Building a Life Dedicated to IMPACT With Charity: Water Founder Scott Harrison

00:00:00.000 | I had this one idea, what if I sold everything I owned,

00:00:03.560 | and I volunteered for one year.

00:00:06.040 | At 18, I stumble into this occupation

00:00:09.800 | in New York City nightlife,

00:00:11.720 | running around smoking 40 cigarettes a day,

00:00:14.320 | doing drugs, going to strip clubs.

00:00:16.680 | And it was really at the end of that 10 years

00:00:19.920 | where I realized, wow, I'm a mess.

00:00:22.560 | I joined this mission of humanitarian doctors and surgeons

00:00:27.120 | to volunteer their time and offer free medical services

00:00:30.680 | to people who couldn't afford it,

00:00:31.720 | which then led to my discovery of the need for clean water.

00:00:35.000 | I look at wealth as an opportunity

00:00:37.320 | to do more good in the world in ending suffering.

00:00:39.880 | How can I take my time, my talent, my money,

00:00:42.720 | and use it to help others?

00:00:44.640 | 70% of Americans believe charities waste their money.

00:00:47.160 | So many of the things that we've tried to do

00:00:48.800 | at Charity Water is restore that lost faith,

00:00:51.520 | get people addicted to generosity.

00:00:54.760 | I was in Northern Ethiopia once,

00:00:56.760 | and somebody came up to me, said,

00:00:59.080 | "Hey, we've heard of you.

00:01:00.160 | "We know the impact you're making up here.

00:01:01.640 | "Let me tell you a story."

00:01:02.600 | The women in my village,

00:01:03.440 | they used to all walk eight hours a day.

00:01:05.160 | And he goes, "There was this one woman,

00:01:06.680 | "at the end of one of her walks,

00:01:08.440 | "she slipped and she fell,

00:01:10.200 | "and all the water that she had just walked for

00:01:12.000 | "spilled out onto the ground.

00:01:13.400 | "And she had this clay pot on her back,

00:01:15.160 | "and the clay pot shattered."

00:01:17.600 | And he said, "She didn't go get another pot.

00:01:20.120 | "She didn't go back and go refill the water."

00:01:22.920 | He said, "She took a rope, and she climbed a tree,

00:01:25.520 | "and she."

00:01:27.200 | - Scott, thank you so much for being here.

00:01:31.600 | - It's good to be here, Chris.

00:01:32.600 | I've been looking forward to this.

00:01:33.680 | It'll be fun.

00:01:34.520 | - I think for so many people,

00:01:36.400 | they've seen you, they know Charity Water,

00:01:38.920 | but they don't know the story.

00:01:39.960 | And I think there's a lot of things I wanna dive into

00:01:42.040 | that mean going back to the beginning

00:01:43.960 | and understanding where you came from,

00:01:45.320 | because it's not the same story

00:01:47.320 | that most people go through.

00:01:48.840 | - Well, I think act one is a pretty bizarre childhood.

00:01:53.040 | When I was four, I was born in Philadelphia,

00:01:56.240 | middle-class family.

00:01:57.480 | Dad was a business guy.

00:01:58.680 | My mom was a writer.

00:01:59.880 | And we moved into this really ugly gray house

00:02:02.640 | at the end of a cul-de-sac in the dead of winter.

00:02:05.760 | My parents were gonna have a big family there,

00:02:08.640 | and it was close to my dad's job,

00:02:10.400 | so we had a small commute.

00:02:11.600 | These were all the concerns at the time.

00:02:14.080 | And the house was advertised as energy efficient,

00:02:18.000 | which was great,

00:02:18.840 | except the house came with a carbon monoxide gas leak.

00:02:21.680 | So we move in and we all start getting headaches.

00:02:25.080 | And on New Year's Day, 1980,

00:02:27.720 | my mom walks across the bedroom and she collapses.

00:02:31.280 | She crumples to the floor.

00:02:32.560 | So she's the canary in the coal mine,

00:02:34.960 | which leads to a series of blood tests,

00:02:37.640 | which leads to the discovery of carbon monoxide

00:02:40.200 | in her bloodstream,

00:02:41.400 | which then leads to the leak,

00:02:43.440 | which was in the basement

00:02:44.440 | and it was this faulty heat exchanger.

00:02:47.160 | And I remember my dad ripped it out with an HVAC guy

00:02:50.080 | and he threw it on the sidewalk.

00:02:51.840 | But unfortunately,

00:02:53.200 | the damage was just done specifically for my mom.

00:02:56.200 | And she just never recovered.

00:02:58.320 | She never bounced back from that.

00:03:00.320 | My dad and I bounced back from our symptoms.

00:03:03.120 | But what happened to her was her immune system

00:03:06.280 | was irreparably destroyed.

00:03:08.080 | And her body was no longer able to process chemicals,

00:03:11.640 | process anything toxic.

00:03:14.120 | So I think the best way to describe it from this point on,

00:03:16.320 | she just lived in a bubble.

00:03:17.880 | She lived in one room, isolated.

00:03:20.720 | She wore a 3M mask, like an N95,

00:03:25.160 | really for the rest of her life.

00:03:26.760 | And family planning stopped.

00:03:28.960 | So I grew up this only child,

00:03:32.320 | very quickly now in a caregiver role,

00:03:35.120 | helping to cook for mom,

00:03:36.240 | helping to clean,

00:03:38.120 | really just helping try to make her

00:03:40.240 | as comfortable as possible.

00:03:42.600 | And maybe just to give everybody one story

00:03:45.120 | that I remember as a kid.

00:03:46.440 | I remember mom, she was a writer,

00:03:47.800 | so she loved to read and she was so frustrated

00:03:51.200 | that now the ink from books would make her sick.

00:03:54.880 | So as a kid,

00:03:55.720 | I would either bake her books in the oven

00:03:58.720 | to try to get that smell of new print out,

00:04:01.320 | or I would put them out in the backyard

00:04:03.720 | and flip the pages throughout the day

00:04:05.600 | so that the sun would kind of bake them.

00:04:07.640 | And then I would walk up to the second floor

00:04:09.840 | and she was living in a bathroom

00:04:12.960 | that was covered with aluminum foil.

00:04:15.000 | She slept on a cot

00:04:16.640 | that had been washed in baking soda 20 times.

00:04:19.120 | And I remember she would open the door

00:04:20.400 | kind of with this crinkle sound,

00:04:22.960 | and she would be wearing her mask and her glasses.

00:04:25.600 | She'd be wearing cotton gloves.

00:04:27.720 | She would take the book from me

00:04:29.400 | and she would put it inside a cellophane bag,

00:04:32.040 | shut the door,

00:04:33.120 | and then she was able to read.

00:04:34.480 | So just weird, Chris.

00:04:36.400 | My parents were devout Christians,

00:04:40.880 | kind of non-denominational Christians.

00:04:42.360 | So they had a really authentic faith

00:04:47.360 | that they would certainly attribute

00:04:49.120 | as the only way that they stayed married

00:04:50.640 | and kept the family together.

00:04:52.760 | And I was actually actively raised in the church.

00:04:54.920 | So I would go on Sundays

00:04:56.080 | and I would play piano in Sunday school.

00:04:59.440 | And I was just a good kid growing up.

00:05:00.880 | I didn't smoke.

00:05:01.720 | I didn't drink.

00:05:02.720 | I didn't sleep around.

00:05:05.200 | I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up,

00:05:07.080 | and I was gonna cure mom

00:05:08.480 | and other people I'd met like her.

00:05:10.960 | So that was kind of act one.

00:05:12.680 | Act two was a big detour from that.

00:05:16.320 | At 18, I start acting out

00:05:19.560 | this cliche prodigal son rebellion story,

00:05:23.960 | and I grow my hair down to my shoulders.

00:05:25.840 | I join a rock band and I moved to New York City.

00:05:28.440 | And the band immediately breaks up

00:05:31.280 | because we all hated each other.

00:05:32.680 | But I stumble into this occupation

00:05:35.840 | in New York City nightlife.

00:05:38.200 | And I realized that if a person wanted to rebel,

00:05:41.960 | you could rebel in style as a nightclub promoter.

00:05:45.640 | And all you had to do was get

00:05:47.160 | the right, beautiful, famous people inside the club

00:05:50.560 | alongside people with money,

00:05:52.480 | and then you could sell them a $25 cocktail

00:05:54.800 | or a $1,000 bottle of champagne that cost you only 40.

00:05:58.280 | And act two, that was the next 10 years of my life

00:06:03.280 | running around New York City packing nightclubs.

00:06:06.280 | I wound up working at 40 different nightclubs,

00:06:10.080 | really to the horror and sadness of my parents

00:06:13.320 | who saw their good, virginal Christian kid

00:06:17.000 | now out there smoking 40 cigarettes a day,

00:06:19.440 | doing drugs, going to strip clubs, drinking problem,

00:06:24.440 | just a total hedonistic mess.

00:06:27.600 | And it was really at the end of that 10 years

00:06:31.400 | where I realized, wow, I'm a mess.

00:06:35.680 | And I've really become emotionally bankrupt,

00:06:40.680 | I'm spiritually bankrupt.

00:06:41.960 | I've come so far from this real foundation,

00:06:45.880 | this kind of amazing foundation

00:06:48.040 | that my parents had tried to lay for me in my childhood

00:06:52.480 | as helping others, as this idea of being a doctor.

00:06:56.440 | I'd served nobody but myself for 10 years.

00:06:59.360 | And that really led me to this moment

00:07:03.000 | of kind of cathartic self-discovery and saying,

00:07:05.960 | I need a change, this is not working out.

00:07:09.640 | And I've got to go not find a pivot here,

00:07:13.000 | I need to kind of explore 180 degree change.

00:07:17.160 | What's the opposite of everything

00:07:18.840 | I've been doing for 10 years?

00:07:20.040 | What's the opposite of everything

00:07:21.120 | I've been thinking and speaking?

00:07:23.640 | And being a pretty radical guy, I had this one idea,

00:07:27.840 | what if I sold everything I owned

00:07:29.840 | and I volunteered for one year on a humanitarian mission?

00:07:34.560 | What if I gave back one year of the 10 years

00:07:37.360 | that I'd selfishly wasted and could I be useful?

00:07:41.280 | So it was pretty quick.

00:07:42.280 | I remember from this dial-up internet cafe,

00:07:46.000 | putting in all these applications

00:07:47.280 | to the famous humanitarian organizations

00:07:49.800 | I had tangentially heard of.

00:07:51.680 | You know, the Save the Children's and Oxfam's

00:07:54.200 | and Doctors Without Borders

00:07:55.600 | and World Visions and Red Crosses of the World.

00:07:58.800 | And then I put in my 10 applications and I waited.

00:08:01.360 | And maybe no surprise to anybody listening,

00:08:04.000 | I'm denied by all 10 organizations.

00:08:06.520 | You know, it turns out they are not looking

00:08:08.160 | for nightclub promoters or ex-nightclub promoters

00:08:11.960 | to work alongside.

00:08:14.680 | And I just remember being so sad, so disappointed,

00:08:19.600 | that I thought I was ready for change.

00:08:22.080 | I take this first step and nobody will have me.

00:08:25.160 | Well, I was very fortunate that there was one organization

00:08:27.800 | that actually at first denied me

00:08:29.240 | and then they were about to start their mission

00:08:31.160 | and they couldn't fill that position.

00:08:32.560 | So they went back through the rejected resumes

00:08:35.600 | and they called me up and said,

00:08:37.160 | if I'm willing to pay them $500 a month,

00:08:39.840 | and if I'm willing to go live

00:08:41.760 | in the poorest country in the world,

00:08:43.480 | a country called Liberia in West Africa,

00:08:46.440 | then I could join their humanitarian mission.

00:08:49.160 | And the role that they had for me was a photojournalist.

00:08:51.880 | Now, I was technically not a photojournalist,

00:08:54.200 | but I had gone to NYU part-time.

00:08:56.440 | I'd gotten a communications degree

00:08:58.440 | and I was a pretty decent photographer

00:08:59.840 | and a pretty decent writer.

00:09:01.200 | So my life changed so dramatically as I left nightlife

00:09:06.200 | and set foot in the poorest country in the world,

00:09:10.960 | a country with no electricity, no running water,

00:09:13.640 | no sewage system, no mail system,

00:09:15.840 | a country that had just come out of a 14-year civil war.

00:09:19.320 | And I joined this mission of humanitarian doctors

00:09:24.080 | and surgeons, people who had come from 40 countries

00:09:27.040 | to volunteer their time and offer free medical services

00:09:31.280 | to people who couldn't afford it,

00:09:33.240 | where those services didn't exist.

00:09:35.000 | And that really was the beginning of Act III,

00:09:37.880 | which then eventually led to my discovery

00:09:41.240 | of the need for clean water

00:09:42.680 | and then founding Charity Water.

