.000 | And I joined this mission

00:12:16.240 | of humanitarian doctors and surgeons,

00:12:19.360 | people who had come from 40 countries

00:12:21.280 | to volunteer their time and offer free medical services

00:12:25.560 | to people who couldn't afford it,

00:12:27.080 | where those services didn't exist.

00:12:29.000 | And that really was the beginning of Act III,

00:12:31.480 | which then eventually led to my discovery

00:12:34.720 | of the need for clean water and then founding Charity Water.

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00:15:07.760 | So we're gonna get through to a lot of these things.

00:15:09.680 | And when I think about that hard change you made,

00:15:12.200 | did something inspire you?

00:15:13.360 | Did it build up over time?

00:15:15.120 | I know countless people who don't feel like

00:15:16.800 | they're doing their life's work,

00:15:18.200 | and they haven't hit that moment.

00:15:19.800 | Maybe they also haven't been as far from their life's work

00:15:22.480 | in their previous career as you were.

00:15:24.200 | But what advice do you have for that transition point?

00:15:26.800 | I think it did build up over time.

00:15:28.800 | And then there was this catalyst where,

00:15:31.400 | I remember I started having some health issues.

00:15:33.440 | And one day, half my body went numb,

00:15:36.800 | and I couldn't feel my hand or my arm.

00:15:39.040 | I remember walking over my loft,

00:15:40.560 | turning on the water, steaming hot water in the sink,

00:15:44.240 | and I put my hand and arm under it,

00:15:45.600 | and I can't feel anything.

00:15:47.360 | So I am convinced something is terribly wrong with me.

00:15:50.800 | I have some brain tumor, I have some incurable disease,

00:15:54.120 | and I'm gonna die.

00:15:55.640 | And that actually led me to really consider

00:15:59.600 | existential questions of the heaven and hell

00:16:02.160 | that I was raised with as a kid.

00:16:04.160 | Questions about legacy, questions about,

00:16:07.160 | did it matter that I was here at all?

00:16:09.520 | What had I done for others?

00:16:11.360 | It turned out that nobody could find anything wrong with me.

00:16:13.800 | So after a series of brain tests and MRIs and EKG scans,

00:16:18.320 | it could have been my lifestyle

00:16:20.200 | of going to dinner at 10, going to the club at 12,

00:16:23.560 | going to the after hours to do cocaine from five to noon,

00:16:26.720 | and then taking Ambien at 1 p.m. to come down.

00:16:30.160 | Might have had something to do with my body

00:16:31.720 | just crying out and shutting down, or at least half of it.

00:16:34.680 | But that was an event that I think caused me

00:16:38.160 | to really stop and take stock of life and legacy

00:16:42.840 | and want to just change everything.

00:16:46.160 | You know, not even get back on track.

00:16:48.320 | You know, create a completely new path or a new track.

00:16:51.400 | - And when you created that path,

00:16:52.320 | you didn't know what it would be.

00:16:53.640 | And I think a lot of people assume

00:16:55.600 | that if I don't love what I'm doing,

00:16:57.520 | I need to find what I love before I can make a change.

00:17:01.360 | Would you argue that maybe that is incorrect common wisdom?

00:17:05.280 | - I completely stumbled into it.

00:17:07.480 | You know, I should say,

00:17:08.320 | when I went to join this medical mission,

00:17:10.960 | I quit all the stuff that I mentioned.

00:17:13.280 | I remember having my last cigarette.

00:17:15.040 | I remember saying I'm never gonna touch drugs again.

00:17:18.040 | I'm never gonna look at a pornographic image again.

00:17:20.120 | I really want to kind of shed all of these vices

00:17:23.400 | that have gripped me for a decade.

00:17:26.960 | And what was so important for me

00:17:30.000 | was also changing community and environment.

00:17:33.320 | It was much easier not to smoke two packs of Marlboro Reds

00:17:37.280 | or get high when you're surrounded by humanitarian doctors.

00:17:41.760 | Not so easy when your job is nightlife

00:17:45.080 | and filling clubs five nights a week.

00:17:47.000 | So for me, I think I was so fortunate

00:17:49.560 | that the intention was there to change,

00:17:52.040 | but then my environment also changed.

00:17:55.080 | I don't know that I would have had the self-control

00:17:57.640 | to just quit all that stuff cold turkey

00:18:00.560 | while I'm still surrounded by thousands

00:18:02.800 | of drunk partying people.

00:18:04.800 | - And you probably didn't know the goal

00:18:06.280 | going into this one-year adventure

00:18:09.160 | was to get into charitable work for your life.

00:18:12.520 | It was just to reset and start over, I guess.

00:18:15.560 | - Correct.

00:18:16.400 | It's just where it took me.

00:18:17.320 | Yeah, and in fact, at the end of the year,

00:18:19.240 | I just signed up for another year

00:18:20.520 | 'cause I just didn't know what was next,

00:18:22.120 | but I wanted more life, more impact like this.

00:18:26.720 | And the cool thing, Chris, was when I landed in Liberia

00:18:31.720 | as a photojournalist for this medical mission,

00:18:34.280 | I had about 15,000 emails that I brought with me.

00:18:38.440 | And back then, email open rates were close to 100%.

00:18:42.040 | I was taking this whole group of people

00:18:45.120 | that I had invited to 40 different clubs over a decade

00:18:49.800 | and was sharing what I was seeing.

00:18:52.320 | They were living vicariously through this guy

00:18:54.280 | that they had known and partied with

00:18:56.360 | who is now embedded with really badass,

00:19:00.160 | life-changing doctors and surgeons in this country

00:19:04.840 | that's 14 years post-war.

00:19:07.560 | And with these people trying to pick up the pieces

00:19:09.480 | and serve some of the greatest human needs,

00:19:12.040 | maybe even on the planet at that time.

00:19:14.520 | So, I joke that there were certainly a few unsubscribes

00:19:17.920 | in the beginning.

00:19:19.040 | People were saying, "Look, that Prada party that you said,

00:19:21.400 | that was awesome.

00:19:22.240 | That store party you threw for the opening,

00:19:25.160 | that MTV thing you did with Perry Farrell was awesome,

00:19:28.520 | but I'm not signing up for cleft lips and cleft tumors."

00:19:32.320 | That was really the small minority.

00:19:34.680 | Maybe the ability to tell stories visually

00:19:38.160 | of what I was seeing actually grew the list

00:19:41.320 | and people began to donate money and sponsor surgeries.

00:19:45.280 | And then people began to volunteer and say,

00:19:47.400 | "Well, Scott can go and find a way to be useful.

00:19:51.200 | I work at Chanel.

00:19:52.360 | I'd like some of that feeling of purpose in my life as well."

00:19:56.040 | So, I was kind of able to redeem some of the things

00:19:58.960 | that I learned over those 10 years,

00:20:00.880 | even though they were directed selfishly

00:20:02.680 | or they were directed in a hedonistic way.

00:20:06.160 | I think the thing that I had learned

00:20:08.080 | was how to tell stories.

00:20:10.080 | The story I was telling then, Chris,

00:20:11.480 | was get past my velvet rope,

00:20:13.720 | get seen by us looking through the one-way glass,

00:20:16.880 | get picked to come in,

00:20:18.680 | then sit with all the beautiful, rich, famous people,

00:20:21.560 | spend a whole lot of money,

00:20:23.200 | and your life has great meaning.

00:20:25.160 | You have arrived.

00:20:26.160 | I'd gotten so good at telling that story

00:20:28.560 | that I was just telling the wrong story.

00:20:31.120 | So, when I started telling a very different story

00:20:33.920 | of doctors who had passionately given up their vacation time,

00:20:38.920 | who had not flown to the Four Seasons in the Maldives,

00:20:41.960 | but had come to the poorest country in the world

00:20:44.040 | for a couple months to serve and get nothing in return,

00:20:49.240 | people were really moved by that.

00:20:51.120 | But the skill had been learned

00:20:53.840 | in a very different environment, maybe.

00:20:56.920 | - Yeah, you talked about the person in Chanel

00:20:58.960 | trying to have a bit more purpose.

00:21:01.520 | At what point in time did you find

00:21:03.160 | that doing this was your purpose?

00:21:05.480 | Or I guess, what is your purpose now?

00:21:07.320 | - Well, I think almost immediately.

00:21:08.800 | I loved it.

00:21:09.640 | I mean, I remember getting asked a lot,

00:21:10.840 | "Oh, isn't it hard?

00:21:11.680 | "You're living in this 120-square-foot cabin

00:21:14.320 | "with two roommates,

00:21:15.400 | "and the ship was not a cruise liner.

00:21:17.560 | "This was not a carnival cruise.

00:21:18.840 | "The thing was 53 years old,

00:21:20.160 | "had rats and mice and cockroaches,

00:21:22.760 | "and it was a very, very old, broken-down ship,

00:21:25.600 | "which actually had to be retired a couple years later."

00:21:28.640 | But I was so inspired by being surrounded

00:21:33.640 | with people who served others.

00:21:36.000 | I think it was really that simple,

00:21:37.640 | who were just asking the question,

00:21:39.480 | "How can I take what I've been blessed with?

00:21:41.240 | "How can I take my time, my talent, my money,

00:21:45.160 | "and use it to help others?

00:21:48.000 | "Use it to end some of this needless suffering

00:21:51.920 | "out there in the world?"

00:21:53.040 | So I think I was just surrounded, Chris,

00:21:54.400 | with people with the exact opposite intention

00:21:58.480 | for the life I'd lived for 10 years,

00:22:00.680 | and the lives of the people that I was curating

00:22:03.360 | or that I was surrounded,

00:22:04.800 | which was really how much pleasure can we bring to ourself

00:22:09.240 | at any given moment of any given day

00:22:11.520 | and all the moments of all the days

00:22:13.680 | versus how can we help, how can we serve?

00:22:16.440 | - And do you think that is a formula

00:22:18.360 | for a more fulfilling life?

00:22:19.960 | - I'm very careful to tell others.

00:22:22.000 | I mean, I think I have my personal experience.

00:22:24.760 | I have found there's a real freedom

00:22:26.840 | that comes with service.

00:22:28.760 | We've had donors over the years.

00:22:30.520 | Someone's about to go buy a BMW

00:22:32.200 | and will come across Charity Water

00:22:33.520 | and will buy a Toyota Prius instead

00:22:35.920 | and donate the difference

00:22:37.840 | to go help a couple communities get access to clean water.

00:22:40.880 | So I have seen sacrificial giving.

00:22:43.880 | I've seen purpose-driven work improve the lives

00:22:48.800 | of so many people now through our community.

00:22:51.080 | We've had millions of donors around the world.

00:22:53.120 | I believe so, you know, certainly true for me

00:22:55.720 | and certainly true from what I've observed.

00:22:58.400 | I will say, Chris, like there was never enough.

00:23:01.640 | Yes, somebody always had a more beautiful girlfriend

00:23:03.880 | who was more famous.

00:23:05.120 | Somebody always had a better car, a better plane.