00:09:44.680 | - We're gonna get through to a lot of these things.

00:09:46.560 | And when I think about that hard change you made,

00:09:49.080 | did it really just, was something inspire you?

00:09:51.120 | Did it build up over time?

00:09:52.920 | How, you know, I know countless people

00:09:55.520 | who don't feel like they're doing their life's work

00:09:57.720 | and, you know, maybe it hasn't,

00:10:00.240 | they haven't hit that moment.

00:10:01.240 | Maybe they also haven't been as far from their life's work

00:10:03.880 | in their previous career as you were,

00:10:05.600 | but what advice do you have for that transition point?

00:10:07.680 | - I think it did build up over time.

00:10:09.680 | And then there was this catalyst where,

00:10:12.200 | I remember I started having some health issues

00:10:14.360 | and one day half my body went numb

00:10:17.760 | and I couldn't feel my hand or my arm.

00:10:20.040 | I remember walking over my loft, turning on the water,

00:10:23.280 | steaming hot water in the sink

00:10:25.560 | and I put my hand and arm under it

00:10:26.920 | and I can't feel anything.

00:10:27.920 | So I am convinced something is terribly wrong with me.

00:10:31.320 | I have some brain tumor, I have some incurable disease

00:10:34.640 | and I'm gonna die.

00:10:35.800 | And that actually led me to really consider,

00:10:40.400 | you know, existential questions of the heaven and hell

00:10:43.480 | that I was raised with as a kid,

00:10:45.640 | questions about legacy, questions about, you know,

00:10:49.240 | did it matter that I was here at all?

00:10:51.560 | What had I done for others?

00:10:53.600 | It turned out that nobody could find anything wrong with me.

00:10:56.040 | So after a series of brain tests and MRIs and EKG scans,

00:11:00.200 | I mean, it could have been my lifestyle

00:11:02.760 | of going to dinner at 10, going to the club at 12,

00:11:07.040 | going to the after hours to do cocaine from five to noon

00:11:10.160 | and then taking Ambien, you know, 1 p.m. to come down.

00:11:13.560 | It might have had something to do with my body

00:11:15.120 | just crying out and shutting down or at least half of it.

00:11:18.840 | But that was an event that I think caused me

00:11:22.640 | to really stop and take stock of life and legacy

00:11:26.960 | and want to just change everything, you know,

00:11:30.000 | not even get back on track, you know,

00:11:32.160 | create a completely new path or a new track.

00:11:35.000 | - And when you created that path,

00:11:35.920 | you didn't know what it would be.

00:11:37.240 | And I think a lot of people assume that

00:11:39.520 | if I don't love what I'm doing,

00:11:41.120 | I need to find what I love before I can kind of make a change.

00:11:45.280 | Would you argue that maybe that

00:11:47.080 | is kind of incorrect common wisdom?

00:11:49.000 | - I stumbled, I completely stumbled into it.

00:11:51.840 | You know, I should say,

00:11:53.840 | when I went to join this medical mission,

00:11:56.440 | I quit all the stuff that I mentioned.

00:11:58.720 | You know, I remember having my last cigarette.

00:12:00.600 | I remember, you know,

00:12:01.800 | saying I'm never going to touch drugs again.

00:12:04.080 | I'm never going to look at a pornographic image again.

00:12:06.000 | I really want to kind of shed all of these vices

00:12:09.440 | that have gripped me for a decade.

00:12:13.120 | And what was so important for me

00:12:15.920 | was also changing community and environment.

00:12:18.800 | It was much easier not to smoke two packs of Marlboro Reds

00:12:22.520 | or, you know, get high

00:12:26.040 | when you're surrounded by humanitarian doctors.

00:12:29.000 | Not so easy when your job is nightlife

00:12:31.760 | and filling clubs five nights a week.

00:12:33.720 | So for me, I think I was so fortunate

00:12:36.240 | that the intention was there to change,

00:12:38.880 | but then my environment also changed.

00:12:41.680 | I don't know that I would have had the self-control

00:12:44.200 | to just quit all that stuff cold turkey

00:12:47.080 | while I'm still surrounded by, you know,

00:12:48.800 | thousands of drunk partying people.

00:12:51.400 | - And you probably didn't know the goal

00:12:52.920 | going into this one-year adventure

00:12:55.760 | was to get into charitable work for your life.

00:12:59.080 | - Correct, correct.

00:12:59.920 | - Just to kind of reset and start over, I guess.

00:13:02.560 | - It's just where it took me.

00:13:03.560 | Yeah, and in fact, at the end of the year,

00:13:05.440 | I just signed up for another year

00:13:06.720 | 'cause I just didn't know what was next,

00:13:08.280 | but I wanted more life, more impact like this.

00:13:13.000 | And, you know, the cool thing, Chris,

00:13:14.280 | was when I landed in Liberia as a photojournalist

00:13:19.000 | for this medical mission,

00:13:20.520 | I had about 15,000 emails that I brought with me.

00:13:24.640 | And back then, you know, email open rates

00:13:26.920 | were close to 100%.

00:13:28.440 | So I was taking this whole group of people

00:13:33.200 | that I had invited to 40 different clubs over a decade

00:13:37.200 | and was sharing what I was seeing.

00:13:40.000 | So they were living vicariously through this guy

00:13:42.400 | that they had known and partied with

00:13:44.200 | who is now embedded with, you know,

00:13:47.280 | really badass, like life-changing doctors and surgeons

00:13:51.440 | in this country, you know, that's 14 years post-war

00:13:56.280 | and with these people trying to pick up the pieces

00:13:58.520 | and serve some of the greatest needs,

00:14:02.400 | like some of the greatest human needs,

00:14:03.840 | you know, maybe even on the planet at that time.

00:14:06.240 | So, you know, I joke that there were certainly

00:14:08.080 | a few unsubscribes in the beginning.

00:14:10.600 | You know, people were saying,

00:14:11.440 | "Look, that Prada party that you said,

00:14:12.920 | you know, that was awesome.

00:14:13.840 | That store party you threw for the opening,

00:14:17.000 | you know, that MTV thing you did with Perry Farrell

00:14:19.880 | was awesome, but I'm not signing up

00:14:22.240 | for cleft lips and cleft tumors."

00:14:24.520 | That was really the small minority.

00:14:26.560 | I mean, maybe the ability to tell stories visually

00:14:31.440 | of what I was seeing actually grew the list

00:14:34.520 | and people began to donate money and sponsor surgeries.

00:14:38.440 | And then people began to volunteer and say,

00:14:40.560 | "Well, Scott can go and find a way to be useful."

00:14:44.240 | You know, I work at Chanel.

00:14:45.760 | I'd like some of that feeling of purpose in my life as well.

00:14:49.760 | So I was kind of able to redeem some of the things

00:14:52.640 | that I learned over those 10 years,

00:14:54.520 | even though they were directed selfishly

00:14:56.320 | or they were directed, you know, in, you know,

00:14:59.120 | maybe a hedonistic way.

00:15:00.960 | I think the thing that I had learned

00:15:02.920 | was how to tell stories.

00:15:04.840 | You know, the story I was telling then, Chris,

00:15:06.560 | was get past my velvet rope, you know,

00:15:09.200 | get seen by us looking through the one-way glass,

00:15:12.360 | get picked to come in,

00:15:14.120 | then sit with all the beautiful, rich, famous people,

00:15:17.000 | spend a whole lot of money,

00:15:18.600 | and your life has great meaning.

00:15:20.520 | You have arrived.

00:15:21.560 | I'd gotten so good at telling that story

00:15:24.000 | that I was just telling the wrong story.

00:15:26.640 | So when I started telling a very different story

00:15:29.640 | of doctors who had passionately given up

00:15:33.240 | their vacation time,

00:15:34.680 | who had not flown to the Four Seasons in the Maldives,

00:15:37.680 | but had come to the poorest country in the world

00:15:39.760 | for a couple months to serve and get nothing in return,

00:15:43.440 | people were really moved by that.

00:15:45.320 | But the skill had been learned in a very different--

00:15:49.280 | - Yeah, you talked about the person at Chanel

00:15:51.360 | trying to have a bit more purpose.

00:15:53.320 | At what point in time did you find

00:15:54.960 | that doing this was your purpose?

00:15:57.320 | Or I guess, what is your purpose now?

00:15:59.320 | - I think almost immediately.

00:16:00.640 | I loved it.

00:16:01.640 | I mean, I remember getting asked a lot like,

00:16:03.400 | "Oh, isn't it hard?

00:16:04.240 | "You're living in this 120-square-foot cabin

00:16:06.840 | "with two roommates."

00:16:08.000 | And the ship was not a cruise liner.

00:16:11.120 | This was not a carnival cruise.

00:16:12.360 | The thing was 53 years old,

00:16:13.680 | had rats and mice and cockroaches.

00:16:16.240 | And it was a very, very old kind of broken-down ship,

00:16:19.720 | which actually had to be retired a couple years later.

00:16:22.240 | But I was so inspired by being surrounded

00:16:27.760 | with people who served others.

00:16:30.200 | I think it was really that simple,

00:16:31.800 | who were just asking the question,

00:16:33.600 | "How can I take what I've been blessed with?

00:16:35.400 | "How can I take my time, my talent, my money,

00:16:38.960 | "and use it to help others,

00:16:41.400 | "use it to end some of this needless suffering

00:16:45.240 | "out there in the world?"

00:16:46.400 | So I think I was just surrounded, Chris,

00:16:48.040 | with people with the exact opposite intention

00:16:51.800 | for the life I'd lived for 10 years

00:16:53.720 | and the lives of the people that I was curating

00:16:56.400 | or that I was surrounded, which was really,

00:16:59.240 | how much pleasure can we bring to ourself

00:17:02.440 | at any given moment of any given day

00:17:04.720 | and all the moments of all the days

00:17:07.080 | versus how can we help?

00:17:09.080 | How can we serve?

00:17:09.920 | And do you think that is a formula

00:17:11.080 | for a more fulfilling life?

00:17:13.320 | I'm very careful to tell others.

00:17:15.560 | I mean, I think I have my personal experience.

00:17:18.600 | I have found there's a real freedom

00:17:21.240 | that comes with service.

00:17:23.160 | We've had donors over the years.

00:17:25.920 | Someone's about to go buy a BMW

00:17:27.560 | and will come across Charity Water

00:17:28.880 | and will buy a Toyota Prius instead

00:17:31.200 | and donate the difference

00:17:33.120 | to go help a couple communities get access to clean water.

00:17:36.120 | So I have seen sacrificial giving.

00:17:38.800 | I've seen purpose-driven work improve the lives

00:17:43.800 | of so many people now through our community.

00:17:46.240 | We've had millions of donors around the world.

00:17:48.800 | I believe so, certainly true for me

00:17:51.720 | and certainly true from what I've observed.

00:17:54.000 | I will say, Chris, there was never enough.

00:17:57.640 | Somebody always had a more beautiful girlfriend

00:17:59.680 | who was more famous.

00:18:00.880 | Somebody always had a better car, a better plane.

00:18:04.880 | If I was with a group of people

00:18:06.480 | gambling $10,000 a hand at Blackjack,

00:18:09.120 | somebody else was gambling 100,000 a hand.

00:18:11.520 | So it was this insatiable lust for more,

00:18:14.960 | but there was no end point.

00:18:16.640 | And I think looking back at that,

00:18:19.560 | I mean, there was never going to be enough.

00:18:22.080 | And in fact, I still know people who are out at the clubs

00:18:25.600 | and they are now dating girls younger than their daughters.

00:18:29.280 | You know, just continually looking for more,

00:18:33.120 | looking for more, looking for those markers of success,

00:18:36.080 | knowing that somebody's always got

00:18:37.360 | a little bit more than you.

00:18:38.920 | And it's not like that when you embrace a life of service.

00:18:43.440 | I guess it's more to a different degree.

00:18:46.120 | There's more work to be done.

00:18:47.920 | One of my favorite quotes,

00:18:50.240 | somebody sent me from a New York City bodega

00:18:52.240 | like almost 20 years ago,

00:18:53.520 | and it was a sign outside of Delhi that says,

00:18:56.480 | "Do not be afraid of work with no end."

00:18:59.720 | And that's really how I see 17 years at Charity Water now,

00:19:03.440 | is there's always another person to help.

00:19:06.040 | There's always another community that needs clean water.

00:19:09.560 | Let's say we get to the end of the water crisis,

00:19:13.360 | which I truly believe is possible and I truly hope we do.

00:19:16.680 | You know, people are always asking me,

00:19:17.800 | so you're just going to put yourself out of business, right?

00:19:19.600 | Oh, Charity should put themselves out of business.

00:19:21.760 | I think that's one of the stupidest concepts I've ever heard.

00:19:24.640 | Yeah, if we've helped 17 million people get clean water,

00:19:28.120 | if we get to 100 million served, 300 million served,

00:19:31.280 | if we eradicate this problem, you know,

00:19:33.960 | I would hope we would take everything we have learned

00:19:38.400 | over decades of working with donors,

00:19:41.960 | building trust, building relationship.

00:19:44.680 | I would hope we'd take everything we've learned,

00:19:47.640 | operating in 30 really difficult countries around the world,

00:19:52.120 | and we'd say, great, everybody now has water.

00:19:55.440 | What else could we do together?

00:19:57.040 | What else could we do with our donors?

00:19:58.440 | What else could we do with our team members

00:20:00.480 | and all this expertise?

00:20:01.560 | Are there people hungry?

00:20:03.000 | Are there people without access to healthcare?

00:20:04.440 | Are there people that don't have a roof over their heads?

00:20:06.680 | Let's take everything we've learned,

00:20:08.280 | let's go focus on that next critical human need

00:20:12.120 | or that next group of people who are needlessly suffering,

00:20:16.280 | rather than let's drop the mic,

00:20:18.240 | shut down the organization,

00:20:19.480 | and go all try to become, you know, millionaires finally.

00:20:22.240 | - Well, let's talk about that because, you know,

00:20:24.400 | the mission is never ending, right?

00:20:25.920 | You've dedicated yourself and the organization you built

00:20:28.400 | to a life of service.

00:20:29.640 | There's no end in sight, right?

00:20:30.920 | There will always probably be something, unfortunately,

00:20:33.720 | that the world needs to be less suffering

00:20:37.880 | and people in a better place.

00:20:39.800 | How do you make time for yourself in that world?

00:20:42.800 | How do you, you mentioned, you know,

00:20:44.480 | the selfishness of your past.

00:20:46.520 | Is a little bit of selfishness okay?

00:20:48.840 | Can you take yourself out to dinner?

00:20:50.160 | Can you go on a vacation or, you know,

00:20:52.800 | because you've been so close to it,

00:20:54.360 | I can't remember the number, but it's, you know,

00:20:56.280 | a very small amount of money each month

00:20:58.880 | to provide someone with water.

00:21:00.840 | So how do you not want to give everything?

00:21:03.480 | - I think it's personality.

00:21:05.880 | I'm both optimistic, but I'm also very pragmatic.

00:21:09.960 | And I think maybe, you know,

00:21:11.680 | my experience in 10 years of clubs

00:21:13.760 | has helped me take a long view at this.

00:21:17.760 | And, you know, I realized going out to dinner with my wife

00:21:22.080 | is really important.

00:21:22.960 | Going out to family dinners is important for our family.

00:21:26.020 | There are certain things that I try to be

00:21:30.120 | a really, really good steward of money with.

00:21:34.080 | I mean, I know a lot of people, you know,

00:21:35.720 | are a fan of your travel hacks.

00:21:37.240 | And we were talking about this offline before.

00:21:39.600 | You know, I'm on about a hundred planes a year

00:21:42.200 | and I just fly coach.

00:21:43.800 | You know, we have never used a single donor dollar

00:21:47.000 | to fly me or any other executive, you know,

00:21:49.480 | or anybody at the organization in business class

00:21:52.120 | because we take that extra money,

00:21:54.200 | which in my case would be, you know,

00:21:55.840 | hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

00:21:57.400 | And we put that back in the mission.

00:21:59.080 | So there are certain things that, you know,

00:22:02.320 | you're taking an austerity stance on.

00:22:05.800 | But, you know, there are other things that, I mean,

00:22:09.160 | I think I live a pretty normal life.

00:22:11.680 | You know, I've got a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old

00:22:14.920 | and we just had a, I have one that's nine weeks old now.

00:22:18.920 | We had our surprise third.

00:22:20.680 | I'm almost 50, my wife's 40, but, you know,

00:22:24.080 | I really think about just making sure my kids

00:22:27.600 | are able to go play sports and live in a safe house

00:22:31.520 | in a safe neighborhood.

00:22:32.640 | And, you know, when they need bikes, I go and buy them bikes.

00:22:35.560 | I'm not thinking, oh my gosh,

00:22:37.360 | if my nine-year-old goes without a bike,

00:22:39.480 | I can go give two more people in Africa

00:22:41.320 | access to clean water.

00:22:42.440 | I think it kind of take a long, sustainable view.

00:22:44.400 | If my family is healthy,

00:22:46.080 | if my relationship with my wife is healthy,

00:22:49.600 | you know, I'm probably going to be able to do this

00:22:51.840 | a whole lot longer and hopefully impact the lives

00:22:54.360 | of hundreds of millions of people, you know,

00:22:56.600 | by sustaining the energy or the passion or the mission.

00:23:01.600 | I'm also surrounded, you know,

00:23:04.800 | I spend a lot of time in proximity to extraordinary wealth.

00:23:09.800 | And I know it does not make people happy.

00:23:14.000 | I mean, I do know some of the most unhappy people I know

00:23:18.280 | are some of the wealthiest people that I know.

00:23:20.360 | And just because, you know,

00:23:22.280 | you've got hundreds of millions of dollars

00:23:24.200 | or billions of dollars does not make for a healthy,

00:23:27.960 | flourishing relationship, family, you know, holistic life.

00:23:33.360 | So, there's no mystery, I think,

00:23:35.960 | around money or capital that I'm chasing anymore.

00:23:39.960 | In fact, sometimes even the opposite.

00:23:42.360 | - And how has that changed your own outlook

00:23:44.400 | on building, you know, your wealth or saving?

00:23:47.600 | - We have one family that gives to us

00:23:49.880 | that I'm really inspired by.

00:23:51.720 | They are a family in Texas.

00:23:54.400 | They've given over $13 million to Charity Water.

00:23:58.520 | And the family caps their spending at $180,000 a year.

00:24:02.240 | This is a family of four.

00:24:03.760 | And that's just the number that, you know,

00:24:05.960 | I think the house is paid for

00:24:07.160 | and their couple cars are paid for,

00:24:08.920 | but they just don't spend any more than $180,000 a year.

00:24:11.800 | And they give away everything else,

00:24:13.600 | everything from investments,

00:24:14.680 | everything from, you know, he was a successful businessman.

00:24:19.600 | And I'm really inspired by that.

00:24:22.160 | You know, so I kind of, I mean, I appreciate the extremes.

00:24:27.160 | We were talking earlier about,

00:24:28.680 | I think you've got a family member who's a Franciscan monk.

00:24:32.360 | I mean, that is compelling to me.

00:24:34.600 | I just don't know that I'm cut out for, you know,

00:24:37.840 | I will say this, in the fundraising business,

00:24:41.000 | I find sometimes people who have a really unhealthy view

00:24:44.880 | of money will then shame people who do have money

00:24:49.080 | and they become terrible fundraisers.

00:24:50.640 | Nobody wants to be around them.

00:24:52.240 | You know, you don't get invited to go on a vacation,

00:24:56.040 | you know, with somebody who has the capacity

00:24:57.880 | to give you a million dollars or $10 million

00:25:00.360 | or, you know, $50 million,

00:25:02.160 | if you're going to make them feel judged,

00:25:04.720 | if you're going to make them feel terrible about themselves.

00:25:07.480 | So I think it's just, maybe it has to do with my past

00:25:11.200 | or what I was able to do in New York for 10 years

00:25:14.240 | or just a lot of the people

00:25:15.640 | that I'm in a relationship with now at Charity Water.

00:25:18.360 | I look at wealth as an opportunity

00:25:21.000 | to do more good in the world.

00:25:22.920 | Wealth as an opportunity to serve,

00:25:25.440 | to put that money to work in human flourishing,

00:25:29.920 | in ending suffering.

00:25:31.480 | And it's my job, when I'm around people

00:25:34.240 | who have extraordinary wealth or, you know,

00:25:37.360 | middle-class wealth, to tell compelling enough stories,

00:25:42.320 | to create a compelling organization

00:25:45.000 | that can be a vehicle for turning their money

00:25:48.200 | into the transformation of human life

00:25:51.360 | and then creating a circle back to them

00:25:54.480 | so that they know it happened.

00:25:55.960 | And if I can do all that,

00:25:57.360 | which I've been trying to do for almost 20 years,

00:25:59.840 | you know, we find we're restoring

00:26:01.280 | a lot of people's faith in charity.

00:26:04.280 | And charity means love.

00:26:05.520 | It's a really beautiful word that has become something

00:26:09.000 | that many people are skeptical or cynical about.

00:26:11.920 | I remember when I started, 42% of Americans,

00:26:14.400 | you know, polled by USA Today,

00:26:15.920 | said they didn't trust charities.

00:26:17.680 | A more recent New York University study

00:26:19.800 | found 70% of Americans believe charities

00:26:21.680 | waste their money in some part, waste their donations.

00:26:24.520 | So, so many of the things that we've tried to do

00:26:26.680 | at Charity Water is restore that lost faith

00:26:29.480 | and, you know, almost get people addicted to generosity.

00:26:34.480 | And it could be generosity of time.

00:26:36.200 | It could be generosity of money.

00:26:37.760 | It could be both.

00:26:38.600 | - Yeah, I mean, the thing that I first learned

00:26:40.280 | about Charity Water that made me realize

00:26:42.600 | you guys were different is that

00:26:44.280 | you have two separate sources for money, right?

00:26:47.560 | One covers all the overhead,

00:26:49.280 | all the way down to the credit card processing fees,

00:26:51.400 | and then the other is just directly

00:26:53.840 | to go towards causes and pay your money.

00:26:56.840 | I mean, I think that was an intentional decision early on.

00:26:59.440 | - That's right.

00:27:00.280 | - How much of your success do you think

00:27:01.760 | would you attribute to, you know,

00:27:03.880 | in my mind, there's two things.

00:27:05.000 | You've ran it completely differently

00:27:06.440 | and then you've become masterful at storytelling.

00:27:08.920 | How do you think about those two things

00:27:10.520 | and is maybe there another thing

00:27:12.000 | that you think drove such success?

00:27:14.120 | - Well, yeah, when I started, I was 30.

00:27:15.840 | I'd just come back from two years in Africa

00:27:17.520 | as a photojournalist.

00:27:18.760 | And I think I had the advantage, Chris,

00:27:20.400 | of not knowing anything about how to build a charity

00:27:24.480 | or run a charity.

00:27:25.360 | And I didn't really know anyone in institutional philanthropy.

00:27:28.440 | I know people who worked at Goldman Sachs

00:27:30.920 | or at Sephora or at MTV VH1 at the time, everyday people.

00:27:35.920 | And I remember actually going

00:27:38.320 | and buying nonprofits for dummies.

00:27:41.080 | You know, the yellow book.

00:27:42.800 | How do you start a 501(c)(3)?

00:27:44.480 | What is a 501(c)(3)?

00:27:45.720 | Okay, we need some lawyers

00:27:46.840 | and you have to file this application

00:27:48.640 | with the federal government

00:27:49.720 | and you need a board.

00:27:51.400 | I really had no idea at the beginning.

00:27:54.160 | But I think that then allowed me to go out

00:27:56.400 | and do just some informal market research.

00:27:58.960 | And as I talked to my friends,

00:28:00.800 | they loved the noble mission

00:28:03.160 | of getting everybody on earth clean water.

00:28:05.200 | I mean, everybody I talked to

00:28:06.880 | could stand for clean water for humans.

00:28:10.320 | Republicans and Democrats and people of faith

00:28:13.000 | and people who are agnostic or atheists,

00:28:14.680 | like everybody could think water is a good idea for people.

00:28:18.840 | But really this pervasive kind of underlying skepticism,

00:28:23.840 | everyone also seemed to have a horror story

00:28:27.800 | of a charity gone wrong.

00:28:29.560 | You know, a charity where the money didn't get

00:28:32.480 | to the people that it was intended to get to,

00:28:34.800 | or a charity where they'd hired aunts and uncles

00:28:38.000 | and distant relatives and was just racked with nepotism.

00:28:41.960 | So the model for Charity Water really came out

00:28:45.160 | of just listening to everyday people.

00:28:47.560 | I said, "Well, what would make you compelled to give?"

00:28:50.920 | And the 100% model just came out of that.

00:28:52.720 | Well, people said, "If I knew that 100% of what I gave

00:28:55.080 | "would actually help people, I'd be more likely to give."

00:28:58.040 | I said, "All right, well, this just needs to look like

00:29:00.520 | "two separately audited bank accounts.

00:29:02.960 | "And in one bank account, I'm gonna raise my hand

00:29:05.600 | "and go try to find business leaders and entrepreneurs

00:29:09.320 | "who are not skeptical and actually who wouldn't mind paying

00:29:12.800 | "those unsexy overhead costs like staff salaries

00:29:16.240 | "and office rent and phone bills

00:29:18.600 | "and the toner for the Epson copy machine

00:29:21.480 | "if they knew we were efficient with those donations

00:29:24.120 | "and transparent.