00:23:08.480 | If I was with a group of people

00:23:10.120 | gambling $10,000 a hand at blackjack,

00:23:12.800 | somebody else was gambling $100,000 a hand.

00:23:15.720 | So it was this insatiable lust for more,

00:23:19.480 | but there was no end point.

00:23:21.360 | And looking back at that,

00:23:23.600 | there was never going to be enough.

00:23:25.360 | And in fact, I still know people who are out at the clubs

00:23:28.600 | and they are now dating girls younger than their daughters.

00:23:32.440 | You know, just continually looking for more,

00:23:35.920 | looking for more, looking for those markers of success,

00:23:38.880 | knowing that somebody's always got

00:23:40.200 | a little bit more than you.

00:23:41.560 | And it's not like that when you embrace a life of service.

00:23:45.800 | I guess it's more to a different degree.

00:23:48.000 | There's more work to be done.

00:23:49.760 | One of my favorite quotes,

00:23:51.600 | somebody sent me from a New York City bodega

00:23:53.640 | like almost 20 years ago.

00:23:54.960 | And it was a sign outside a deli that says,

00:23:57.920 | "Do not be afraid of work with no end."

00:24:01.800 | And that's really how I see, you know,

00:24:03.600 | 17 years at Charity Water now

00:24:05.400 | is there's always another person to help.

00:24:08.040 | There's always another community that needs clean water.

00:24:10.840 | Let's say we get to the end of the water crisis,

00:24:14.320 | which I truly believe is possible.

00:24:16.080 | And I truly hope we do.

00:24:17.320 | People are always asking me,

00:24:18.280 | "So you're just going to put yourself out of business, right?

00:24:20.160 | Oh, charity should put themselves out of business."

00:24:22.200 | I think that's one of the stupidest concepts

00:24:23.960 | I've ever heard.

00:24:24.800 | We've helped 17 million people get clean water.

00:24:27.320 | If we get to 100 million served, 300 million served,

00:24:30.800 | if we eradicate this problem,

00:24:33.080 | I would hope we would take everything we have learned

00:24:37.040 | over decades of working with donors,

00:24:40.640 | building trust, building relationship.

00:24:43.360 | I would hope we'd take everything we've learned,

00:24:46.400 | operating in 30 really difficult countries around the world.

00:24:50.800 | And we'd say, "Great, everybody now has water.

00:24:54.600 | What else could we do together?

00:24:56.520 | What else could we do with our donors?

00:24:57.920 | What else could we do with our team members

00:24:59.960 | and all this expertise?

00:25:01.080 | Are there people hungry?

00:25:02.600 | Are there people without access to healthcare?

00:25:04.040 | Are there people that don't have a roof over their heads?

00:25:06.040 | Let's take everything we've learned.

00:25:07.200 | Let's go focus on that next critical human need

00:25:11.280 | or that next group of people who are needlessly suffering."

00:25:15.520 | Rather than let's drop the mic,

00:25:17.520 | shut down the organization and go all try to become,

00:25:20.200 | you know, millionaires finally.

00:25:21.200 | - Let's talk about that because, you know,

00:25:23.680 | the mission is never ending, right?

00:25:25.200 | You've dedicated yourself and the organization you built

00:25:27.680 | to a life of service.

00:25:29.280 | There's no end in sight, right?

00:25:30.560 | There will always probably be something, unfortunately,

00:25:33.520 | that the world needs to be less suffering

00:25:36.400 | and people in a better place.

00:25:38.160 | How do you make time for yourself in that world?

00:25:41.000 | You mentioned, you know, the selfishness of your past.

00:25:43.960 | Is a little bit of selfishness okay?

00:25:46.320 | Can you take yourself out to dinner?

00:25:47.640 | Can you go on a vacation?

00:25:48.680 | Or because you've been so close to it,

00:25:50.720 | I can't remember the number,

00:25:51.720 | but it's, you know, a very small amount of money each month

00:25:55.080 | to provide someone with water.

00:25:57.080 | So how do you not want to give everything?

00:26:00.080 | - It's personality.

00:26:01.400 | I'm both optimistic, but I'm also very pragmatic.

00:26:05.720 | And I think maybe, you know,

00:26:07.440 | my experience in 10 years of clubs

00:26:09.280 | has helped me take a long view at this.

00:26:13.200 | And I realized going out to dinner with my wife

00:26:15.960 | is really important.

00:26:16.840 | Going out to family dinners is important for our family.

00:26:19.840 | There are certain things that I try to be a really,

00:26:23.080 | really good steward of money.

00:26:25.120 | I know a lot of people are a fan of your travel hacks

00:26:27.200 | and we were talking about this offline before.

00:26:29.520 | You know, I'm on about a hundred planes a year

00:26:32.120 | and I just fly coach.

00:26:33.680 | We have never used a single donor dollar

00:26:36.520 | to fly me or any other executive, you know,

00:26:39.040 | or anybody at the organization in business class

00:26:41.720 | because we take that extra money,

00:26:43.800 | which in my case would be, you know,

00:26:45.480 | hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

00:26:47.040 | And we put that back in the mission.

00:26:49.040 | So there are certain things

00:26:51.080 | that you're taking an austerity stance on.

00:26:55.400 | But, you know, there are other things that, I mean,

00:26:57.600 | I think I live a pretty normal life.

00:26:59.280 | You know, I've got a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old

00:27:02.560 | and I have one that's nine weeks old now.

00:27:04.520 | We had our surprise third.

00:27:06.480 | I'm almost 50, my wife's 40.

00:27:08.040 | But, you know, I really think about just making sure

00:27:11.560 | my kids are able to go play sports

00:27:14.160 | and live in a safe house in a safe neighborhood.

00:27:17.360 | And, you know, when they need bikes,

00:27:18.880 | I go and buy them bikes.

00:27:19.760 | I'm not thinking, oh my gosh,

00:27:21.320 | if my nine-year-old goes without a bike,

00:27:23.440 | I can go give two more people in Africa

00:27:25.280 | access to clean water.

00:27:26.440 | I think it kind of take a long, sustainable view.

00:27:28.440 | If my family is healthy,

00:27:30.120 | if my relationship with my wife is healthy,

00:27:33.000 | you know, I'm probably gonna be able to do this

00:27:35.240 | a whole lot longer and hopefully impact the lives

00:27:37.800 | of hundreds of millions of people

00:27:40.080 | by sustaining the energy or the passion or the mission.

00:27:43.920 | I spent a lot of time in proximity to extraordinary wealth.

00:27:48.920 | And I know it does not make people happy.

00:27:52.240 | The most unhappy people I know

00:27:54.120 | are some of the wealthiest people that I know.

00:27:56.240 | And just because, you know,

00:27:57.520 | you've got hundreds of millions of dollars

00:27:59.480 | or billions of dollars,

00:28:00.400 | does not make for a healthy, flourishing relationship,

00:28:05.400 | family, you know, holistic life.

00:28:09.320 | So there's no mystery, I think,

00:28:12.120 | around money or capital that I'm chasing anymore.

00:28:16.600 | In fact, sometimes even the opposite.

00:28:18.480 | - And how has that changed your own outlook

00:28:20.280 | on building, you know, your wealth or saving?

00:28:24.080 | - We have one family that gives to us

00:28:26.560 | that I'm really inspired by.

00:28:28.040 | They are a family in Texas.

00:28:30.440 | They've given over $13 million to Charity Water,

00:28:33.600 | and the family caps their spending at $180,000 a year.

00:28:37.880 | This is a family of four.

00:28:39.920 | And that's just the number, you know,

00:28:41.720 | I think the house is paid for

00:28:42.960 | and their couple cars are paid for,

00:28:44.680 | but they just don't spend any more than $180,000 a year.

00:28:47.600 | And they give away everything else,

00:28:49.440 | everything from investments,

00:28:50.520 | everything from he was a successful businessman.

00:28:53.560 | And I'm really inspired by that.

00:28:55.880 | I appreciate the extremes that we were talking early about.

00:28:59.280 | I think you've got a family member

00:29:00.880 | who's a Franciscan monk.

00:29:02.440 | That is compelling to me.

00:29:03.840 | I will say this, in the fundraising business,

00:29:06.560 | I find sometimes people

00:29:08.480 | who have a really unhealthy view of money

00:29:11.360 | will then shame people who do have money

00:29:14.520 | and they become terrible fundraisers.

00:29:16.080 | Nobody wants to be around them.

00:29:17.480 | You know, you don't get invited to go on a vacation

00:29:21.000 | with somebody who has the capacity

00:29:22.640 | to give you a million dollars or $10 million, $50 million.

00:29:25.680 | If you're gonna make them feel judged,

00:29:28.720 | if you're gonna make them feel terrible about themselves.

00:29:31.520 | Maybe it has to do with my past

00:29:33.600 | or what I was able to do in New York for 10 years,

00:29:36.240 | or just a lot of the people

00:29:37.480 | that I'm in a relationship with now at Charity Water.

00:29:39.720 | I look at wealth as an opportunity

00:29:42.360 | to do more good in the world.

00:29:44.040 | Wealth as an opportunity to serve,

00:29:46.840 | to put that money to work in human flourishing,

00:29:50.400 | in ending suffering.

00:29:51.680 | And it's my job when I'm around people

00:29:54.200 | who have extraordinary wealth or middle-class wealth

00:29:57.520 | to tell compelling enough stories,

00:29:59.440 | to create a compelling organization

00:30:02.200 | that can be a vehicle for turning their money

00:30:05.560 | into the transformation of human life,

00:30:09.000 | and then creating a circle back to them

00:30:12.160 | so that they know it happened.

00:30:13.840 | And if I can do all that,

00:30:14.920 | which I've been trying to do for almost 20 years,

00:30:17.640 | you know, we find we're restoring

00:30:19.080 | a lot of people's faith in charity.

00:30:22.120 | Now, charity means love.

00:30:23.440 | It's a really beautiful word that has become something

00:30:27.200 | that many people are skeptical or cynical about.

00:30:30.160 | I remember when I started,

00:30:31.040 | 42% of Americans polled by USA Today

00:30:34.160 | said they didn't trust charities.

00:30:35.680 | More recent, a New York University study found

00:30:38.040 | 70% of Americans believe charities waste their money

00:30:40.880 | in some part, waste their donations.

00:30:43.360 | So, so many of the things that we've tried to do

00:30:45.520 | at Charity Water is restore that lost faith

00:30:48.360 | and, you know, almost get people addicted to generosity.

00:30:52.880 | And it can be generosity of time.

00:30:54.320 | It can be generosity of money.

00:30:56.080 | It can be both.

00:30:56.920 | Getting the crew together isn't as easy as it used to be.

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00:33:34.680 | I just wanna thank you quick for listening to

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00:33:53.600 | The thing that I first learned about Charity Water

00:33:55.880 | that made me realize you guys were different

00:33:57.880 | is that you have two separate sources for money, right?

00:34:02.400 | One covers all the overhead,

00:34:04.120 | all the way down to the credit card processing fees,

00:34:06.220 | and then the other is just directly to go towards causes.

00:34:10.880 | I mean, I think that was an intentional decision early on,

00:34:13.160 | but how much of your success

00:34:15.520 | do you think would you attribute to,

00:34:17.640 | you know, in my mind, there's two things.

00:34:19.020 | You've ran it completely differently,

00:34:20.480 | and then you've become masterful at storytelling,

00:34:22.700 | but how do you think about those two things,

00:34:24.740 | and is maybe there another thing

00:34:26.240 | that you think drove such success?

00:34:28.360 | - That's right.

00:34:29.320 | Well, yeah, when I started, I was 30.

00:34:30.720 | I'd just come back from two years in Africa

00:34:32.440 | as a photojournalist,

00:34:33.680 | and I think I had the advantage, Chris,

00:34:35.360 | of not knowing anything about how to build a charity

00:34:39.480 | or run a charity,

00:34:40.400 | and I didn't really know anyone in institutional philanthropy.

00:34:43.720 | I knew people who worked at Goldman Sachs or at Sephora

00:34:47.760 | or at MTV VH1 at the time, everyday people,

00:34:50.960 | and I remember actually going

00:34:53.400 | and buying "Nonprofits for Dummies," the yellow book.

00:34:57.680 | How do you start a 501(c)(3)?

00:34:59.360 | What is a 501(c)(3)?

00:35:00.640 | Okay, we need some lawyers,

00:35:01.800 | and you have to file this application

00:35:03.600 | with the federal government,

00:35:04.680 | and you need a board,

00:35:05.880 | and I really had no idea at the beginning,

00:35:08.840 | but I think that then allowed me to go out

00:35:11.080 | and do just some informal market research,

00:35:13.840 | and as I talked to my friends,

00:35:15.720 | they loved the noble mission

00:35:18.080 | of getting everybody on earth clean water.

00:35:20.160 | I mean, everybody I talked to

00:35:22.320 | could stand for clean water for humans,

00:35:25.760 | Republicans and Democrats and people of faith

00:35:28.480 | and people who are agnostic or atheists,

00:35:30.180 | like everybody could think water is a good idea for people,

00:35:34.900 | but really this pervasive underlying skepticism,

00:35:39.900 | everyone also seemed to have a horror story

00:35:42.260 | of a charity gone wrong,

00:35:44.020 | a charity where the money didn't get to the people

00:35:48.060 | that it was intended to get to

00:35:49.300 | or a charity where they'd hired aunts and uncles

00:35:52.560 | and distant relatives and was just racked with nepotism.

00:35:56.900 | So the model for Charity Water

00:35:59.220 | really came out of just listening to everyday people.

00:36:02.580 | I said, "Well, what would make you compelled to give?"

00:36:05.980 | And the 100% model just came out of that.

00:36:07.780 | Well, people said, "If I knew that 100% of what I gave

00:36:10.140 | "would actually help people, I'd be more likely to give."

00:36:13.820 | I said, "All right, well, this just needs to look like

00:36:16.320 | "two separately audited bank accounts,

00:36:19.100 | "and in one bank account, I'm gonna raise my hand

00:36:21.760 | "and go try to find business leaders and entrepreneurs

00:36:25.960 | "who are not skeptical

00:36:27.320 | "and actually who wouldn't mind paying

00:36:29.480 | "those unsexy overhead costs like staff salaries

00:36:32.980 | "and office rent and phone bills

00:36:35.360 | "and the toner for the Epson copy machine

00:36:38.040 | "if they knew we were efficient

00:36:39.400 | "with those donations and transparent."

00:36:42.080 | And then I can go out to the public and say,

00:36:44.160 | "Great, not your problem.

00:36:45.980 | "If you give a dollar or a million dollars,

00:36:48.320 | "every single penny, every dollar will go directly

00:36:51.240 | "to build these water projects

00:36:53.360 | "which get people clean water."

00:36:55.120 | And as you mentioned, so that there would be

00:36:57.320 | kinda perfect integrity with the 100% model,

00:36:59.920 | we said, "We'll even pay back your credit card fees.

00:37:02.280 | "If you give 100 bucks on your Amex, sadly, we get 96,

00:37:06.040 | "but we will pay that $4 back from the overhead account

00:37:09.600 | "and we'll send your $100 to the field."

00:37:12.000 | And then the second thing that came out of listening was

00:37:14.720 | people wanted just to see where their money went.

00:37:17.920 | So we said, "All right, well, we're gonna prove

00:37:20.080 | "where this money goes.

00:37:21.000 | "Money's not fungible.

00:37:22.440 | "We can build technology in the water bank account

00:37:25.920 | "where all the public is giving towards

00:37:27.960 | "and we could track a $92 donation to a well in Malawi

00:37:32.960 | "or $114 donation to a spring protection in Nepal."

00:37:38.040 | And we actually became the first charity in the world

00:37:41.140 | just to geolocate all of our completed water projects

00:37:44.600 | up on Google Earth and then later Google Maps.

00:37:47.880 | So there was this theme of hyper-transparency,

00:37:52.000 | but again, could we wrap that with a story?

00:37:54.480 | And then the third pillar was just this belief that,

00:37:58.160 | yeah, I remember looking around the sector and saying,

00:38:01.480 | "Where are the apples of charity?

00:38:03.780 | "Where's the Nike?

00:38:05.360 | "Where's the Virgin?"

00:38:07.000 | Or later, "Where's the Tesla?

00:38:08.180 | "Where are these inspiring, imaginative, creative brands

00:38:13.180 | "that capture the imagination of people?"

00:38:16.360 | And I saw a lot of shame and guilt-based marketing.

00:38:19.660 | I saw a lot of charities with bad websites

00:38:22.440 | and terrible checkout forms

00:38:24.120 | and PDFs that they expected people to read,

00:38:26.760 | white papers about their issue.

00:38:29.000 | So I think this just came through listing

00:38:31.100 | and these became really core distinctives for Charity Water,

00:38:34.660 | the 100% model, always looking for ways

00:38:37.160 | to connect people to their money, proving it,

00:38:39.680 | trying to build this really inspiring,

00:38:42.600 | design-forward brand.

00:38:45.700 | And then maybe the most important thing

00:38:48.020 | was really what we wouldn't do.

00:38:49.360 | We wouldn't send anyone that looked like me

00:38:51.240 | over to Africa or India or Southeast Asia to go drill wells.

00:38:55.400 | And I believed just from day one

00:38:57.680 | for this work to be culturally appropriate,

00:39:00.160 | for it to be sustainable in the long run,

00:39:02.160 | it had to be led by the locals

00:39:04.080 | in each of these countries where we worked.

00:39:06.280 | And if we were successful,

00:39:07.980 | we would help grow the teams of local hydrogeologists

00:39:11.680 | and local well drillers and technicians.

00:39:14.320 | And as we scaled, we would create thousands of local jobs

00:39:19.320 | in the process and they would be the ones

00:39:22.280 | leading their communities and leading their countries

00:39:24.320 | forward in the future.

00:39:25.200 | They'd also be the ones getting the credit.

00:39:27.560 | And that's maybe what I've been really most proud of.

00:39:30.720 | 17 years later, we employ well over 2,500 people

00:39:34.380 | through our partner network now across 21 active countries.

00:39:38.520 | And they are taking the money that we're raising

00:39:41.360 | and turning it into clean water for the people

00:39:44.120 | living in their communities and their countries

00:39:45.880 | every single day.

00:39:47.420 | So just to kind of finish on this, day one,

00:39:49.680 | I put all these things together and my best idea

00:39:52.280 | for the launch of Charity Water

00:39:54.000 | was to get a nightclub donated during fashion week

00:39:57.180 | and to get open bar donated

00:39:59.240 | and then to just email everyone I knew

00:40:01.840 | and invite them to my 31st birthday party.

00:40:04.600 | And 700 people came, probably less for me,

00:40:07.520 | more for the club and the open bar.

00:40:09.560 | And on their way in, we put out this big plexi box

00:40:12.640 | and they had to drop $20 in the box to get in the club.

00:40:16.520 | And at the end of the night, we'd collected $15,000.

00:40:20.080 | And we took 100% of the money

00:40:22.240 | to a refugee camp in Northern Uganda.

00:40:25.040 | We built our very first well.

00:40:27.680 | And then we sent the photo proof and the GPS coordinates

00:40:31.000 | and the satellite images back to the 700 people who came.

00:40:34.600 | And we said, you came, you gave $20, it mattered.

00:40:38.960 | And here, watch, see, see the impact you made.

00:40:45.000 | And I mean, that sounds so simple,

00:40:47.280 | but nobody else was doing that at the time.

00:40:50.220 | And it turned out to be such a competitive advantage

00:40:52.920 | in the early days.

00:40:54.160 | - You had no experience in this space

00:40:55.800 | and have built, you know, not the biggest,

00:40:58.440 | but definitely one of the most innovative charities

00:41:00.800 | that I'm familiar with.

00:41:01.920 | I wanna jump into a few lessons

00:41:03.640 | because it seems like, wow, you just did this one thing

00:41:06.360 | and then it took off from there.

00:41:07.440 | I know you've had your fair share of setbacks along the way.

00:41:11.180 | So you were passionate about this space,

00:41:13.260 | but I know that takes patience and resilience.

00:41:16.280 | How do you handle that?

00:41:17.640 | And then what advice would you give to people

00:41:19.540 | who are dealing with similar things in life,

00:41:22.000 | whether it's charities or anything,

00:41:23.960 | just to build that resilience in their own pursuits?

00:41:27.240 | - Well, a lot of things didn't work.

00:41:29.440 | I remember, you know, the 100% model sounds great

00:41:32.280 | until you run out of people

00:41:33.680 | who are willing to pay for overhead.

00:41:35.720 | So we had this moment about a year and a half in

00:41:38.380 | where we were raising so much money

00:41:40.360 | for clean water projects

00:41:41.960 | 'cause the 100% model was resonating

00:41:44.460 | with the everyday public,

00:41:45.920 | but I just couldn't find people

00:41:47.960 | to hire that next incremental staff member soon enough.

00:41:51.960 | And I'll never remember,

00:41:53.160 | there was this really pivotal moment.

00:41:54.720 | We had $881,000 in the water bank account

00:41:59.000 | that was headed out to the field to build projects.

00:42:02.120 | And we had a couple weeks left

00:42:04.060 | in the overhead account to make payroll.

00:42:07.080 | And I remember the advice I was getting from people

00:42:09.520 | was to go borrow against the 881K.

00:42:12.680 | You know, write a little IOU

00:42:14.160 | and transfer between accounts

00:42:15.480 | 'cause you gotta pay your people

00:42:16.760 | and, you know, you'll figure this out later.

00:42:18.880 | And I remember calling lawyers

00:42:20.840 | and I was gonna start to unwind the charity

00:42:23.960 | and just say, this doesn't work.

00:42:26.240 | This is an untenable model.