00:29:25.160 | "And then I can go out to the public and say,

00:29:27.320 | "Great, not your problem.

00:29:29.120 | "If you give a dollar or a million dollars,

00:29:31.440 | "every single penny, every dollar will go directly

00:29:34.320 | "to build these water projects

00:29:36.400 | "which get people clean water."

00:29:38.160 | And as you mentioned, you know,

00:29:39.160 | so that there would be kind of perfect integrity

00:29:41.560 | with the 100% model, we said,

00:29:43.120 | "Well, even pay back your credit card fees.

00:29:45.000 | "If you give 100 bucks on your Amex, sadly, we get 96,

00:29:48.720 | "but we will pay that $4 back from the overhead account

00:29:52.240 | "and we'll send your $100 to the field."

00:29:54.240 | And then the second thing that came out of listening was

00:29:56.920 | people wanted just to see where their money went.

00:29:59.560 | So we said, "All right, well, we're gonna prove

00:30:01.720 | "where this money goes.

00:30:02.600 | "Money's not fungible.

00:30:04.200 | "We can build technology in the water bank account

00:30:07.640 | "where all the public is giving towards

00:30:09.640 | "and we could track a $92 donation to a well in Malawi

00:30:14.640 | "or $114 donation to a spring protection in Nepal."

00:30:19.480 | And we actually became the first charity in the world

00:30:22.200 | just to geolocate all of our completed water projects

00:30:25.640 | up on Google Earth and then later Google Maps.

00:30:28.520 | So there was this theme of hyper-transparency,

00:30:32.400 | but, you know, again, could we wrap that with a story?

00:30:35.280 | And then the third kind of pillar was just this belief that,

00:30:39.320 | yeah, I remember looking around the sector and saying,

00:30:41.680 | "Where are the apples of charity?

00:30:43.960 | "Where's the Nike?

00:30:45.240 | "Where's the Virgin?"

00:30:46.880 | Or later, "Where's the Tesla?

00:30:48.000 | "Where are these inspiring, imaginative, creative brands

00:30:53.000 | "that capture the imagination of people?"

00:30:56.440 | And I saw a lot of shame and guilt-based marketing.

00:30:59.800 | I saw a lot of charities with bad websites

00:31:02.960 | and terrible checkout forms and PDFs

00:31:05.360 | that they expected people to read,

00:31:07.080 | you know, white papers about their issue.

00:31:09.120 | So I think this just came through listening

00:31:11.360 | and these became really core distinctives for Charity Water,

00:31:14.880 | the 100% model,

00:31:16.680 | always looking for ways to connect people to their money,

00:31:19.400 | proving it, trying to build this really inspiring,

00:31:23.400 | design-forward brand.

00:31:26.120 | And then maybe the most important thing

00:31:28.440 | was really what we wouldn't do.

00:31:29.760 | We wouldn't send anyone that looked like me

00:31:31.600 | over to Africa or India or Southeast Asia to go drill wells.

00:31:35.480 | And I believed just from day one

00:31:37.760 | for this work to be culturally appropriate,

00:31:40.040 | for it to be sustainable in the long run,

00:31:42.040 | it had to be led by the locals

00:31:43.960 | in each of these countries where we worked.

00:31:45.960 | And if we were successful,

00:31:47.680 | we would help grow the teams of local hydrogeologists

00:31:51.320 | and local well drillers and technicians.

00:31:53.720 | And as we scaled,

00:31:55.200 | we would create thousands of local jobs in the process,

00:32:00.200 | and they would be the ones leading their communities

00:32:03.040 | and leading their countries forward in the future.

00:32:04.840 | They'd also be the ones getting the credit.

00:32:06.640 | And that's, you know,

00:32:07.480 | maybe what I've been really most proud of,

00:32:09.520 | you know, 17 years later,

00:32:10.920 | we employ, you know,

00:32:11.840 | well over 2,500 people through our partner network

00:32:15.400 | now across 21 active countries.

00:32:17.640 | And they are taking the money that we're raising

00:32:20.440 | and turning it into clean water

00:32:22.720 | for the people living in their communities

00:32:24.200 | in their countries every single day.

00:32:26.040 | So just to kind of finish on this,

00:32:27.840 | day one, I put all these things together,

00:32:29.640 | and my best idea for the launch of Charity Water

00:32:32.880 | was to get a nightclub donated during Fashion Week

00:32:35.960 | and to get Open Bar donated,

00:32:38.000 | and then to just email everyone I knew

00:32:40.360 | and invite them to my 31st birthday party.

00:32:42.440 | And 700 people came,

00:32:44.640 | probably less for me,

00:32:45.640 | more for the club and the Open Bar.

00:32:47.480 | And on their way in,

00:32:48.560 | we put out this big plexi box

00:32:50.520 | and they had to drop $20 in the box to get in the club.

00:32:53.600 | And at the end of the night,

00:32:54.800 | we'd collected $15,000.

00:32:56.920 | And we took 100% of the money

00:32:58.920 | to a refugee camp in Northern Uganda.

00:33:01.680 | We built our very first well,

00:33:04.080 | and then we sent the photo, proof,

00:33:06.160 | and the GPS coordinates and the satellite images

00:33:08.840 | back to the 700 people who came.

00:33:10.680 | And we said, "You came, you gave $20.

00:33:13.680 | "It mattered, and here, watch, see.

00:33:17.600 | "See the impact you made."

00:33:20.080 | And I mean, that sounds so simple,

00:33:22.360 | but nobody else was doing that at the time.

00:33:25.040 | And it turned out to be such a competitive advantage

00:33:28.280 | in the early days.

00:33:29.600 | - You had no experience in this space

00:33:31.240 | and have built, you know, not the biggest,

00:33:33.600 | but definitely one of the most innovative charities

00:33:35.640 | that I'm familiar with.

00:33:37.000 | I wanna jump into a few lessons

00:33:38.840 | because, you know, it seems like,

00:33:40.360 | wow, you just did this one thing

00:33:41.880 | and then it took off from there.

00:33:42.960 | I know you've had your fair share of setbacks along the way.

00:33:46.720 | So, you know, you were passionate about this space,

00:33:49.400 | but I know that takes patience and resilience.

00:33:52.520 | How do you handle that?

00:33:54.280 | What advice would you give to people

00:33:55.960 | who are dealing with similar things in life,

00:33:58.440 | whether it's charities or anything,

00:34:00.400 | just to kind of build that resilience

00:34:02.600 | in their own pursuits?

00:34:03.640 | - Well, a lot of things didn't work.

00:34:06.200 | I remember, you know, the 100% model sounds great

00:34:09.000 | until you run out of people

00:34:10.400 | who are willing to pay for overhead.

00:34:12.200 | So we had this moment about a year and a half in

00:34:14.840 | where we were raising so much money

00:34:16.800 | for clean water projects

00:34:18.360 | 'cause the 100% model was resonating

00:34:20.840 | with the everyday public,

00:34:22.280 | but I just couldn't find people

00:34:24.320 | to hire that next incremental staff member soon enough.

00:34:27.840 | And I'll never remember,

00:34:29.040 | there was this really pivotal moment.

00:34:30.560 | We had $881,000 in the water bank account

00:34:34.800 | that was headed out to the fields to build projects.

00:34:37.840 | And we had a couple weeks left

00:34:39.800 | in the overhead account to make payroll.

00:34:42.280 | And I remember the advice I was getting from people

00:34:44.680 | was to go borrow against the 881(k).

00:34:47.600 | You know, write a little IOU

00:34:49.080 | and transfer between accounts

00:34:50.360 | 'cause you gotta pay your people

00:34:51.600 | and, you know, you'll figure this out later.

00:34:54.200 | And I remember calling lawyers

00:34:56.160 | and I was gonna start to unwind the charity

00:34:59.240 | and just say, this doesn't work.

00:35:01.600 | This is an untenable model.

00:35:03.960 | You know, I guess unless you have, you know,

00:35:05.680 | a huge amount of capital to start with

00:35:07.320 | or a billionaire backer.

00:35:09.440 | But I remember thinking if we borrowed one penny

00:35:12.680 | of the public's money, you know,

00:35:14.400 | and violated that promise,

00:35:16.560 | even if we paid it back later,

00:35:17.960 | there would just be a crack in the foundation

00:35:20.040 | of our integrity.

00:35:20.920 | And I didn't wanna run that organization.

00:35:22.880 | I would rather fail and, you know,

00:35:24.960 | try again with maybe the traditional business model

00:35:27.680 | where you put all the money in one business,

00:35:28.960 | you know, one account.

00:35:30.440 | And we were very fortunate at that time.

00:35:32.680 | I met a young entrepreneur in Silicon Valley

00:35:36.200 | and I remember taking a meeting with him.

00:35:38.520 | He was interested in what we were doing.

00:35:39.920 | And I remember thinking the meeting went terribly.

00:35:43.200 | And at the end of the meeting,

00:35:45.880 | he asked for our bank account details.

00:35:47.720 | And then three days later,

00:35:49.240 | he shot me a note well after midnight saying,

00:35:52.840 | I enjoyed meeting you.

00:35:54.200 | You know, really love the passion, love the work.

00:35:56.320 | I just wired a million dollars into your overhead account.

00:35:58.520 | And we went from insolvent, you know,

00:36:00.240 | weeks away from insolvency

00:36:02.400 | to over a year of operating capital.

00:36:06.440 | And, you know, we really never looked back.

00:36:09.560 | Had that not happened,

00:36:11.920 | I'm probably not having this conversation with you.

00:36:14.000 | And what helped me so much was I think,

00:36:17.120 | one, I fell back on our values.

00:36:19.160 | And I would have been proud to hold my head high

00:36:23.520 | and shut the organization down

00:36:24.920 | and just say this didn't work,

00:36:26.240 | but at least not compromise.

00:36:28.040 | And, you know, besides the money, that million dollars,

00:36:31.080 | which was so needed at the time,

00:36:33.200 | it was also that somebody believed in me.

00:36:35.040 | And he believed that this was a tenable model.

00:36:38.360 | We just needed more time.

00:36:40.080 | We needed more time to work it out.

00:36:41.760 | And today, there are 131 families who pay the overhead.

00:36:45.760 | And that grows every single year.

00:36:47.600 | We invite 10 or 15 new people in.

00:36:50.520 | And, you know, we've never really looked back

00:36:53.600 | after that moment, after that time.

00:36:55.320 | That forced us to be creative.

00:36:56.600 | It forced us to come up with a multi-year, multi-tier

00:37:00.280 | kind of operations giving program.

00:37:03.440 | And, you know, now we have so many people

00:37:05.520 | that actually prefer to give that way.

00:37:07.640 | They would prefer to support a software engineer

00:37:10.640 | or a UI/UX designer

00:37:12.560 | than actually give directly to the water projects.

00:37:14.960 | - And so now can you give money the other way?

00:37:17.120 | If you have too much in the overhead,

00:37:19.080 | do you just save it for a rainy day?

00:37:22.240 | - Well, we never have too much in the overhead, Chris.

00:37:24.480 | We never have too much in the overhead.

00:37:26.120 | You know, that's always probably,

00:37:27.600 | it's always a slightly harder proposition.

00:37:30.800 | You know, but all that to say, you know,

00:37:33.160 | it's, we're not going bankrupt.

00:37:35.440 | You know, we're always trying to grow that group.

00:37:37.200 | We're trying, that is where all the growth capital

00:37:38.880 | comes from.

00:37:39.720 | So unless we grow the amount of people

00:37:42.000 | who are willing to give on that side,

00:37:44.280 | we can't grow the team.

00:37:45.520 | We really can't grow, you know,

00:37:46.880 | the scale of the organization.

00:37:48.680 | But, you know, I think that was one.

00:37:51.120 | I think in, you know, resiliency,

00:37:53.120 | you're talking about staying the course.

00:37:55.120 | I remember seeing, so we're 17 years in,

00:37:58.080 | and we've now helped 17.4 million people

00:38:01.280 | get access to clean water.

00:38:02.600 | About 137,000 villages around the world.

00:38:06.520 | On my bad days, I try to fill Madison Square Garden

00:38:10.080 | with 17 million people.

00:38:11.480 | And you would have to build

00:38:12.800 | about a thousand Madison Square Gardens.

00:38:15.520 | So, you know, Charity Water has sold out

00:38:17.920 | Staples Center or The Garden or, you know,

00:38:19.840 | O2 Arena in London about a thousand times,

00:38:23.360 | you know, to contain the amount of people

00:38:24.880 | who now have water.

00:38:25.960 | 99% of my time, I put that 17 million

00:38:28.440 | against the 700 million, and it's 1/40th.

00:38:31.080 | Yes, two and a half percent of the way to goal,

00:38:33.760 | because goal really is creating a world

00:38:36.680 | where no one drinks disgusting water.