00:42:28.640 | You know, I guess unless you have

00:42:30.160 | a huge amount of capital to start with

00:42:31.800 | or a billionaire backer.

00:42:33.880 | But I remember thinking if we borrowed one penny

00:42:37.960 | of the public's money and violated that promise,

00:42:42.040 | even if we paid it back later,

00:42:43.440 | there would just be a crack

00:42:44.480 | in the foundation of our integrity.

00:42:46.440 | And I didn't wanna run that organization.

00:42:48.400 | I would rather fail and try again

00:42:51.640 | with maybe the traditional business model

00:42:53.360 | where you put all the money in one account.

00:42:55.040 | And we were very fortunate at that time.

00:42:57.040 | I met a young entrepreneur in Silicon Valley

00:43:00.360 | and I remember taking a meeting with him.

00:43:02.720 | He was interested in what we were doing.

00:43:04.120 | And I remember thinking the meeting went terribly.

00:43:06.840 | And at the end of the meeting,

00:43:09.120 | he asked for our bank account details.

00:43:10.960 | And then three days later,

00:43:12.520 | he shot me a note well after midnight saying,

00:43:15.960 | I enjoyed meeting you.

00:43:17.320 | You know, really love the passion, love the work.

00:43:19.480 | I just wired a million dollars into your overhead account.

00:43:21.960 | And we went from insolvent,

00:43:23.720 | weeks away from insolvency

00:43:25.760 | to over a year of operating capital.

00:43:30.200 | And we really never looked back.

00:43:33.040 | Had that not happened,

00:43:35.900 | I'm probably not having this conversation with you.

00:43:38.360 | And what helped me so much was I think,

00:43:41.560 | one, I fell back on our values

00:43:43.600 | and I would have been proud to hold my head high

00:43:48.320 | and shut the organization down

00:43:49.720 | and just say this didn't work,

00:43:51.080 | but at least not compromise.

00:43:52.680 | And besides the money, that million dollars,

00:43:56.520 | which was so needed at the time,

00:43:58.640 | it was also that somebody believed in me.

00:44:00.760 | He believed that this was a tenable model.

00:44:04.000 | We just needed more time.

00:44:05.760 | We needed more time to work it out.

00:44:07.360 | And today, there are 131 families who pay the overhead.

00:44:11.540 | And that grows every single year.

00:44:13.140 | We invite 10 or 15 new people in.

00:44:16.300 | And we've never really looked back after that moment,

00:44:20.400 | after that time that forced us to be creative.

00:44:22.440 | It forced us to come up with a multi-year,

00:44:25.140 | multi-tier operations giving program.

00:44:29.060 | And now we have so many people

00:44:30.880 | that actually prefer to give that way.

00:44:33.040 | They would prefer to support a software engineer

00:44:36.080 | or a UI/UX designer than actually give directly

00:44:39.160 | to the water projects.

00:44:40.480 | - Now can you give money the other way?

00:44:41.800 | If you have too much in the overhead,

00:44:43.520 | do you just save it for the rainy day?

00:44:45.160 | - Well, we never have too much in the overhead, Chris.

00:44:47.440 | We never have too much in the overhead.

00:44:48.940 | It's always a slightly harder proposition,

00:44:52.040 | but all that to say, we're not going bankrupt.

00:44:54.800 | We're always trying to grow that group.

00:44:56.440 | That is where all the growth capital comes from.

00:44:58.200 | So unless we grow the amount of people

00:45:00.880 | who are willing to give on that side,

00:45:03.160 | we can't grow the team.

00:45:04.440 | We really can't grow the scale of the organization.

00:45:07.160 | But I think in resiliency,

00:45:09.720 | you're talking about staying the course.

00:45:11.840 | So we're 17 years in,

00:45:13.260 | and we've now helped 17.4 million people

00:45:16.520 | get access to clean water,

00:45:17.820 | about 137,000 villages around the world.

00:45:21.680 | On my bad days, I try to fill Madison Square Garden

00:45:24.720 | with 17 million people.

00:45:26.360 | And you would have to build

00:45:27.680 | about a thousand Madison Square Gardens.

00:45:30.760 | So, you know, Charity Water has sold out

00:45:32.800 | Staple Center or the Garden or, you know,

00:45:34.760 | O2 Arena in London about a thousand times

00:45:38.280 | to contain the amount of people who now have water.

00:45:41.280 | 99% of my time, I put that 17 million

00:45:43.800 | against the 700 million, and it's 1/40.

00:45:46.840 | It's two and a half percent of the way to goal

00:45:49.760 | because goal really is creating a world

00:45:52.900 | where no one drinks disgusting water.

00:45:55.280 | No human being alive, as we're recording a podcast,

00:45:59.240 | is risking their life, is poisoning themselves

00:46:02.520 | simply because of the environment they were born into.

00:46:05.720 | And especially because we know how to solve this problem.

00:46:08.400 | That's what makes this both wonderful and energizing

00:46:11.360 | and also frustrating is there are a lot of problems, Chris,

00:46:15.240 | we don't know how to solve.

00:46:16.480 | My mom eventually died of pancreatic cancer.

00:46:18.560 | It was four months from diagnosis to death.

00:46:20.520 | They had absolutely no idea how to help her.

00:46:22.480 | We don't know how to solve ALS

00:46:24.280 | or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's yet.

00:46:26.560 | We know how to solve water for people.

00:46:29.000 | There's not a single one of the 700 million people out there

00:46:32.520 | where we're scratching our heads saying,

00:46:34.400 | "I just couldn't help them."

00:46:36.000 | Wouldn't know how to get them water.

00:46:38.360 | Now, we haven't created the will to solve the problem.

00:46:42.040 | We haven't allocated the resources to solve the problem,

00:46:44.520 | but we actually know how to do it.

00:46:47.200 | So, you know, I really kind of believe

00:46:48.920 | the best is yet to come.

00:46:50.060 | I remember looking at a 27-year stock chart of Amazon.

00:46:56.280 | And the quote was, "Had Jeff Bezos quit in year 20,

00:47:01.280 | he'd only created 7% of the company's value.

00:47:05.840 | 93% came in years 21 through 27."

00:47:08.840 | That number may even be bigger now as a ratio,

00:47:10.840 | maybe five and 95.

00:47:12.840 | So I think there is an animating idea

00:47:15.280 | of just continuing to show up.

00:47:16.680 | And we're in year 17 now.

00:47:19.040 | And you never know who is waiting, who is watching.

00:47:25.600 | We still don't have a single philanthropist of note

00:47:29.080 | in the entire world who has raised their hand and said,

00:47:32.280 | "Hey, I'm gonna work on water."

00:47:34.040 | Y'all are working on health and education

00:47:37.380 | and women and girls and gender equality

00:47:39.480 | and economic development.

00:47:40.920 | You know what, I found the one thing that sits underneath

00:47:44.240 | almost every problem related to extreme poverty,

00:47:47.600 | and that's water.

00:47:48.760 | So I'm gonna take that on.

00:47:50.120 | We still don't have that.

00:47:52.080 | You know, there is no Bloomberg, Gates, Elon, Bezos.

00:47:54.720 | There's nobody who's kind of raised their hand.

00:47:56.720 | No corporation has raised their hand

00:47:58.800 | and made any sort of significant commitment towards this

00:48:02.440 | or really moved the needle forward.

00:48:04.200 | So I think as we just, you know, keep our heads down

00:48:07.560 | and every year, you know, try to grow the organization,

00:48:10.360 | grow our community, grow our impact,

00:48:13.160 | we put ourselves in a situation where hopefully

00:48:16.120 | we build trust, we build credibility,

00:48:18.840 | we build the systems and the infrastructure now,

00:48:21.520 | you know, across over 20 countries

00:48:23.640 | to be able to absorb that future interest in water

00:48:27.400 | and hopefully the future capital that comes to this space.

00:48:30.080 | - I think part of the reason I am so compelled

00:48:31.960 | by the story of Charity Water is your ability to tell it,

00:48:35.120 | both here, in video, on your website.

00:48:38.720 | Did you know how important that aspect would be

00:48:41.800 | to your success when you started?

00:48:44.040 | - I didn't, I didn't.

00:48:45.280 | And I think it's a little bit innate.

00:48:47.960 | I don't think in statistics, you know, they don't move me.

00:48:51.040 | I really think in stories, and I'm also a visual thinker.

00:48:54.520 | You know, I took photos early on with Charity Water.

00:48:56.840 | Now we have far better, more accomplished photographers

00:48:59.920 | who are willing to often donate their time

00:49:01.880 | and go out and document this work.

00:49:04.240 | But I think I've realized the power of it over the years.

00:49:07.960 | I'll give you an example.

00:49:09.160 | I wrote this chapter in my book,

00:49:10.880 | which was probably the most moving and devastating story

00:49:14.160 | for me over 17 years.

00:49:15.800 | And if I gave you the statistics,

00:49:17.400 | okay, 700 million people in the world don't have water.

00:49:20.280 | Women are walking hundreds of millions of hours

00:49:23.720 | every year that they're wasting.

00:49:25.520 | Up to 50% of the disease in many of these countries

00:49:29.160 | is caused simply by bad water.

00:49:31.800 | Half the schools throughout the developing world

00:49:34.800 | don't have water or toilets for their students, right?

00:49:37.360 | I mean, I could statistic after statistic,

00:49:39.640 | but if I told you that I was in Northern Ethiopia once

00:49:44.160 | and somebody came up to me in a $5 a night hotel room lobby,

00:49:49.880 | kind of the restaurant lobby and said,

00:49:52.720 | "Hey, you're the Charity Water guy.

00:49:54.440 | We've heard of you.

00:49:55.280 | We know the impact you're making up here.

00:49:56.600 | Let me tell you a story."

00:49:57.920 | He sits down and he says, "I'm from a remote village.

00:50:00.800 | The women in my village,

00:50:01.680 | they used to all walk eight hours a day."

00:50:03.960 | And he goes, "There was this one woman

00:50:06.040 | and at the end of one of her walks,

00:50:09.640 | before she got home, she slipped and she fell

00:50:13.000 | and all the water that she just walked for

00:50:14.800 | spilled out into the ground.

00:50:16.880 | And she had this clay pot on her back

00:50:18.640 | and the clay pot shattered.

00:50:21.080 | And there were shards all over the path."

00:50:24.040 | And he said, "She didn't go get another pot.

00:50:26.600 | She didn't go back and go refill the water."

00:50:30.480 | He said, "She took a rope and she climbed a tree

00:50:33.520 | and she tied a noose around her neck and she hung herself.

00:50:37.160 | They're in the center of my village.

00:50:38.760 | And we found her body swinging from a tree."

00:50:41.680 | And he let that sit.

00:50:43.400 | And he said, "The work you're doing is important."

00:50:44.840 | And he walked back into the kitchen.

00:50:47.200 | I remember thinking at first, "That's not true.

00:50:50.280 | That's what you tell the humanitarian aid worker

00:50:53.560 | to make us feel great

00:50:54.720 | about the work we're doing in the country."

00:50:57.360 | But I think the power of story, you know, that nagged at me.

00:51:01.240 | And a couple months later, I told my wife, I said,

00:51:03.560 | "I need to go and see if this is true.

00:51:05.760 | I need to go and see if this woman lived.

00:51:08.640 | And I need to see the tree."

00:51:10.800 | And I wound up flying back to Ethiopia

00:51:13.880 | and flying up to the north and then driving four hours,

00:51:16.720 | got to the end of the road,

00:51:18.320 | renting a donkey and a camel

00:51:20.280 | and putting a little backpack and tent,

00:51:22.360 | and then walking nine hours over the mountains

00:51:25.080 | to reach this village.

00:51:26.280 | It was called Meda.

00:51:27.240 | And over the next week, I lived in this village

00:51:30.800 | and I walked in her footsteps and I met her mother

00:51:33.680 | and I met her best friend

00:51:35.520 | who walked for water with her that day.

00:51:37.760 | And they'd kind of split at the end of the walk,

00:51:40.000 | her friend going to her house.

00:51:41.240 | And her name was Leta Kiros, walking towards her house.

00:51:45.600 | And what I didn't know until I lived in this village

00:51:49.640 | was that she was 13 years old when she died.

00:51:52.960 | I was imagining someone towards the end of her life

00:51:55.720 | when she was described to me as a woman.

00:51:57.320 | She was a teenage girl.

00:51:59.120 | And I saw where she got her water.

00:52:01.840 | I visited her grave.

00:52:03.320 | I talked to the priest who gave her ceremony.

00:52:06.600 | I interviewed her friends who told me what she was like.

00:52:08.840 | She had vision.

00:52:09.680 | She wanted to get out of this village.

00:52:11.000 | She wanted to become a doctor, a nurse to help people.

00:52:14.920 | And I remember just standing next to the tree,

00:52:18.480 | which was this frail little tree

00:52:20.000 | and there was a dirt path that ran next to the tree,

00:52:22.720 | imagining a 13-year-old girl's body hanging

00:52:25.640 | with a noose around her neck

00:52:28.240 | and water off in the dust and shards of clay pot.

00:52:33.240 | And it angered me.

00:52:36.760 | I came back with a driving desire to do more

00:52:42.720 | because kids shouldn't be hanging themselves

00:52:45.120 | because they were born in a village without water.

00:52:47.880 | And I remember the last thing just about this story,

00:52:50.200 | what struck me as I thought of, well, this is a tough story.

00:52:55.200 | I almost need to be careful telling the story.

00:52:57.760 | But I asked her best friend, I said,

00:52:59.880 | "Why do you think she took her life?"

00:53:01.840 | And her friend said, this is through a translator

00:53:04.240 | in the local language, Tigrinya.

00:53:06.280 | Her friend said, "Shame."

00:53:08.240 | Because it was her role

00:53:10.240 | to go and get the water for the family.

00:53:12.200 | And not only had she let the family down

00:53:15.360 | through her carelessness, slipping and falling,

00:53:19.120 | she'd also broken the clay pot, which was a valuable asset.

00:53:23.080 | And the shame of her failure

00:53:25.680 | would have been probably too much

00:53:28.480 | for her to go back and face her family.

00:53:30.640 | So there's statistics and then there is the story

00:53:34.800 | of a real life person

00:53:37.080 | who's just one of those 703 million people

00:53:41.160 | that certainly resonated with me.

00:53:43.640 | I was able to connect to the idea of shame.

00:53:46.280 | I was able to connect to futility,

00:53:49.840 | to a situation that you just don't know how to get out of.

00:53:54.760 | So you just have to keep doing it every single day.

00:53:57.440 | And wanting, Chris, to be a part of that answer

00:54:02.440 | to the next 13-year-old girl that I could get to.

00:54:06.160 | - Makes me wanna make sure

00:54:07.000 | if there's not a well in that village,

00:54:09.360 | can we start, do a fundraiser to put a well in that village?

00:54:11.520 | I'm hoping there already is.

00:54:12.840 | - This is years ago.

00:54:14.640 | - Okay.

00:54:15.720 | So I hear you, the storytelling there

00:54:18.800 | pales in comparison to the numbers.

00:54:21.240 | And when I think about my own ability to storytell,

00:54:25.000 | I think you're far superior and I need to work on that.

00:54:27.600 | Is that something you learned?

00:54:28.720 | Is that something that was practiced?

00:54:30.120 | How can you draw people in?

00:54:31.520 | - I go to the movies a lot by myself.

00:54:33.720 | I think we're creatures of story.

00:54:35.960 | My wife was laughing at me the other day.

00:54:37.360 | I spent three and a half hours alone

00:54:39.280 | in the new Scorsese movie because I grew up

00:54:42.480 | and I did a couple of years in film school

00:54:44.120 | and he's a great storyteller.

00:54:46.160 | So I'm constantly trying to immerse myself in stories

00:54:50.040 | that have nothing to do with Charity Water,

00:54:51.880 | but watch people who are masters of the craft.

00:54:55.560 | There's no formula.

00:54:56.680 | I mean, I'm never sitting down and like saying this,

00:54:58.840 | then that, then this, you know, the hero's journey,

00:55:00.960 | or I've never read Joseph Campbell's work.

00:55:02.960 | I mean, I'm familiar kind of

00:55:03.800 | with the idea of the hero's journey,

00:55:05.760 | but I'm a chronological thinker.

00:55:08.160 | So it's kind of this, then that, then this,

00:55:10.120 | then that, then this.

00:55:11.720 | I feel like just because I put everybody

00:55:13.320 | on such a downer there, I'll tell just one other kind

00:55:15.720 | of story in the opposite end of that.

00:55:18.080 | One of my favorites over the years,

00:55:20.600 | and we have so many stories, myriad stories

00:55:22.720 | that we've come across of just extraordinary people

00:55:25.080 | and extraordinary lives impacted by not having water,

00:55:29.000 | impacted by having water.

00:55:30.840 | There's this woman named Helen

00:55:32.480 | that we met in Northern Uganda.

00:55:35.280 | And Helen was kind of the end of middle age,

00:55:39.800 | and she was a mom, she had a bunch of kids.

00:55:42.400 | And our team was visiting Charity Water Completed Projects.

00:55:46.720 | And when the community knows you're coming,

00:55:48.880 | Chris, there's a lot of fanfare.

00:55:50.520 | I mean, they roll out the red carpet,

00:55:51.920 | they're bringing goats and chickens and eggs,

00:55:53.760 | and there are speeches, and there's dancing,

00:55:55.440 | and there's singing.

00:55:56.480 | There's a real honoring of the people who have come

00:55:59.680 | just to learn more about the community.

00:56:00.960 | So the team had done four with fanfare,

00:56:03.440 | and this was like the fifth at the end of the day.

00:56:05.320 | And they were trying to sneak into this village

00:56:07.720 | just to see the water point in action

00:56:10.480 | and kind of almost sneak up on it and say,

00:56:11.880 | "Hey, were people using it?

00:56:13.080 | "And what did it feel like around the well?"

00:56:15.120 | Well, Helen had somehow gotten wind.

00:56:17.240 | So she leads this welcoming party of women,

00:56:20.440 | and they're dancing, and they're singing,

00:56:21.960 | and they're welcoming the team in.

00:56:23.520 | And after that stops, we sit down with Helen,

00:56:26.840 | and we said, "Just tell us your story.

00:56:28.720 | "Now you have water.

00:56:29.800 | "It's feet from your home.

00:56:31.880 | "How is your life different now?"

00:56:34.200 | And Helen begins to tell us the story

00:56:35.440 | of what her life was like before.

00:56:37.120 | She used to go get 10 gallons of water,

00:56:38.920 | so two kind of big yellow jugs.

00:56:41.280 | Think of what you've got in your garage

00:56:43.080 | for your riding mower or the little gas tank.

00:56:45.760 | And she would carry two of these,

00:56:47.920 | very heavy, 40 pounds each.

00:56:50.080 | And she said, "Because the water was so far away,

00:56:52.760 | "I always had to make these choices.

00:56:55.600 | "There's never enough water,

00:56:56.600 | "so what would I do with the water today?"

00:56:59.320 | And then she listed, "Well, I could cook.

00:57:01.760 | "I could clean.

00:57:03.080 | "I could garden.

00:57:04.400 | "I could wash my kids' bodies.

00:57:06.440 | "I could wash my kids' school uniforms."

00:57:09.000 | And she said, "There was just never enough water."

00:57:11.080 | And she said, "As a Ugandan woman,

00:57:13.120 | "we put our families first."

00:57:15.320 | She said, "Now that I have clean water,

00:57:18.320 | "feet from my house," she said this.

00:57:19.960 | She said, "Now I am beautiful."

00:57:22.600 | And our team didn't quite get it.

00:57:23.840 | We're like, "Helen, of course,

00:57:24.680 | "you're this beautiful Ugandan woman."

00:57:27.280 | And she goes, "No, I don't think you understand."

00:57:28.920 | She goes, "Now I finally, for the first time in my life,

00:57:32.040 | "in this village, have enough water to wash my face

00:57:35.480 | "and my body and my clothes."

00:57:38.200 | And she said, "I am beautiful."

00:57:39.800 | She said, "Look at me, I'm looking so smart."

00:57:41.880 | And we'd never quite thought of water in that way before,

00:57:46.880 | until we sat down with a woman

00:57:49.800 | and just listened to her simply tell her story.

00:57:53.520 | And water to her meant dignity.

00:57:55.760 | Water meant beauty.

00:57:57.200 | We'd been talking about water as health

00:57:59.360 | and rattling off statistics of disease

00:58:01.680 | and water is educated.

00:58:03.480 | Water to her meant something deeply personal.

00:58:07.240 | And when I tell that story, for me,

00:58:12.880 | it also, what an extraordinary thing

00:58:15.680 | to be able to give a woman, especially a woman

00:58:19.240 | who is sacrificially giving for her family.

00:58:22.000 | She wasn't using the water for herself.

00:58:25.160 | She was using her limited water

00:58:27.080 | that she was walking hours for, for others,

00:58:29.880 | for the benefit of others.

00:58:31.280 | And now she finally had enough to take care of herself.

00:58:34.360 | I mean, who doesn't wanna be a part of that?

00:58:37.000 | - I feel like what you've just given everyone listening

00:58:39.120 | is not only an incredible story about water

00:58:42.360 | and the impact it can have,

00:58:43.840 | but an example of how taking the time to pull stories,

00:58:48.840 | whether it's from your life,

00:58:50.560 | whether it's from the lives of people that you work with,

00:58:53.120 | the companies you work with,

00:58:55.160 | and turning them into something

00:58:56.760 | that's more than set of figures or facts.

00:58:59.200 | And I so often default to the transactional information,

00:59:03.680 | like, oh, water could give someone this, this, this, this.