00:38:38.680 | Like no human being alive,

00:38:40.880 | as we're recording a podcast,

00:38:42.840 | is risking their life, is poisoning themselves.

00:38:46.840 | Simply because of the environment they were born into.

00:38:50.080 | And especially because we know how to solve this problem.

00:38:53.080 | I mean, that's what makes this both wonderful

00:38:55.440 | and energizing and also frustrating,

00:38:58.000 | is there are a lot of problems, Chris,

00:38:59.920 | we don't know how to solve.

00:39:01.240 | My mom eventually died of pancreatic cancer.

00:39:04.000 | It was four months from diagnosis to death.

00:39:05.920 | They had absolutely no idea how to help her.

00:39:07.520 | We don't know how to solve ALS

00:39:09.280 | or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's yet.

00:39:11.560 | We know how to solve water for people.

00:39:13.560 | There's not a single one of the 700 million people out there

00:39:17.080 | where we're scratching our heads saying,

00:39:19.000 | I just couldn't help them.

00:39:20.560 | You know, wouldn't know how to get them water.

00:39:22.840 | Now, we haven't created the will to solve the problem.

00:39:26.520 | We haven't allocated the resources to solve the problem,

00:39:28.960 | but we actually know how to do it.

00:39:31.400 | So, you know, I really kind of believe

00:39:33.120 | the best is yet to come.

00:39:34.240 | I remember looking at a seven,

00:39:36.560 | what was it?

00:39:37.400 | It was a 27-year stock chart of Amazon.

00:39:42.400 | And the quote was, had Jeff Bezos quit in year 20,

00:39:47.040 | he'd only created 7% of the company's value.

00:39:50.800 | 93% came in years 21 through 27.

00:39:53.800 | That number may even be bigger now as a ratio.

00:39:56.320 | It might be five and 95.

00:39:57.880 | So I think there is an animating idea

00:40:01.520 | of just continuing to show up.

00:40:02.920 | And we're in year 17 now.

00:40:04.840 | And you never know who is waiting, who is watching.

00:40:09.840 | We still don't have a single philanthropist of note

00:40:13.920 | in the entire world who has raised their hand and said,

00:40:16.960 | hey, I'm gonna work on water.

00:40:18.840 | Y'all are working on health and education

00:40:22.320 | and women and girls and gender equality

00:40:24.680 | and economic development.

00:40:26.000 | You know what?

00:40:26.840 | I found the one thing that sits underneath

00:40:28.960 | almost every problem related to extreme poverty,

00:40:32.680 | and that's water.

00:40:33.840 | So I'm gonna take that on.

00:40:35.280 | We still don't have that.

00:40:36.840 | You know, there is no Bloomberg, Gates, Elon, Bezos.

00:40:39.440 | There's nobody who's kind of raised their hand.

00:40:41.440 | No corporation has raised their hand

00:40:43.560 | and made any sort of significant commitment towards this

00:40:47.680 | to really move the needle forward.

00:40:49.480 | So I think as we just, you know, keep our heads down

00:40:52.800 | and every year, you know, try to grow the organization,

00:40:55.560 | grow our community, grow our impact.

00:40:58.120 | We put ourselves in a situation where hopefully

00:41:01.040 | we build trust, we build credibility,

00:41:03.720 | we build the systems and the infrastructure now,

00:41:06.400 | you know, across over 20 countries

00:41:08.400 | to be able to absorb that future interest in water

00:41:12.960 | and hopefully the future capital that comes to this space.

00:41:16.200 | - I think part of the reason I am so compelled

00:41:18.080 | by the story of Charity Water is your ability to tell it,

00:41:21.240 | both here in video, on your website.

00:41:24.080 | Did you know how important that aspect would be

00:41:27.120 | to your success when you started?

00:41:29.240 | - I didn't, I didn't.

00:41:30.480 | And I think it's a little bit innate.

00:41:33.440 | I don't think in statistics, you know, they don't move me.

00:41:37.520 | I really think in stories and I'm also a visual thinker.

00:41:41.360 | You know, I took photos early on with Charity Water.

00:41:43.640 | Now we have far better, more accomplished photographers

00:41:46.760 | who are willing to, you know, often donate their time

00:41:48.880 | and go out and document this work.

00:41:51.320 | But I just think,

00:41:53.760 | I think I've realized the power of it over the years.

00:41:56.760 | I mean, I'll just, I'll give you an example.

00:41:59.160 | I wrote this chapter in my book,

00:42:00.840 | which was probably the most moving and devastating story,

00:42:03.920 | you know, for me over 17 years.

00:42:05.800 | And, you know, if I gave you the statistics,

00:42:07.600 | okay, 700 million people in the world don't have water.

00:42:09.960 | Women are walking hundreds of millions of hours

00:42:13.320 | every year that they're wasting.

00:42:14.920 | Up to 50% of the disease in many of these countries

00:42:19.360 | is caused simply by bad water.

00:42:21.240 | Half the schools throughout the developing world

00:42:24.240 | don't have water or toilets for their students, right?

00:42:26.720 | I mean, I could, I could, I could,

00:42:28.680 | statistic after statistic, you know,

00:42:30.960 | but if I told you that I was in Northern Ethiopia once

00:42:34.840 | and somebody came up to me

00:42:37.320 | in a $5 a night hotel room lobby,

00:42:39.640 | kind of the restaurant lobby and said,

00:42:42.360 | "Hey, you're the charity water guy.

00:42:44.040 | We've heard of you.

00:42:44.880 | We know the impact you're making up here.

00:42:46.160 | Let me tell you a story."

00:42:47.480 | He sits down and he says, "I'm from a remote village.

00:42:50.040 | The women in my village,

00:42:50.880 | they used to all walk eight hours a day."

00:42:52.760 | And he goes, "There was this one woman.

00:42:54.680 | And at the end of one of her walks,

00:42:57.560 | before she got home, she slipped and she fell.

00:43:00.440 | And all the water that she had just walked for

00:43:02.240 | spilled out into the ground.

00:43:03.840 | And she had this clay pot on her back

00:43:05.600 | and the clay pot shattered.

00:43:07.680 | And there were shards all over the path."

00:43:09.400 | And he said, "She didn't go get another pot.

00:43:11.720 | She didn't go back and go refill the water."

00:43:14.680 | He said, "She took a rope and she climbed a tree

00:43:17.480 | and she tied a noose around her neck and she hung herself.

00:43:20.360 | It's in the center of my village.

00:43:21.600 | And we found her body swinging from a tree."

00:43:23.640 | And he let that sit.

00:43:24.720 | And he said, "The work you're doing is important."

00:43:26.120 | And he walked back into the kitchen.

00:43:27.920 | I remember thinking at first, that's not true.

00:43:32.080 | You know, that's what you tell the humanitarian aid worker

00:43:35.560 | to make us feel great

00:43:36.680 | about the work we're doing in the country.

00:43:38.680 | But I think the power of story,

00:43:40.520 | you know, that nagged at me.

00:43:42.040 | And a couple of months later, I told my wife,

00:43:44.440 | I said, "I need to go and see if this is true.

00:43:46.640 | I need to go and see if this woman lived.

00:43:48.920 | And I need to see the tree."

00:43:50.600 | And I wound up flying back to Ethiopia

00:43:53.400 | and flying up to the north and then driving four hours,

00:43:56.240 | got to the end of the road,

00:43:57.560 | renting a donkey and a camel

00:44:00.520 | and putting a little backpack and tent,

00:44:02.560 | and then walking nine hours over the mountains

00:44:05.400 | to reach this village.

00:44:06.560 | It was called Maida.

00:44:07.720 | And over the next week, I lived in this village

00:44:10.280 | and I walked in her footsteps and I met her mother.

00:44:13.120 | And I met the friend, her best friend,

00:44:15.320 | who walked for water with her that day.

00:44:17.520 | And they had kind of split at the end of the walk,

00:44:19.760 | her friend going to her house.

00:44:20.960 | And her name was Letakiros, walking towards her house.

00:44:25.680 | And what I didn't know until I lived in this village

00:44:29.480 | was that she was 13 years old when she died.

00:44:32.160 | I was imagining someone towards the end of her life

00:44:34.320 | when she was described to me as a woman.

00:44:35.880 | She was a teenage girl.

00:44:37.360 | And I saw where she got her water.

00:44:39.680 | I visited her grave.

00:44:41.120 | I talked to the priest who gave her ceremony.

00:44:44.120 | I interviewed her friends who told me what she was like.

00:44:46.440 | She had vision.

00:44:47.280 | She wanted to get out of this village.

00:44:48.600 | She wanted to become a doctor, a nurse to help people.

00:44:52.560 | And I remember just standing next to the tree,

00:44:56.080 | which was this frail little tree.

00:44:57.560 | And there was a dirt path that ran next to the tree.

00:45:00.000 | You know, imagining a 13-year-old girl's body hanging

00:45:03.160 | with a noose around her neck

00:45:05.320 | and water off in the dust and shards of clay pot.

00:45:10.320 | And it angered me.

00:45:13.280 | I came back with a driving desire to do more

00:45:19.400 | because kids shouldn't be hanging themselves

00:45:23.000 | because they were born in a village without water.

00:45:25.080 | And I remember the last thing just about this story,

00:45:27.360 | what struck me as I thought of, well, this is a tough story.

00:45:31.920 | You know, I almost need to be careful telling the story,

00:45:35.440 | but I asked her best friend,

00:45:37.160 | I said, "Why do you think she took her life?"

00:45:39.000 | And her friend said, this is through a translator

00:45:41.360 | in the local language, Degrenia.

00:45:43.120 | Her friend said, "Shame."

00:45:44.400 | Because it was her role to go and get the water

00:45:47.320 | for the family.

00:45:48.320 | And not only had she let the family down

00:45:51.440 | through her carelessness, slipping and falling,

00:45:54.720 | she'd also broken the clay pot, which was a valuable asset.

00:45:58.040 | And the shame of her failure

00:46:00.640 | would have been probably too much

00:46:02.840 | for her to go back and face her family.

00:46:05.120 | So there's statistics.

00:46:06.880 | And then there is the story of a real life person

00:46:11.000 | who's just one of those 703 million people

00:46:14.400 | that certainly resonated with me.

00:46:16.880 | I was able to connect to the idea of shame.

00:46:19.280 | I was able to connect to futility,

00:46:22.840 | to a situation that you just don't know how to get out of.

00:46:26.680 | So you just have to keep doing it every single day.

00:46:29.040 | And wanting, Chris, to be a part of that answer

00:46:33.400 | to the next 13-year-old girl that I could get to.

00:46:36.600 | - I don't even, it makes me wanna make sure

00:46:38.320 | if there's not a well in that village,

00:46:40.760 | can we start, do a fundraiser to put a well in that village?

00:46:43.440 | I'm hoping there already is.

00:46:44.840 | So I hear you, the storytelling there

00:46:48.480 | pales in comparison to the numbers.

00:46:50.400 | And when I think about my own ability to storytell,

00:46:53.880 | I think you're far superior and I need to work on that.

00:46:56.760 | Is that something you learned?

00:46:57.880 | Is that something that was practiced?

00:46:59.080 | How did you, how can you draw people in?

00:47:01.520 | How can you, yeah.

00:47:03.000 | - I go to the movies a lot by myself.

00:47:04.960 | I mean, I think we're creatures of story.

00:47:07.840 | I'm fascinated, my wife was laughing at me the other day.

00:47:11.080 | I spent three and a half hours alone

00:47:13.360 | in the new Scorsese movie.

00:47:15.880 | Because I grew up and I did a couple years in film school

00:47:18.480 | and I think he's a great storyteller.

00:47:20.800 | So I'm constantly trying to immerse myself in stories

00:47:25.000 | that have nothing to do with charity water

00:47:26.600 | and nothing to do with our work,

00:47:29.560 | but watch people who are masters of the craft.

00:47:33.440 | There's no formula.

00:47:34.520 | I mean, I'm never sitting down and like saying this,

00:47:36.640 | then that, then this, you know, the hero's journey,

00:47:38.760 | or I've never read Joseph Campbell's work.

00:47:41.600 | I mean, I'm familiar kind of

00:47:42.440 | with the idea of the hero's journey,

00:47:44.080 | but I'm a chronological thinker.

00:47:46.640 | So it's kind of this, then that, then this,

00:47:48.560 | then that, then this.

00:47:50.080 | I feel like just because I put everybody

00:47:52.080 | on such a downer there,

00:47:52.960 | I'll tell just one other kind of story

00:47:55.200 | on the opposite end of that.

00:47:56.680 | One of my favorites over the years,

00:47:59.320 | and we have so many stories, myriad stories

00:48:01.400 | that we've come across of just extraordinary people

00:48:03.760 | and extraordinary lives impacted by not having water,

00:48:07.840 | impacted by having water.