00:59:06.480 | And I just need to stop and pause in the future

00:59:09.480 | and really realize that taking the time to tell that story,

00:59:12.720 | which you'd think as someone who talks to a microphone

00:59:15.200 | for a living would innately have as a common practice.

00:59:18.640 | But I just think if there's a lesson

00:59:20.560 | that I've taken away from the last few minutes,

00:59:22.480 | it's just how powerful that can be

00:59:24.360 | and how it's not limited to someone in your role.

00:59:26.480 | It's not a skill that only matters

00:59:28.280 | if you're raising money for charity.

00:59:29.600 | It's something that probably matters in all aspects of life.

00:59:32.960 | - That's right.

00:59:33.800 | I mean, some of the greatest entrepreneurs are storytellers.

00:59:36.520 | It has to be true.

00:59:37.560 | I'll say that, Chris.

00:59:38.400 | It has to be true.

00:59:39.240 | I mean, I think sometimes there can be over embellishment

00:59:41.840 | and people can get really carried away.

00:59:43.720 | So a story is powerful when it is true.

00:59:47.720 | And often the details in a story make it true.

00:59:52.000 | It would not have been true for me

00:59:53.680 | had I not lived in Leta Quiros's village,

00:59:55.680 | had I not stood next to that tree,

00:59:58.240 | had I not walked in her footsteps down the ravine,

01:00:00.680 | had I not talked to the other women

01:00:02.640 | at that same source of water.

01:00:04.400 | So for me, the proximity and the immersion

01:00:08.720 | to the story was really important.

01:00:10.920 | And then the details emerge from those,

01:00:14.080 | which can really move people

01:00:17.160 | because the details also remind people

01:00:21.240 | that it's true, you know what I mean?

01:00:25.080 | It's not a general, the specificity.

01:00:27.560 | You know, Helen, I mean, I have a picture of her in her dress.

01:00:30.760 | So if I were to do this on stage,

01:00:32.280 | I would show you Helen dancing

01:00:34.760 | and I would show you the two yellow cans.

01:00:37.120 | And then I would show you a portrait we took of Helen

01:00:39.880 | as she is radiantly beaming.

01:00:42.480 | And you would look at her green kind of paisley dress

01:00:46.680 | and you would notice, wow, it really does look clean.

01:00:50.320 | I can't see any dirt on that.

01:00:51.800 | So I think showing as well as telling

01:00:56.080 | is often really, really important.

01:00:59.080 | - And it's not just for story.

01:01:01.200 | I mean, let's take an example

01:01:02.600 | because you've taken a lot of these stories

01:01:04.680 | and made videos, put them on the site.

01:01:07.000 | I'm referencing one in particular

01:01:08.800 | that you happened to share before we got started.

01:01:11.480 | The financial impact to the organization

01:01:13.920 | of telling these stories is also great.

01:01:16.840 | So it's not just storytelling for storytelling sake.

01:01:20.360 | The time you spend in that village,

01:01:22.000 | which I think sometimes comes across as not from you,

01:01:24.960 | but like you're brainstorming these ideas

01:01:26.920 | and you're like, do I really want to spend

01:01:28.200 | a week of my life collecting a story?

01:01:30.920 | And I think one thing I've taken from our conversations,

01:01:33.520 | the value of that story could be even greater

01:01:36.480 | than the time you spent collecting it.

01:01:38.280 | - I agree.

01:01:39.120 | Look, stories can move people.

01:01:42.000 | I mean, I really think about storytelling is,

01:01:44.560 | is this story gonna bring out something valuable

01:01:48.480 | in the people that might encounter it?

01:01:51.320 | I'll just give you one other example.

01:01:52.480 | We'll probably talk about the film

01:01:53.560 | that the people could go to actually see

01:01:55.200 | some of these images,

01:01:56.040 | but there's a famous donor story

01:01:58.760 | where there was a nine-year-old girl

01:02:00.400 | named Rachel Beckwith in Seattle, Washington.

01:02:03.600 | And she saw me talk.

01:02:05.120 | And at the time I would ask everyone in the audience

01:02:07.480 | to donate their next birthday to Charity Water.

01:02:11.080 | And I'd say, you don't need any more stuff.

01:02:13.280 | You don't need toys.

01:02:14.840 | You know, women, you don't need handbags.

01:02:16.520 | Guys, you don't need wallets.

01:02:17.760 | Like we have enough stuff.

01:02:19.520 | Humans don't even have water.

01:02:21.560 | So turn your birthday into a giving moment.

01:02:24.520 | And I thought the sticky marketing message would be,

01:02:27.120 | ask for your age in dollars.

01:02:30.080 | So if you're turning nine, ask everyone for $9.

01:02:32.640 | If you're turning 89, ask everyone for $89.

01:02:36.400 | And Rachel took me seriously at this

01:02:38.960 | and she donates her ninth birthday

01:02:40.280 | and she sets a goal of $300,

01:02:43.440 | which was gonna help the time 10 people get access to water.

01:02:47.320 | And she cancels her birthday party,

01:02:49.080 | won't accept gifts, and she raises $220.

01:02:52.840 | So she falls short in her goal and she tells her mom,

01:02:55.600 | she feels like she's failed

01:02:57.120 | and she's gonna try harder next year.

01:02:58.520 | And her mom's like, hey, I think you're pretty awesome.

01:03:00.440 | I mean, you raised $220 and just,

01:03:02.400 | you care so much about people you've never met

01:03:05.480 | living an ocean away.

01:03:06.880 | I mean, we should all be inspired by you.

01:03:09.400 | Well, right after her birthday, she dies in a car crash.

01:03:12.000 | There's a 25 car pile up on an interstate in Seattle.

01:03:16.080 | She's the only fatality.

01:03:17.880 | Tractor trailer, jackknifes.

01:03:19.960 | Her mom was driving, her sister was in the front.

01:03:21.960 | She was smashed in the backseat.

01:03:24.600 | And I was in Africa at the time.

01:03:25.720 | I was in Central African Republic.

01:03:26.960 | I remember landing the next day at JFK,

01:03:29.920 | turning on my phone, the BlackBerry at the time.

01:03:32.440 | And her pastor had emailed me to let me know

01:03:35.840 | of this little girl in his Seattle congregation

01:03:38.360 | who had donated her birthday,

01:03:39.920 | had raised $220 and then had passed away.

01:03:43.440 | And he asked me, could we reopen her campaign?

01:03:46.040 | And he was gonna just ask everybody in the church

01:03:48.080 | to donate $9.

01:03:49.840 | Long story short, people get wind of this campaign

01:03:53.880 | and a lot of people, Chris, donate $9.

01:03:57.120 | And it spreads to the New York Times

01:03:59.200 | and Nick Kristof picks it up.

01:04:00.320 | It spreads to the morning shows,

01:04:02.040 | starts spreading to Europe.

01:04:04.080 | And then one of the coolest things

01:04:06.040 | was people in Africa start donating $9 in Rachel's name.

01:04:11.040 | She goes from $220 to $1.3 million in donations.

01:04:16.880 | She inspired almost 60,000 complete strangers to give.

01:04:21.240 | And what was even cooler was so many of those givers

01:04:26.080 | then went on to donate their next birthday

01:04:29.240 | that inspired by this sacrificial nine-year-old girl

01:04:33.080 | who really should want toys or whatever the thing

01:04:36.600 | that a nine-year-old should want for themselves.

01:04:39.480 | I think it so inspired 60,000 people.

01:04:41.720 | They said, not only can we give to honor her last wish,

01:04:46.040 | but we could also follow the lead of a nine-year-old girl.

01:04:50.240 | That story, as tragic as it is,

01:04:53.080 | has put so much good into the world.

01:04:55.680 | Beyond the 100,000 people that now have clean water.

01:04:57.880 | I mean, she wanted to help 10 people while alive.

01:05:00.480 | She's now brought clean water to well over 100,000 people.

01:05:04.120 | Actually got to take her mom and her grandparents

01:05:06.560 | on the one-year anniversary of her death,

01:05:08.360 | took them to Ethiopia and they went village to village

01:05:10.480 | to village to village.

01:05:11.760 | And they personally met thousands of people

01:05:15.680 | who had clean water because of their daughter,

01:05:18.320 | because of their granddaughter.

01:05:20.320 | But I think that story is good in the world.

01:05:24.480 | And maybe people have heard that story,

01:05:26.960 | didn't even donate a birthday to Charity Water,

01:05:28.720 | they donated it for some other cause or for cancer research

01:05:32.400 | or to build a school.

01:05:34.320 | - I know the part of this story that changed for you

01:05:38.960 | was when you started, when you took this trip

01:05:41.400 | and you just talked about taking Rachel's family on a trip.

01:05:45.320 | How much of the perspective from travel

01:05:47.720 | and seeing people in other cultures and other circumstances

01:05:51.080 | has given you the perspective and gratitude you have

01:05:54.960 | and how valuable do you think that is as a mechanism

01:05:57.800 | for changing anyone's perspective?

01:06:00.640 | - Chris, I get asked a lot having done this

01:06:02.400 | for close to 20 years, what keeps you going?

01:06:05.440 | How can you still get up and just do this

01:06:08.280 | day in and day out?

01:06:09.880 | The travel is a piece.

01:06:11.520 | So I make sure it's never too long

01:06:14.360 | before I am on the ground in these communities,

01:06:16.960 | connecting with the people we are hoping to serve

01:06:19.200 | and the people we're serving.

01:06:20.600 | So that grounds me, it roots me.

01:06:22.400 | I've been to Africa more than 55 times now.

01:06:25.040 | I've been to 72 countries around the world

01:06:27.920 | and living in these villages,

01:06:30.240 | I just got to take my six and eight-year-old

01:06:32.440 | this March for the first time to Uganda,

01:06:34.880 | which is where Charity Water's first well was.

01:06:37.280 | And I had my kids carrying water.

01:06:39.600 | I had my kids asking questions of communities

01:06:43.600 | and my kids are born into a middle-class life.

01:06:45.480 | They will never have to drink dirty water

01:06:47.160 | as long as they live.

01:06:48.960 | And I wanted to share that experience with them as well.

01:06:53.040 | I got to bring some of our major donors' kids

01:06:55.800 | as well on that trip and it was just really impactful.

01:06:58.440 | So for me, it is very, very important.

01:07:01.400 | Bryan Stevenson at EGI talks a lot about proximity.

01:07:04.840 | You know, there's a power, there's a credibility

01:07:08.120 | that comes when you are in proximity to your issue,

01:07:11.800 | you know, to the passion and the purpose.

01:07:15.000 | I had that proximity for the first two years,

01:07:17.880 | you know, on that mercy ship,

01:07:19.320 | embedded with these doctors.

01:07:20.600 | I had the proximity because I was scrubbed up

01:07:23.360 | with a camera in an eight-and-a-half-hour surgery,

01:07:26.240 | watching them remove a tumor

01:07:28.200 | or put somebody's body back together

01:07:30.880 | who had been burned by rebel soldiers during the war.

01:07:33.720 | That has helped.