00:48:09.400 | There's this woman named Helen

00:48:11.680 | that we met in Northern Uganda.

00:48:13.960 | And Helen was, you know, kind of the end of middle age

00:48:18.600 | and she was a mom, she had a bunch of kids.

00:48:20.960 | And our team was visiting Charity Water Completed Projects.

00:48:25.200 | And when the community knows you're coming, Chris,

00:48:27.600 | there's a lot of fanfare.

00:48:29.320 | I mean, they roll out the red carpet,

00:48:30.720 | they're bringing goats and chickens and eggs,

00:48:32.520 | and there are speeches and there's dancing

00:48:34.200 | and there's singing.

00:48:35.440 | You know, there's a real honoring

00:48:37.000 | of the people who have come to, you know,

00:48:39.560 | just to learn more about the community.

00:48:40.840 | So I think we, the team had done four with fanfare,

00:48:43.800 | and this was like the fifth at the end of the day.

00:48:45.680 | And they were trying to sneak into this village

00:48:48.040 | just to see the water point in action

00:48:50.560 | and kind of almost sneak up on it and say,

00:48:51.920 | "Hey, were people using it?

00:48:53.160 | And what did it feel like around the well?"

00:48:55.160 | Well, Helen had somehow gotten wind.

00:48:57.880 | So she leads this welcoming party of women

00:49:01.120 | and they're dancing and they're singing

00:49:02.640 | and they're welcoming the team in.

00:49:04.160 | And after that stops, we sit down with Helen

00:49:08.400 | and we said, "Just tell us your story.

00:49:10.240 | You know, now you have water.

00:49:11.320 | It's feet from your home.

00:49:13.840 | How is your life different now?"

00:49:15.760 | And Helen begins to tell us the story

00:49:17.000 | of what her life was like before.

00:49:18.640 | She used to go get 10 gallons of water.

00:49:20.400 | So two kind of big yellow jugs.

00:49:22.760 | Think of what you've got in your garage

00:49:24.520 | for your riding mower or the little gas tank.

00:49:28.520 | And she would carry two of these very heavy, 40 pounds each.

00:49:32.640 | And she said, "Because the water was so far away,

00:49:35.240 | I always had to make these choices.

00:49:37.760 | There's never enough water.

00:49:38.760 | So what would I do with the water today?"

00:49:41.040 | And then she listed, "Well, I could cook.

00:49:43.520 | I could clean.

00:49:44.840 | I could garden.

00:49:46.160 | I could wash my kids' bodies.

00:49:48.200 | I could wash my kids' school uniforms."

00:49:50.640 | And she said, "There was just never enough water."

00:49:52.680 | And she said, "As a Ugandan woman,

00:49:54.800 | we put our families first."

00:49:56.560 | She said, "Now that I have clean water, feet from my house,"

00:50:00.520 | she said this, she said, "Now I am beautiful."

00:50:03.600 | And our team didn't quite get it.

00:50:04.840 | We're like, "Helen, of course,

00:50:05.760 | you're this beautiful Ugandan woman."

00:50:07.920 | And she goes, "No, I don't think you understand."

00:50:09.560 | She goes, "Now I finally, for the first time in my life,

00:50:12.600 | in this village, have enough water to wash my face

00:50:15.840 | and my body and my clothes."

00:50:18.440 | And she said, "I am beautiful."

00:50:19.800 | She said, "Look at me, I'm looking so smart."

00:50:21.800 | And we'd never quite thought of water in that way before

00:50:26.800 | until we sat down with a woman

00:50:29.200 | and just listened to her simply tell her story.

00:50:32.760 | And water to her meant dignity.

00:50:35.080 | Water meant beauty.

00:50:36.400 | We'd been talking about water as health

00:50:38.560 | and rattling off statistics of disease

00:50:40.840 | and water is educated.

00:50:42.920 | Water to her meant something deeply personal.

00:50:46.800 | And when I tell that story, for me,

00:50:50.720 | it also, what an extraordinary thing

00:50:53.200 | to be able to give a woman,

00:50:54.480 | especially a woman who is sacrificially giving

00:50:58.000 | for her family.

00:50:58.920 | She wasn't using the water for herself.

00:51:01.640 | She was using her limited water

00:51:03.560 | that she was walking hours for, for others,

00:51:06.320 | for the benefit of others.

00:51:07.720 | And now she finally had enough to take care of herself.

00:51:10.760 | I mean, who doesn't want to be a part of that?

00:51:12.360 | - Yeah, it's, I don't even know what to say.

00:51:15.080 | I feel like just personally, I'm not going to keep this in.

00:51:17.640 | I'm like, I'm more interested in an interview

00:51:20.240 | that I'm like, I'm not sure there's the tactics.

00:51:22.640 | Like, I just want to keep talking.

00:51:24.720 | So that's between us and I guess my editor.

00:51:28.080 | Well, here's what I think I'll say.

00:51:30.480 | I feel like what you've just given everyone listening

00:51:32.560 | is not only an incredible story about water

00:51:35.320 | and the impact it can have,

00:51:36.600 | but an example of how taking the time to pull stories,

00:51:41.720 | whether it's from your life,

00:51:42.760 | whether it's from the lives of people that you work with,

00:51:45.160 | the companies you work with,

00:51:46.600 | and turning them into something that's not tangible,

00:51:49.120 | instead of figures or facts.

00:51:50.520 | And I so often default to the transactional information

00:51:55.040 | like, oh, water could give someone this, this, this, this.

00:51:57.840 | And I just need to stop and pause in the future

00:52:00.920 | and really realize that taking the time to tell that story,

00:52:04.400 | which you'd think as someone

00:52:05.720 | who talks to a microphone for a living

00:52:07.480 | would kind of innately have as a common practice,

00:52:11.360 | but I just think if there's a lesson

00:52:13.440 | that I've taken away from the last few minutes,

00:52:15.600 | it's just how powerful that can be

00:52:17.480 | and how it's not limited to someone in your role.

00:52:19.600 | It's not a skill that only matters

00:52:21.480 | if you're raising money.

00:52:22.480 | It's something that probably matters in all aspects of life.

00:52:25.440 | - That's right.

00:52:26.280 | I mean, some of the greatest entrepreneurs are storytellers.

00:52:29.660 | It has to be true.

00:52:30.760 | I'll say that, Chris, it has to be true.

00:52:32.240 | - Yes.

00:52:33.080 | - I mean, I think sometimes there can be over embellishment

00:52:35.600 | and people can get really carried away.

00:52:37.800 | So, you know, a story is powerful when it is true

00:52:42.600 | and often the details in a story, you know, make it true.

00:52:46.800 | It would not have been true for me

00:52:48.480 | had I not lived in Leta Quiros's village,

00:52:50.460 | had I not stood next to that tree,

00:52:52.960 | had I not walked in her footsteps down the ravine,

00:52:55.400 | had I not talked to the other women

00:52:57.320 | at that same source of water.

00:52:59.040 | So, you know, for me, the proximity

00:53:02.160 | and the immersion to the story was really important.

00:53:05.720 | And then the details emerge from those,

00:53:08.800 | which I think, you know, can really move people

00:53:12.360 | because the details also remind people that it's true.

00:53:17.360 | You know what I mean?

00:53:18.560 | It's not a general, the specificity.

00:53:21.000 | You know, Helen, I mean, I have a picture of her

00:53:22.960 | in her dress.

00:53:24.180 | So if I were to do this on stage,

00:53:25.640 | I would show you Helen dancing

00:53:27.840 | and I would show you the two yellow cans.

00:53:30.140 | And then I would show you a portrait we took of Helen

00:53:32.880 | as she is radiantly beaming.

00:53:35.160 | And you would look at her green kind of paisley dress

00:53:39.300 | and you would notice, wow, it really does look clean.

00:53:42.400 | I can't see any dirt on that.

00:53:44.480 | So I think showing as well as telling

00:53:47.160 | is often really, really important.

00:53:50.040 | - And it's not just for story.

00:53:52.160 | I mean, let's take an example.

00:53:53.600 | You've taken a lot of these stories and made videos,

00:53:56.580 | put them on the site.

00:53:57.700 | I'm referencing one in particular

00:53:59.640 | that you happened to share before we got started,

00:54:02.280 | the financial impact to the organization

00:54:04.700 | of telling these stories is also great.

00:54:07.600 | So it's not just storytelling for storytelling sake.

00:54:10.840 | The time you spend in that village,

00:54:12.260 | which I think sometimes comes across as not from you,

00:54:15.200 | but like you're brainstorming these ideas

00:54:17.160 | and you're like, do I really want to spend a week

00:54:18.800 | of my life collecting a story?

00:54:21.000 | And I think one thing I've taken from our conversations,

00:54:24.080 | the value of that story could be even greater

00:54:27.000 | than the time you spent collecting.

00:54:28.360 | - I agree.

00:54:29.200 | I agree.

00:54:30.040 | I mean, look, stories can move people.

00:54:33.320 | I mean, I really think about storytelling

00:54:35.460 | is are we bringing out,

00:54:37.020 | is this story going to bring out something valuable

00:54:40.900 | in the people that might encounter it?

00:54:44.020 | I'll just give you one other example.

00:54:45.220 | We'll probably talk about the film

00:54:46.280 | that the people could go actually see some of these images,

00:54:48.700 | but there's a famous donor story

00:54:51.920 | where there was a nine-year-old girl

00:54:53.540 | named Rachel Beckwith in Seattle, Washington.

00:54:56.300 | And she saw me talk.

00:54:57.460 | And at the time I would ask everyone in the audience

00:54:59.780 | to donate their next birthday to Charity Water.

00:55:03.300 | And I'd say, you don't need any more stuff.

00:55:05.480 | You don't need toys.

00:55:07.000 | You know, women, you don't need handbags.

00:55:08.640 | Guys, you don't need wallets.

00:55:09.880 | Like we have enough stuff.

00:55:11.400 | Humans don't even have water.

00:55:13.200 | So turn your birthday into a giving moment.

00:55:15.800 | And I thought the sticky marketing message would be

00:55:18.400 | ask for your age in dollars.

00:55:20.920 | So if you're turning nine, ask everyone for $9.

00:55:23.440 | If you're turning 89, ask everyone for $89.

00:55:26.800 | And Rachel took me seriously at this

00:55:29.320 | and she donates her ninth birthday

00:55:30.640 | and she sets a goal of $300,

00:55:33.780 | which was gonna help the time 10 people get access to water.

00:55:37.640 | And she cancels her birthday party, won't accept gifts,

00:55:40.800 | and she raises $220.

00:55:43.140 | So she falls short in her goal and she tells her mom,

00:55:45.840 | she feels like she's failed

00:55:47.240 | and she's gonna try harder next year.

00:55:48.640 | And her mom's like, hey, I think you're pretty awesome.

00:55:50.520 | I mean, you raised $220 and just, you know,

00:55:52.960 | you care so much about people you've never met

00:55:56.000 | living an ocean away.

00:55:57.400 | I mean, we should all be inspired by you.

00:55:59.760 | Well, right after her birthday, she dies in a car crash.

00:56:02.200 | There's a 25 car pile up on an interstate in Seattle.

00:56:06.480 | She's the only fatality, tractor trailer, jackknifes.

00:56:10.080 | Her mom was driving, her sister was in the front.

00:56:12.160 | She was smashed in the backseat.

00:56:14.240 | And I was in Africa at the time.

00:56:15.320 | I was in Central African Republic.

00:56:16.560 | I remember landing the next day at JFK,

00:56:19.920 | turning on my phone, the BlackBerry at the time.

00:56:22.440 | And her pastor had emailed me to let me know

00:56:26.200 | of this little girl in his Seattle congregation

00:56:28.800 | who had donated her birthday, had raised $220,

00:56:32.440 | and then had passed away.

00:56:34.480 | And he asked me, could we reopen her campaign?

00:56:37.240 | And he was gonna just ask everybody in the church

00:56:39.560 | to donate $9.

00:56:41.000 | Long story short, people get wind of this campaign.

00:56:45.360 | And a lot of people, Chris, donate $9.

00:56:48.280 | And it spreads to the New York Times,

00:56:50.320 | and Nick Kristof picks it up.

00:56:51.440 | It spreads to the morning shows,

00:56:53.120 | starts spreading to Europe.

00:56:55.160 | And then one of the coolest things was people in Africa

00:56:58.960 | start donating $9 in Rachel's name.

00:57:02.000 | She goes from $220 to $1.3 million in donations.

00:57:07.000 | She inspired almost 60,000 complete strangers to give.

00:57:10.840 | And what was even cooler was so many of those givers

00:57:15.680 | then went on to donate their next birthday

00:57:18.800 | that inspired by this sacrificial nine-year-old girl

00:57:22.640 | who really should want toys or Taylor Swift cons,

00:57:26.440 | whatever the thing that a nine-year-old

00:57:28.640 | should want for themselves.

00:57:30.560 | I think it so inspired 60,000 people.

00:57:32.800 | They said, not only can we give to honor her last wish,

00:57:36.800 | but we could also follow the lead of a nine-year-old girl.

00:57:40.760 | And I think that story, as tragic as it is,

00:57:44.280 | has put so much good into the world,

00:57:47.800 | beyond the 100,000 people that now have clean water.

00:57:49.960 | I mean, she wanted to help 10 people while alive.

00:57:52.560 | She's now brought clean water to well over 100,000 people,

00:57:56.000 | actually got to take her mom and her grandparents

00:57:58.400 | on the one-year anniversary of her death,

00:58:00.440 | took them to Ethiopia,

00:58:01.360 | and they went village to village to village to village.

00:58:03.800 | And they personally met thousands of people

00:58:07.280 | who had clean water because of their daughter,

00:58:09.480 | because of their granddaughter.

00:58:10.640 | But I think that story is good in the world.

00:58:14.320 | And maybe people have heard that story,

00:58:16.760 | didn't even donate a birthday to Charity Water,

00:58:18.520 | but they donated it for some other cause

00:58:20.360 | or for cancer research or to build a school.

00:58:23.160 | - I know the part of this story that changed for you

00:58:27.160 | was when you took this trip.

00:58:29.360 | And you just talked about taking Rachel's family on a trip.

00:58:32.960 | How much of the perspective from travel

00:58:35.360 | and seeing people in other cultures and other circumstances

00:58:38.760 | has given you the perspective and gratitude you have?

00:58:42.240 | And how valuable do you think that is as a mechanism

00:58:45.720 | for changing anyone's perspective?

00:58:48.680 | - Chris, I get asked a lot,

00:58:49.800 | having done this for close to 20 years,

00:58:52.400 | what keeps you going?

00:58:53.400 | Like, how can you still kind of get up

00:58:56.040 | and just do this day in and day out?

00:58:58.800 | The travel is a piece.

00:59:00.400 | So I make sure, it's never too long

00:59:03.880 | before I am in the ground in these communities,

00:59:06.840 | sorry, on the ground in these communities,

00:59:08.840 | connecting with the people we are hoping to serve

00:59:11.040 | and the people we're serving.

00:59:12.240 | So that grounds me, it roots me.

00:59:14.040 | I've been to Africa more than 55 times now.

00:59:16.640 | I've been to 72 countries around the world.

00:59:19.000 | And living in these villages,

00:59:21.360 | I just got to take my six and eight-year-old

00:59:23.960 | this March for the first time to Uganda,

00:59:26.360 | which is where Charity Waters' first well was.

00:59:28.520 | And I had my kids carrying water.

00:59:30.720 | I had my kids asking questions of communities.

00:59:35.440 | And my kids are born into a middle-class life.

00:59:37.160 | They will never have to drink dirty water

00:59:39.120 | as long as they live.

00:59:40.320 | And I wanted to share that experience with them as well.

00:59:44.480 | And I got to bring some of our major donors' kids

00:59:47.600 | as well on that trip.

00:59:48.440 | And it was just really impactful.

00:59:49.800 | So for me, it is very, very important.

00:59:52.960 | Bryan Stevenson at AGI talks a lot about proximity.

00:59:56.560 | There's a power, there's a credibility

00:59:59.600 | that comes when you are in proximity to your issue,

01:00:03.440 | to the passion and the purpose.

01:00:06.400 | I had that proximity for the first two years

01:00:09.440 | on that mercy ship, embedded with these doctors.

01:00:12.400 | I had the proximity because I was scrubbed up

01:00:15.120 | with a camera in an eight-and-a-half-hour surgery,

01:00:17.960 | watching them remove a tumor

01:00:19.880 | or put somebody's body back together

01:00:23.280 | who had been burned by rebel soldiers during the war.

01:00:26.280 | And I think that has helped.

01:00:29.400 | So I'm always looking for that

01:00:31.280 | and trying to make sure that I'm never too far away

01:00:34.600 | from the issue that I'm advocating for

01:00:38.280 | or the people who we're serving.

01:00:40.120 | And obviously travel to Africa with kids

01:00:42.320 | is a big trip that not everyone can take.

01:00:46.040 | What other things are you doing as a father

01:00:49.440 | or even for yourself to kind of create

01:00:52.200 | that culture of gratitude, of selflessness,

01:00:56.880 | of generosity, of giving in your family?

01:01:00.000 | I like that you started with gratitude

01:01:01.520 | because that is the one practice

01:01:03.640 | that I am very faithful to with the kids.

01:01:07.720 | So we play the gratitude game every night.

01:01:10.600 | We go around.

01:01:11.960 | If I'm doing bedtime alone without my wife, it's 30.

01:01:14.520 | So everybody's got to do 10 and you can have one repeat.

01:01:17.520 | So we're looking at 27 unique things

01:01:20.360 | that we're grateful for every single night.

01:01:22.560 | And sometimes if it's an early bedtime,

01:01:25.440 | I'll push them to do 20.

01:01:27.200 | And just the practice of...

01:01:30.080 | And sometimes you get like, I'm thankful for mom,

01:01:32.000 | I'm thankful for the dog, I'm thankful for our house,

01:01:34.120 | I'm thankful for church, I'm thankful for...

01:01:36.320 | But I've gotten some unbelievably creative,

01:01:40.120 | really profound things out of the kids

01:01:42.480 | and I think even out of myself,

01:01:43.720 | things that have kind of surprised me

01:01:45.360 | when you really go into that posture of gratitude.

01:01:48.280 | So that is one practice that I think

01:01:50.960 | has really enriched the lives of our family.

01:01:53.920 | I think, right, not everybody can take a trip.

01:01:57.040 | And I mean, we got back, my wife's like,

01:01:59.280 | I'm never doing that again.

01:02:00.640 | I mean, seven flights in seven days, time zones,

01:02:05.680 | 14 hours on Emirates through Dubai,

01:02:08.560 | the back of the bus was all coach, yeah.

01:02:11.640 | Actually, that was seven out and coach,

01:02:13.880 | seven out and back and coach with kids, it was rough.

01:02:18.200 | But we would have not traded that experience

01:02:22.240 | and of course, we would have done it again.

01:02:24.120 | I think my wife would have done it again too.

01:02:26.320 | - When it comes to the charitable world,

01:02:28.680 | I feel like I don't have the perspective you do

01:02:32.360 | and you've gotten to know this industry

01:02:34.560 | probably much more than most people.

01:02:37.040 | I'm curious, as people think about causes

01:02:40.600 | they wanna support, obviously, you'll encourage them

01:02:43.600 | to take a look at what you're doing and I will as well.

01:02:46.360 | What advice do you have for people when they find a cause

01:02:49.560 | in actually finding the right organization?

01:02:51.760 | As much as I love the 100% model,

01:02:54.440 | I think it's fairly unique.

01:02:55.840 | And so finding the right organizations can be tough.

01:02:59.280 | And I know in the recent past with different disasters

01:03:02.400 | and war zones, people have made these lists

01:03:05.440 | of 20 different organizations,

01:03:06.960 | but it seems very hard to kind of evaluate an organization

01:03:10.680 | in the nonprofit sector.

01:03:11.600 | - I think it starts with finding causes

01:03:14.200 | that you're passionate about, learning about those causes,

01:03:16.840 | maybe more than what you're asking ChatGBT

01:03:19.800 | or browsing one article, educating yourself on these causes

01:03:24.520 | and then trying to research organizations

01:03:26.720 | that are well-run and are transparent.

01:03:29.120 | I certainly do not think,

01:03:30.760 | in fact, I don't even advocate other people

01:03:33.040 | starting charities to adopt the 100% model.

01:03:35.440 | It was right for us 17 years ago.

01:03:37.160 | It continues to be right for us going forward.

01:03:40.560 | But what I really was trying to say back then

01:03:43.680 | is people just wanna know where their money's going.

01:03:46.440 | Yeah, they just wanna, they want transparency in that.

01:03:49.760 | You know, if I told your listeners today

01:03:52.360 | that the greatest need at Charity Water

01:03:55.480 | was a new expensive copy machine

01:03:58.440 | because we needed to print a bunch of paper copies

01:04:01.000 | and it was gonna be $3,000 or something,

01:04:03.560 | people would donate for a copy machine to meet a need,

01:04:06.360 | to meet a specific need

01:04:07.520 | if they knew how that would move the mission forward.

01:04:11.200 | We don't need a copy machine,

01:04:12.320 | but you could argue that'd be like the unsexiest cost ever

01:04:17.320 | is like something that prints paper.

01:04:21.160 | But if those papers were valuable

01:04:22.600 | to the continuation of the mission, people would step up.

01:04:25.080 | It's often, I think, the opacity,

01:04:28.040 | it's the not knowing where the money goes.

01:04:30.640 | You know, it's the fine print during many of the disasters

01:04:33.160 | where you find out actually $100 million

01:04:35.120 | that was given went into an endowment,

01:04:37.040 | which won't see the light of day

01:04:38.760 | because in that fine print, the organizations say,

01:04:42.360 | well, if we over-raise what we can spend,

01:04:45.320 | you know, we can do anything with this money.

01:04:47.600 | I remember to that end,

01:04:48.440 | there was a very famous example years ago

01:04:51.520 | during the tsunami, I believe it was,

01:04:52.880 | where Doctors Without Borders over-raised significantly.

01:04:57.320 | And they tried to refund everybody's money.

01:04:59.520 | And they tried to say, here, take your money back.

01:05:02.120 | We got what we needed.

01:05:03.600 | Can't spend it in this intended way.

01:05:06.320 | And what do you think 99% of people did?

01:05:08.880 | Said, keep the money.

01:05:10.160 | But thank you for telling us.

01:05:11.720 | You know, so that move would have built so much trust

01:05:15.120 | because it was integrity in that move.

01:05:16.800 | There was transparency in that move.

01:05:18.600 | And I think that's often what, you know,

01:05:20.720 | is lacking sometimes in the sector,

01:05:23.560 | where when you really follow the dollars,

01:05:25.880 | you know, you're not always thrilled

01:05:28.080 | with what happened with them.

01:05:29.520 | - And how would the average person go through that process?

01:05:31.840 | Like, what would you practically--

01:05:32.880 | - You'd read a 990, which is one.

01:05:34.560 | So you'd read a 990.

01:05:35.400 | I mean, every organization publishes their 990,

01:05:37.560 | so you can see how they're spending their money,

01:05:38.920 | how much on marketing, how much on office costs.

01:05:40.920 | You know, you can really see where the money is going out.

01:05:45.920 | And I mean, so that's one document.

01:05:48.640 | I mean, a lot of organizations that don't put that up online.

01:05:51.080 | So that's one flag.

01:05:52.680 | Somebody sent me, you know, due diligence.

01:05:54.920 | Oh, check out this organization.

01:05:56.200 | I said, well, they've been around for seven years.

01:05:58.080 | They haven't posted a single financial online.

01:06:00.600 | You know, that's not even legal.

01:06:02.520 | So a charity is forced to publish their federal filed,

01:06:07.080 | it's like your tax return, every single year,

01:06:09.640 | and that needs to be found online.

01:06:11.120 | So there's actually a lot of just simple best practices

01:06:13.920 | that aren't happening.

01:06:15.000 | I'm a big Dan Pallotta fan.

01:06:16.320 | So I am, if people don't know him,

01:06:18.680 | he gave a very famous TED Talk on kind of the overhead myth.

01:06:21.720 | He wrote a book called "Uncharitable."

01:06:23.360 | He's got a film coming out in the next month or so.

01:06:26.400 | And I am not an advocate for these tiny overheads.

01:06:31.040 | I'm really an advocate for well-run efficient organizations

01:06:35.320 | who are growing their impact,

01:06:36.720 | who are trying to put more and more money, you know,

01:06:40.080 | out into the field or directly to the cause.

01:06:43.240 | And that is driving everything at the organization.

01:06:47.920 | - Yeah, if you looked at their 990 trend,

01:06:50.080 | and it's like, well,

01:06:50.920 | they spent a lot on overhead for two years.

01:06:52.480 | And then in the third year, they, you know,

01:06:55.120 | 20X the amount of money they could raise.

01:06:57.320 | That's, it wasn't necessarily a bad sign

01:06:59.080 | that they had a lot of overhead for a few years.

01:07:00.800 | - Yeah, I mean, I'm a, I'm, you know,

01:07:02.720 | the Wounded Warrior story is probably the most famous.

01:07:05.240 | I remember, you know,

01:07:06.400 | they were much vilified for a long time.

01:07:09.120 | And I sat with Steve Nardizzi once,

01:07:11.120 | who was their kind of co-founder.

01:07:12.880 | And the way that he explained it to me was so simple.