01:07:34.560 | So I'm always looking for that

01:07:36.320 | and trying to make sure that I'm never too far away

01:07:39.520 | from the issue that I'm advocating for

01:07:43.160 | with the people who were serving.

01:07:44.680 | - And obviously, travel to Africa with kids

01:07:47.120 | is a big trip that not everyone can take.

01:07:50.320 | What other things are you doing as a father

01:07:53.440 | or even for yourself to kind of create that culture

01:07:57.640 | of gratitude, of selflessness, of generosity,

01:08:02.640 | of giving in your family?

01:08:05.440 | - I like that you started with gratitude

01:08:07.000 | because that is the one practice

01:08:09.120 | that I am very faithful to with the kids.

01:08:12.800 | So we play the gratitude game every night.

01:08:15.640 | We go around.

01:08:16.840 | If I'm doing bedtime alone without my wife, it's 30.

01:08:19.440 | So everybody's got to do 10 and you can have one repeat.

01:08:22.440 | So we're looking at 27 unique things

01:08:25.320 | that we're grateful for every single night.

01:08:27.920 | And sometimes if it's an early bedtime,

01:08:30.520 | I'll push them to do 20.

01:08:32.840 | And just to practice.

01:08:34.280 | And sometimes you get like, I'm thankful for mom,

01:08:36.320 | I'm thankful for the dog, I'm thankful for our house,

01:08:38.480 | I'm thankful for church, I'm thankful for, you know.

01:08:40.880 | But I've gotten some unbelievably creative,

01:08:44.840 | really profound things out of the kids

01:08:47.200 | and I think even out of myself.

01:08:48.440 | Things that have kind of surprised me

01:08:50.080 | when you really go into that posture of gratitude.

01:08:53.040 | So that is a practice that I think has really enriched

01:08:57.280 | the lives of our family.

01:08:58.680 | You know, I think, right, not everybody can take a trip.

01:09:02.640 | And I mean, we got back, my wife's like,

01:09:05.120 | I'm never doing that again.

01:09:06.480 | I mean, seven flights in seven days, time zones,

01:09:10.360 | 14 hours on Emirates through Dubai, you know.

01:09:13.000 | - In coach?

01:09:13.840 | - In the back of the bus was, oh bro, all coach, yeah.

01:09:16.840 | Actually, that was seven out in back in coach with kids.

01:09:19.840 | It was rough.

01:09:20.960 | But we would have not traded that experience.

01:09:24.160 | And of course, we would have done it again.

01:09:25.920 | I think my wife would have done it again too.

01:09:27.680 | - Well, when it comes to the charitable world,

01:09:30.760 | I feel like I don't have the perspective you do

01:09:34.800 | and you've gotten to know this industry

01:09:37.000 | probably much more than most people.

01:09:39.720 | I'm curious, as people think about causes

01:09:43.280 | they wanna support, obviously, you know,

01:09:45.520 | you'll encourage them to take a look at what you're doing

01:09:47.600 | and I will as well.

01:09:48.760 | What advice do you have for people when they find a cause

01:09:52.800 | and actually finding the right organization?

01:09:54.880 | As much as I love the 100% model,

01:09:56.520 | I think it's fairly unique.

01:09:57.920 | And so finding the right organizations can be tough.

01:10:00.960 | And I know in the recent past with different disasters

01:10:04.080 | and, you know, war zones, people have, you know,

01:10:06.320 | made these lists of 20 different organizations,

01:10:08.640 | but it seems very hard to kind of evaluate an organization

01:10:12.320 | in the nonprofit sector.

01:10:13.600 | - I think it starts with finding causes

01:10:16.160 | that you're passionate about,

01:10:17.320 | learning about those causes,

01:10:18.800 | maybe more than what you're asking chat GPT

01:10:21.560 | or browsing one article,

01:10:23.680 | educating yourself on these causes

01:10:25.840 | and then trying to research organizations

01:10:28.040 | that are well-run and are transparent.

01:10:30.480 | I certainly do not think, in fact,

01:10:32.240 | I don't even advocate other people starting charities

01:10:35.040 | to adopt the 100% model.

01:10:36.840 | It was right for us 17 years ago,

01:10:38.600 | it continues to be right for us going forward.

01:10:42.440 | But what I really was trying to say back then

01:10:45.600 | is people just wanna know where their money's going.

01:10:48.680 | They want transparency in that.

01:10:51.280 | If I told your listeners today

01:10:53.120 | that the greatest need at Charity Water

01:10:56.280 | was a new expensive copy machine,

01:10:59.280 | because we needed to print a bunch of paper copies

01:11:01.840 | and, you know, it was gonna be $3,000 or something.

01:11:04.640 | People would donate for a copy machine to meet a need,

01:11:07.480 | to meet a specific need if they knew

01:11:09.720 | how that would move the mission forward.

01:11:12.240 | We don't need a copy machine, but, you know,

01:11:14.080 | you could argue that'd be like the unsexiest cost ever

01:11:18.200 | is like something that prints paper.

01:11:20.800 | But if those papers were valuable

01:11:22.240 | to the continuation of the mission, people would step up.

01:11:24.960 | It's often, I think, the opacity,

01:11:27.600 | it's the not knowing where the money goes.

01:11:30.240 | You know, it's the fine print during many of the disasters

01:11:32.800 | where you find out actually $100 million

01:11:34.760 | that was given went into an endowment,

01:11:36.720 | which won't see the light of day

01:11:38.760 | because in that fine print,

01:11:41.200 | the organizations say, "Well, if we over-raise

01:11:44.120 | what we can spend, you know,

01:11:45.880 | we can do anything with this money."

01:11:47.960 | I remember to that end, there was a very famous example

01:11:50.600 | years ago during the tsunami, I believe it was,

01:11:52.920 | where Doctors Without Borders over-raised significantly

01:11:57.320 | and they tried to refund everybody's money.

01:11:59.880 | And they tried to say, "Here, take your money back.

01:12:02.480 | We got what we needed.

01:12:04.000 | Can't spend it in this intended way."

01:12:06.720 | And what do you think 99% of people did?

01:12:09.360 | Said, "Keep the money, but thank you for telling us."

01:12:12.800 | You know, so that move would have built so much trust

01:12:15.720 | because it was integrity in that move.

01:12:17.400 | There was transparency in that move.

01:12:19.280 | And I think that's often what is lacking sometimes

01:12:22.960 | in the sector where when you really follow the dollars,

01:12:27.400 | you're not always thrilled with what happened with them.

01:12:30.080 | - How would the average person go through that process?

01:12:32.120 | Like what would you practically do?

01:12:33.520 | Let's say there's a tsunami.

01:12:35.440 | - You'd read a 990, which is one.

01:12:37.200 | So you read a 990.

01:12:38.040 | I mean, every organization publishes their 990

01:12:40.240 | so you can see how they're spending their money,

01:12:41.640 | how much on marketing, how much on office costs.

01:12:43.800 | You can really see where the money is going out.

01:12:46.480 | That's one document.

01:12:48.000 | I mean, there are a lot of organizations

01:12:49.040 | that don't put that up online.

01:12:50.440 | So that's one flag.

01:12:52.320 | Somebody sent me due diligence.

01:12:53.920 | "Oh, check out this organization."

01:12:55.240 | I said, "Well, they've been around for seven years.

01:12:57.160 | They haven't posted a single financial online."

01:12:59.920 | You know, that's not even legal.

01:13:02.320 | So a charity is forced to publish their federal file.

01:13:06.480 | It's like your tax return.

01:13:07.760 | Every single year.

01:13:08.600 | And that needs to be found online.

01:13:10.080 | So there's actually a lot of just simple best practices

01:13:12.920 | that aren't happening.

01:13:14.000 | I'm a big Dan Pallotta fan.

01:13:15.480 | If people don't know him,

01:13:16.440 | he gave a very famous TED talk on kind of the overhead myth.

01:13:19.720 | He wrote a book called "Uncharitable."

01:13:21.280 | He's got a film coming out in the next month or so.

01:13:24.680 | And I am not an advocate for these tiny overheads.

01:13:29.240 | I'm really an advocate for well-run, efficient organizations

01:13:33.600 | who are growing their impact,

01:13:35.000 | who are trying to put more and more money out into the field

01:13:38.880 | or directly to the cause.

01:13:41.000 | And that is driving everything at the organization.

01:13:44.320 | The Wounded Warriors story is probably the most famous.

01:13:46.560 | I remember they were much vilified for a long time.

01:13:50.320 | And I sat with Steve Nardizzi once,

01:13:52.320 | who was their kind of co-founder.

01:13:54.560 | And the way that he explained it to me was so simple.

01:13:57.080 | He said, "I took this organization over

01:13:58.560 | and we were raising $8 million a year for veterans."

01:14:01.440 | And I might get this slightly wrong,

01:14:03.760 | but he said $8 million was not even a fraction of what was needed.

01:14:08.920 | And I learned that every dollar I would put into marketing,

01:14:12.280 | I could return about 50 cents.

01:14:14.440 | So that sounds, whoa, horribly inefficient.

01:14:17.120 | But he said, "I wanted to market and grow the organization.

01:14:21.680 | And then I would kind of worry about efficiency later

01:14:24.160 | when we got up to scale."

01:14:26.120 | And I think he took the thing to 450 million.

01:14:30.680 | Now, again, I don't remember the exact ratio,

01:14:32.920 | but let's say at 450 million,

01:14:35.480 | half of the money was going directly to help veterans.

01:14:40.040 | Well, he just took an efficient organization at 8 million going out

01:14:44.720 | to a much less efficient organization,

01:14:47.320 | but $225 million was going out in impact.

01:14:50.720 | And I think he never really got the chance with his team

01:14:52.800 | to dial it back down and go back to efficiency at scale,

01:14:57.080 | which was going to be possible

01:14:58.400 | because so many of those people were monthly givers.

01:15:00.560 | So there was a high cost to acquire,

01:15:02.960 | but then you got a long tail.

01:15:04.840 | So when you shut off that marketing spend...

01:15:07.240 | And by the way, I mean, Disney Plus,

01:15:09.080 | they went from zero to 100 million users,

01:15:12.200 | I think in the first year,

01:15:13.080 | just by spending billions and billions of dollars of marketing.

01:15:16.600 | We're not seeing that same marketing blitz

01:15:18.800 | in year two and year three.

01:15:20.840 | So I'm with you that these are often really wise investments

01:15:24.840 | that people need to make.

01:15:25.720 | But you ask these questions

01:15:26.880 | and you start to really understand

01:15:28.880 | more about the organization's leadership,

01:15:31.160 | more about their history.

01:15:33.520 | You can make some pretty good decisions

01:15:35.120 | with some more information.

01:15:36.320 | And are any of these sites that provide ratings?

01:15:38.120 | I'm sure maybe you don't want to speak ill of them,

01:15:40.320 | but how much faith do you put in your own research

01:15:42.960 | versus the rating from a charitable rating site?

01:15:47.120 | Yeah, well, we've been fortunate.