01:07:15.360 | He said, "I took this organization over,

01:07:16.840 | and we were raising $8 million a year for, you know,

01:07:19.320 | for veterans."

01:07:20.280 | And I might get this slightly wrong,

01:07:22.400 | but he said $8 million was not even a fraction

01:07:26.160 | of what was needed.

01:07:27.320 | And I learned that, you know,

01:07:28.720 | every dollar I would put into marketing,

01:07:30.880 | I could return about 50 cents.

01:07:32.840 | So that sounds, whoa, horribly inefficient.

01:07:35.520 | But he said, "I wanted to market and grow the organization.

01:07:40.400 | And then I would kind of worry about efficiency later

01:07:42.840 | when we got up to scale."

01:07:44.200 | And I think he took the thing to 450 million.

01:07:48.040 | Now, again, I don't remember the exact ratio,

01:07:50.280 | but let's say at 450 million,

01:07:52.800 | half of the money was going directly to help veterans.

01:07:57.800 | Well, he just took an efficient organization

01:08:01.640 | at 8 million going out to, you know,

01:08:04.400 | you could argue a much less efficient organization,

01:08:07.040 | but $225 million was going out in impact.

01:08:10.040 | And I think he never really got the chance with his team

01:08:12.280 | to dial it back down and go back to efficiency at scale,

01:08:16.520 | which was going to be possible

01:08:18.480 | because so many of those people were monthly givers.

01:08:20.600 | So there was a high cost to acquire,

01:08:22.960 | but then you got a long tail.

01:08:24.640 | So when you shut off that marketing spend, you know,

01:08:27.000 | and by the way, I mean, Disney Plus,

01:08:28.800 | like they went from zero to 100 million users,

01:08:32.400 | I think in the first year,

01:08:33.280 | just by spending billions and billions of dollars

01:08:35.320 | of marketing.

01:08:36.160 | Well, that's not how, you know,

01:08:37.320 | we're not seeing that same marketing blitz

01:08:39.480 | in year two and year three.

01:08:41.080 | So I'm with you that I believe that these are often

01:08:45.160 | really wise investments that people need to make.

01:08:47.280 | But you know, you ask these questions

01:08:48.960 | and you start to really understand

01:08:50.760 | more about the organization's leadership,

01:08:53.000 | more about their history.

01:08:54.480 | You can make some pretty good decisions

01:08:56.200 | with some more information.

01:08:57.880 | - And are any of these sites that provide ratings,

01:08:59.640 | I'm sure maybe you don't want to speak ill of them,

01:09:02.120 | but how much faith do you put in your own research

01:09:05.680 | versus the rating from a charitable rating site?

01:09:10.560 | - Yeah, well, we've been fortunate.

01:09:11.960 | I mean, we've had the highest ratings from all the sites.

01:09:14.360 | I am very cynical about the methodology.

01:09:16.960 | I mean, it's just a formula.

01:09:18.360 | You know, it's a 990 is getting put through

01:09:21.240 | a variety of metrics.

01:09:22.880 | And it's, I think that's a whole nother podcast.

01:09:27.240 | I'm like, man, do I want to even open that?

01:09:30.040 | I think they are a good place to start.

01:09:33.400 | They're certainly a good place to start

01:09:35.240 | maybe weeding out some of the egregious actors.

01:09:37.800 | But is that, it's looking at overhead.

01:09:40.680 | It's looking at some very simple metrics

01:09:43.280 | that is not necessarily an indicator

01:09:46.320 | of the impact they are having

01:09:48.160 | by moving their mission forward in the world.

01:09:50.520 | And simply because it can't.

01:09:51.640 | I mean, there's one and a half million charities

01:09:53.400 | or something in America.

01:09:54.240 | So, you know, imagine it's the same thing

01:09:57.640 | with like the IRS.

01:09:58.480 | Like imagine assigning, you know, 1.4 million, you know,

01:10:02.440 | let's go do deep dives in all these organizations.

01:10:04.600 | It's just, it's not even feasible.

01:10:06.040 | - So I know a big part of what you guys have done well

01:10:08.400 | is around tracking your impact

01:10:10.320 | and effectiveness as an organization.

01:10:12.360 | I'm curious if you've ever thought about that perspective

01:10:15.560 | on a personal level and how you or anyone listening

01:10:20.560 | might be able to apply some of those lessons

01:10:23.640 | to track the impact they're having with their own lives

01:10:27.640 | or with their own wallets or in their own careers.

01:10:30.800 | - I mean, Chris, I'm probably a bad guy

01:10:33.200 | to ask that question to,

01:10:35.160 | because my KPIs are pretty simple

01:10:38.440 | because this is my life's work.

01:10:40.720 | It's people that have access to clean water

01:10:43.960 | because of the organization we're built,

01:10:45.720 | because of the movement that we are growing

01:10:47.920 | and how effectively we're deploying capital to change lives.

01:10:51.760 | So we have a pretty simple output.

01:10:53.600 | I have a personal goal of helping

01:10:56.320 | at least 100 million people.

01:10:58.280 | So that is a benchmark that's out there for me.

01:11:01.400 | And, you know, we've helped 17 million people.

01:11:03.760 | So if we continue to this path,

01:11:06.040 | I would be probably far too old to realize that.

01:11:09.400 | So some exponential growth is certainly required

01:11:12.880 | to achieve that personal goal through work.

01:11:15.640 | When I think about my family, it's all about character.

01:11:19.320 | It's all about virtue.

01:11:21.040 | It's instilling compassion, integrity, generosity

01:11:25.440 | into the lives of my children.

01:11:28.480 | Do they tell the truth?

01:11:30.040 | Do they admit when they're wrong?

01:11:31.840 | I mean, it's all kind of soft stuff.

01:11:34.960 | I can care less if they come and work with me

01:11:36.920 | or, you know, go work at a bank.

01:11:39.320 | I'm really interested in the people that they become

01:11:43.040 | and the way that they do things, whatever they do.

01:11:45.840 | You know, are they doing it with the utmost integrity?

01:11:50.000 | You know, are they doing it by telling the truth?

01:11:52.360 | Are they treating people with kindness and respect?

01:11:55.240 | So I think two very different metrics.

01:11:56.720 | You know, obviously I'm trying to do the same thing

01:11:58.560 | as we build the culture of the organization.

01:12:00.760 | Are we living up to our values?

01:12:02.400 | Are we, you know, are we kind of good

01:12:06.320 | all the way to the core?

01:12:07.720 | You know, is there anything that is not working

01:12:09.600 | that we need to go and fix?

01:12:11.560 | Is there anything that's hypocritical?

01:12:14.400 | You know, are we saying anything

01:12:15.440 | that we actually can't deliver on?

01:12:17.000 | So we're constantly asking ourselves those questions

01:12:19.800 | as a culture as well.

01:12:21.120 | - You mentioned legacy a bit earlier,

01:12:23.520 | and I know Charity Water's work

01:12:25.200 | has had a lasting impact on communities.

01:12:27.560 | And in a way, that impact is part of your legacy.

01:12:30.480 | I'd love to explore this concept

01:12:31.920 | of leaving a meaningful legacy

01:12:33.800 | and making a lasting difference in the world.

01:12:35.800 | And is that something you think about a lot?

01:12:38.400 | - It's interesting.

01:12:40.160 | I probably think about it less for me

01:12:42.760 | and more of encouraging other people to think about it.

01:12:46.160 | But I guess I would think about it as it's really positional

01:12:51.400 | or it's an intention of a life.

01:12:54.720 | I don't think legacy is like,

01:12:56.000 | okay, well, I tick these five boxes

01:12:57.680 | or, you know, they're gonna read at my funeral, A, B, C, D.

01:13:01.720 | I think of it more as going through life

01:13:04.920 | and really just, I mean, I said this earlier,

01:13:07.560 | but asking the question, how can I take what I have,

01:13:11.200 | what I've been blessed with?

01:13:12.040 | I mean, everybody listening to this has been blessed,

01:13:14.480 | has certainly many things to be grateful for.

01:13:17.160 | And how can I use that in the service of others?

01:13:21.400 | I think it's that simple.

01:13:22.720 | And that is really then a legacy of giving.

01:13:25.600 | It's a legacy of compassion.

01:13:27.280 | It's a legacy of generosity that will manifest itself

01:13:31.200 | in different ways through different seasons of life.

01:13:35.520 | I mean, one of my dreams at some point

01:13:37.280 | is to write a million dollar check to a charity.

01:13:39.960 | I have wanted to pay back or pay that forward for 17 years.

01:13:44.240 | You know, we've been able to turn that million dollar gift

01:13:46.400 | into now, you know, well over $800 million raised.

01:13:50.000 | And I think I was able to give that back to that donor

01:13:53.240 | saying you believed in me.

01:13:54.840 | We've honored this 100% model with absolute integrity

01:13:59.360 | now for 17 years, and we've kind of turned that one talent

01:14:02.960 | into 800 more and growing.

01:14:05.440 | But I'd like to do it personally, Chris.

01:14:07.360 | You know, and we're not going to do it

01:14:08.280 | through my salary at Charity Water,

01:14:09.480 | but I'd love to not just give advice,

01:14:14.480 | not just fund water projects across 21 countries.

01:14:17.680 | It'd be fun to write a check and change the game

01:14:20.560 | for a small charity the same way somebody changed the game.

01:14:24.000 | So, I don't know if I'll ever get the opportunity

01:14:25.840 | to do that, but I think, you know,

01:14:29.400 | if I came into money in some way

01:14:32.440 | where I had the ability to do that,

01:14:34.440 | I'd be more likely to do that than to try

01:14:37.680 | to go blow a million dollars on, I don't know.

01:14:40.780 | I mean, I guess it doesn't buy that much anymore,

01:14:43.160 | but you know, rather than trying to upgrade myself

01:14:45.520 | to business class flights for the next, you know,

01:14:47.400 | five years or something.

01:14:48.480 | I'd want that to be useful.

01:14:49.960 | - This has been amazing.

01:14:51.320 | I appreciate you sharing your story

01:14:53.160 | and the story of Charity Water with everyone here.

01:14:55.480 | We didn't even mention where people can find

01:14:57.560 | that video we referenced earlier.

01:14:58.920 | So, maybe let everyone know

01:15:00.640 | where we want to send them right now.

01:15:02.860 | - I think, you know, people want to know more.

01:15:04.760 | If you'd like to see the video or, you know,

01:15:06.920 | you're looking for some way to get involved with us,

01:15:09.520 | probably the best place to go is The Spring.

01:15:12.800 | It's thespring.com.

01:15:14.880 | It's where that video lives.

01:15:16.000 | It's had over a hundred million views now across platforms.

01:15:19.160 | And The Spring is just very simply an online community

01:15:22.800 | of people who show up every month.

01:15:24.760 | It's like Netflix, you know, or Spotify,

01:15:27.040 | you pay them every month,

01:15:28.400 | except we will not send you any music for free.

01:15:31.160 | We will not send you any TV or movies.

01:15:33.440 | We will take a hundred percent of your money every month

01:15:36.720 | and we will turn it into clean water

01:15:38.840 | for people in need around the world.

01:15:40.520 | And, you know, I was actually with Daniel Ek in Ethiopia

01:15:44.200 | who founded Spotify and, you know,

01:15:46.360 | was helping me kind of move

01:15:49.280 | a lot of our one-time giving to subscription.

01:15:51.720 | And that idea and that community

01:15:54.440 | has been really transformative.

01:15:56.320 | We tripled the organization's impact since we started that.

01:15:59.960 | And, you know, the average is, you know,

01:16:01.760 | it's $40 to give one person clean water.

01:16:04.280 | So there's probably a lot of people listening, you know,

01:16:06.440 | who could donate $40 a month

01:16:08.720 | and not even really feel that pain,

01:16:11.560 | but know that every single month

01:16:13.440 | one more person is getting access to clean water.

01:16:15.800 | So I guess, you know, if I had one ask of people to consider,

01:16:18.600 | yeah, there's people that give $10 a month

01:16:20.400 | that are broke college students.

01:16:22.520 | We have people in their nineties on their pensions

01:16:25.280 | who give $10 a month.

01:16:26.400 | And every four months,

01:16:28.200 | a person moves from dirty water to clean water,

01:16:31.840 | which is a real big impact.

01:16:33.080 | So, you know, you could check out the video,

01:16:35.280 | share it with your friends.

01:16:36.720 | You know, a lot of the images, Rachel stories in that video,

01:16:39.520 | you get to see what she looked like

01:16:41.080 | and just some really cool stuff and images in there.

01:16:45.840 | - Well, Scott, I appreciate you being here.

01:16:47.680 | I've been a charity water supporter throughout the years

01:16:51.400 | and will continue to be.

01:16:53.440 | Thank you for joining me.

01:16:54.440 | - Thanks for having me.

Building a Life Dedicated to IMPACT With Charity: Water Founder Scott Harrison

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