01:15:48.680 | I mean, we've had the highest ratings from all the sites.

01:15:51.040 | I am very cynical about the methodology.

01:15:53.240 | I mean, it's just a formula.

01:15:54.600 | You know, it's a 990 is getting put through a variety of metrics.

01:15:58.400 | And I think that's a whole nother podcast.

01:16:01.320 | I'm like, man, do I want to even open that?

01:16:04.360 | I think they are a good place to start.

01:16:06.360 | There's certainly a good place to start

01:16:08.240 | maybe weeding out some of the egregious actors.

01:16:10.800 | But it's looking at overhead.

01:16:12.440 | It's looking at some very simple metrics

01:16:15.120 | that is not necessarily an indicator of the impact

01:16:19.040 | they are having by moving their mission forward in the world.

01:16:22.760 | And simply because it can't.

01:16:23.800 | I mean, there's one and one and a half million charities

01:16:25.600 | or something in America.

01:16:26.400 | So, you know, imagine it's the same thing with the IRS.

01:16:29.200 | I can imagine assigning 1.4 million.

01:16:32.360 | You know, let's go do deep dives in all these organizations.

01:16:34.760 | It's just it's not even feasible.

01:16:36.440 | So I know a big part of what you guys have done

01:16:38.320 | well is around tracking your impact and effectiveness as an organization.

01:16:42.680 | I'm curious if you've ever thought about that perspective on a personal level

01:16:48.000 | and how you or anyone listening might be able to apply

01:16:53.360 | some of those lessons to track the impact

01:16:57.120 | they're having with their own lives or with their own wallets

01:17:00.440 | or in their own careers.

01:17:01.640 | I mean, Chris, I'm probably a bad guy to ask that question to

01:17:05.880 | because my KPIs are pretty simple

01:17:08.840 | because this is my life's work.

01:17:11.280 | It's people that have access to clean water

01:17:14.080 | because of the organization we're built, because of the movement

01:17:17.480 | that we are growing and how effectively we're deploying capital to change lives.

01:17:22.240 | So we have a pretty simple output.

01:17:23.800 | I have a personal goal of helping at least 100 million people.

01:17:28.920 | So that is a benchmark that's out there for me.

01:17:31.920 | And we help 17 million people.

01:17:34.600 | So if we continue to this path, I would be probably far too old to realize that.

01:17:40.280 | So some exponential growth is certainly required

01:17:43.800 | to achieve that personal goal through work.

01:17:46.440 | When I think about my family, it's all about character.

01:17:50.000 | It's all about virtue.

01:17:52.080 | It's instilling compassion, integrity, generosity into the lives of my children.

01:17:58.720 | Do they tell the truth?

01:18:00.840 | Do they admit when they're wrong?

01:18:02.680 | It's all kind of soft stuff.

01:18:05.040 | I can care less if they come and work with me or, you know, go work at a bank.

01:18:09.040 | It's I'm really interested in the people that they become

01:18:14.000 | and the way that they do things, whatever they do.

01:18:17.160 | You know, are they doing it with the utmost integrity?

01:18:21.040 | You know, are they doing it by telling the truth?

01:18:23.680 | Are they treating people with kindness and respect?

01:18:26.400 | So I think two very different metrics.

01:18:28.520 | You know, obviously, I'm trying to do the same thing

01:18:30.360 | as we build the culture of the organization.

01:18:32.640 | Are we living up to our values?

01:18:34.280 | Are we good all the way to the core?

01:18:36.600 | You know, is there anything that is not working that we need to go and fix?

01:18:40.120 | Is there anything that's hypocritical?

01:18:42.920 | You know, are we saying anything that we actually can't deliver on?

01:18:45.880 | So we're constantly asking ourselves those questions as a culture as well.

01:18:50.000 | You mentioned legacy a bit earlier.

01:18:52.360 | And I know Charity Waters work has had a lasting impact on communities.

01:18:56.240 | And in a way, that impact is part of your legacy.

01:18:58.920 | I'd love to explore this concept of leaving a meaningful legacy

01:19:02.320 | and making a lasting difference in the world.

01:19:04.280 | And is that something you think about a lot?

01:19:06.680 | It's interesting.

01:19:07.440 | I probably think about it less for me and more of encouraging

01:19:11.960 | other people to think about it.

01:19:13.960 | But I guess I would think about it as it's really positional

01:19:18.440 | or it's an intention of a life.

01:19:21.000 | I don't think legacy is like, OK, well, I tick these five boxes or,

01:19:24.680 | you know, they're going to read at my funeral, A, B, C, D.

01:19:28.120 | I think of it more as going through life.

01:19:31.760 | And I said this earlier, but asking the question,

01:19:35.720 | how can I take what I have, what I've been blessed with?

01:19:39.480 | I mean, everybody listening to this has been blessed, has

01:19:41.840 | certainly many things to be grateful for.

01:19:44.480 | And how can I use that in the service of others?

01:19:48.480 | I think it's that simple.

01:19:50.640 | And that is really then a legacy of giving.

01:19:53.800 | It's a legacy of compassion.

01:19:55.560 | It's a legacy of generosity that will manifest itself

01:19:59.400 | in different ways through different seasons of life.

01:20:04.080 | One of my dreams at some point is to write a million dollar

01:20:07.080 | check to a charity.

01:20:08.440 | I have wanted to pay that forward for 17 years.

01:20:11.920 | You know, we've been able to turn that million dollar gift into now,

01:20:14.800 | you know, well over 800 million dollars raised.

01:20:17.760 | And I think I was able to give that back to that donor saying,

01:20:21.440 | you believed in me.

01:20:23.120 | We've honored this 100% model with absolute integrity now for 17 years.

01:20:27.920 | And we've kind of turned that one talent into 800 more and growing.

01:20:32.720 | But I'd like to do it personally, Chris.

01:20:35.080 | You know, I'm not going to do it through my salary at Charity Water,

01:20:37.240 | but I'd love to not just give advice,

01:20:41.000 | not just fund water projects across 21 countries.

01:20:43.880 | It'd be fun to write a check and change the game for a small charity

01:20:48.160 | the same way somebody changed the game.

01:20:50.520 | So I don't know if I'll ever get the opportunity to do that.

01:20:53.040 | But I think, you know, if I came into money in some way

01:20:58.040 | where I had the ability to do that, I'd be more likely to do that

01:21:02.480 | than to try to go blow a million dollars on, I don't know.

01:21:06.800 | I guess it doesn't buy that much anymore.

01:21:08.880 | But rather than trying to upgrade myself to business class flights

01:21:12.240 | for the next five years or something, I'd want that to be useful.

01:21:15.640 | This has been amazing.

01:21:17.080 | I appreciate you sharing your story and the story of Charity Water

01:21:20.040 | with everyone here.

01:21:21.240 | We didn't even mention where people can find that video we referenced earlier.

01:21:24.720 | So maybe let everyone know where we want to send them right now.

01:21:28.400 | If you'd like to see the video or you're looking for some way

01:21:32.040 | to get involved with us, probably the best place to go is The Spring.

01:21:36.400 | It's TheSpring.com.

01:21:38.800 | It's where that video lives.

01:21:39.960 | That's had over 100 million views now across platforms.

01:21:42.880 | And The Spring is just very simply an online

01:21:46.160 | community of people who show up every month.

01:21:48.360 | It's like Netflix or Spotify.

01:21:51.240 | You pay them every month, except we will not send you any music for free.

01:21:55.440 | We will not send you any TV or movies.

01:21:57.680 | We will take 100% of your money every month

01:22:01.200 | and we will turn it into clean water for people in the around the world.

01:22:04.920 | And I was actually with Daniel Ek in Ethiopia, who founded Spotify

01:22:09.080 | and was helping me kind of move

01:22:12.280 | a lot of our one time giving to subscription.

01:22:15.040 | And that idea and that community has been really transformative.

01:22:19.400 | We tripled the organization's impact since we started that.

01:22:22.880 | And, you know, the average is it's $40 to give one person clean water.

01:22:27.560 | So it's probably a lot of people listening, you know, who could donate $40

01:22:31.760 | a month and not even really feel that pain.

01:22:34.920 | But know that every single month, one more person is getting access to clean water.

01:22:39.520 | If I had one ask of people to consider.

01:22:42.040 | Yeah, there's people that give $10 a month that are broke college students.

01:22:45.320 | We have people in their 90s on their pensions who give $10 a month.

01:22:49.720 | And every four months, a person moves from dirty water to clean water,

01:22:54.720 | which is a real big impact.

01:22:55.880 | So check out the video, share it with your friends.

01:22:58.800 | A lot of the images, Rachel stories in that video.

01:23:01.240 | You get to see what she looks like and just some really cool stuff

01:23:05.080 | and images in there.

01:23:06.080 | Well, Scott, I appreciate you being here.

01:23:07.880 | I've been a Charity Water supporter throughout the years and will continue to be.

01:23:12.320 | Thank you for joining me.

01:23:14.040 | Thanks for having me. Give me the opportunity.

01:23:15.640 | Thank you, everyone, so much for joining me.

01:23:19.440 | No matter how many times I hear the Charity Water story,

01:23:22.000 | I get inspired every single time.

01:23:24.120 | And so this time I'm excited that hopefully we're going to be able to build a well.

01:23:28.360 | If you want to contribute to the Daffy campaign,

01:23:30.440 | you can go to all the hacks dot com slash water.

01:23:32.840 | And like I said earlier, Amy and I are personally going to match

01:23:36.080 | the first $5,000 to help get to our $10,000 goal.

01:23:40.040 | Though, if we get there quickly, I'm going to raise that limit

01:23:42.880 | and we'll go for two or more wells.

01:23:45.000 | We'll go for two or three or however many wells we can build.

01:23:48.480 | Reminder that you don't need to open up an account at Daffy.

01:23:51.840 | You can contribute directly at all the hacks dot com slash water.

01:23:55.960 | Reminder that you don't need to open up a donor advised fund at Daffy

01:23:59.440 | to contribute.

01:24:00.240 | You can do that directly at all the hacks dot com slash water.

01:24:03.880 | But if you do want to set up your donor advised fund at Daffy first,

01:24:07.440 | you can get an extra $25 to donate to this or any other cause

01:24:11.440 | once you make your first contribution.

01:24:13.520 | And you can get that $25 at all the hacks dot com slash Daffy, D-A-F-F-Y.

01:24:18.720 | And once you're all set up,

01:24:20.440 | you can go to our campaign at all the hacks dot com slash water

01:24:24.160 | to contribute and get your match.

01:24:26.600 | Both those links are in the show notes.

01:24:28.120 | Thank you so much in advance for your support.

01:24:30.560 | Finally, even if you don't want to contribute,

01:24:32.840 | you can always go to all the hacks dot com slash water to see our progress.

01:24:36.840 | Thank you so much for listening.

01:24:39.280 | Happy holidays, and I will see you next week.

01:24:41.560 | (upbeat music)

01:24:44.140 | (upbeat music)