I had this one idea, what if I sold everything I owned, and I volunteered for one year. At 18, I stumble into this occupation in New York City nightlife, running around smoking 40 cigarettes a day, doing drugs, going to strip clubs. And it was really at the end of that 10 years where I realized, wow, I'm a mess.

I joined this mission of humanitarian doctors and surgeons to volunteer their time and offer free medical services to people who couldn't afford it, which then led to my discovery of the need for clean water. I look at wealth as an opportunity to do more good in the world in ending suffering.

How can I take my time, my talent, my money, and use it to help others? 70% of Americans believe charities waste their money. So many of the things that we've tried to do at Charity Water is restore that lost faith, get people addicted to generosity. I was in Northern Ethiopia once, and somebody came up to me, said, "Hey, we've heard of you.

"We know the impact you're making up here. "Let me tell you a story." The women in my village, they used to all walk eight hours a day. And he goes, "There was this one woman, "at the end of one of her walks, "she slipped and she fell, "and all the water that she had just walked for "spilled out onto the ground.

"And she had this clay pot on her back, "and the clay pot shattered." And he said, "She didn't go get another pot. "She didn't go back and go refill the water." He said, "She took a rope, and she climbed a tree, "and she." - Scott, thank you so much for being here.

- It's good to be here, Chris. I've been looking forward to this. It'll be fun. - I think for so many people, they've seen you, they know Charity Water, but they don't know the story. And I think there's a lot of things I wanna dive into that mean going back to the beginning and understanding where you came from, because it's not the same story that most people go through.

- Well, I think act one is a pretty bizarre childhood. When I was four, I was born in Philadelphia, middle-class family. Dad was a business guy. My mom was a writer. And we moved into this really ugly gray house at the end of a cul-de-sac in the dead of winter.

My parents were gonna have a big family there, and it was close to my dad's job, so we had a small commute. These were all the concerns at the time. And the house was advertised as energy efficient, which was great, except the house came with a carbon monoxide gas leak.

So we move in and we all start getting headaches. And on New Year's Day, 1980, my mom walks across the bedroom and she collapses. She crumples to the floor. So she's the canary in the coal mine, which leads to a series of blood tests, which leads to the discovery of carbon monoxide in her bloodstream, which then leads to the leak, which was in the basement and it was this faulty heat exchanger.

And I remember my dad ripped it out with an HVAC guy and he threw it on the sidewalk. But unfortunately, the damage was just done specifically for my mom. And she just never recovered. She never bounced back from that. My dad and I bounced back from our symptoms. But what happened to her was her immune system was irreparably destroyed.

And her body was no longer able to process chemicals, process anything toxic. So I think the best way to describe it from this point on, she just lived in a bubble. She lived in one room, isolated. She wore a 3M mask, like an N95, really for the rest of her life.

And family planning stopped. So I grew up this only child, very quickly now in a caregiver role, helping to cook for mom, helping to clean, really just helping try to make her as comfortable as possible. And maybe just to give everybody one story that I remember as a kid.

I remember mom, she was a writer, so she loved to read and she was so frustrated that now the ink from books would make her sick. So as a kid, I would either bake her books in the oven to try to get that smell of new print out, or I would put them out in the backyard and flip the pages throughout the day so that the sun would kind of bake them.

And then I would walk up to the second floor and she was living in a bathroom that was covered with aluminum foil. She slept on a cot that had been washed in baking soda 20 times. And I remember she would open the door kind of with this crinkle sound, and she would be wearing her mask and her glasses.

She'd be wearing cotton gloves. She would take the book from me and she would put it inside a cellophane bag, shut the door, and then she was able to read. So just weird, Chris. My parents were devout Christians, kind of non-denominational Christians. So they had a really authentic faith that they would certainly attribute as the only way that they stayed married and kept the family together.

And I was actually actively raised in the church. So I would go on Sundays and I would play piano in Sunday school. And I was just a good kid growing up. I didn't smoke. I didn't drink. I didn't sleep around. I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up, and I was gonna cure mom and other people I'd met like her.

So that was kind of act one. Act two was a big detour from that. At 18, I start acting out this cliche prodigal son rebellion story, and I grow my hair down to my shoulders. I join a rock band and I moved to New York City. And the band immediately breaks up because we all hated each other.

But I stumble into this occupation in New York City nightlife. And I realized that if a person wanted to rebel, you could rebel in style as a nightclub promoter. And all you had to do was get the right, beautiful, famous people inside the club alongside people with money, and then you could sell them a $25 cocktail or a $1,000 bottle of champagne that cost you only 40.

And act two, that was the next 10 years of my life running around New York City packing nightclubs. I wound up working at 40 different nightclubs, really to the horror and sadness of my parents who saw their good, virginal Christian kid now out there smoking 40 cigarettes a day, doing drugs, going to strip clubs, drinking problem, just a total hedonistic mess.

And it was really at the end of that 10 years where I realized, wow, I'm a mess. And I've really become emotionally bankrupt, I'm spiritually bankrupt. I've come so far from this real foundation, this kind of amazing foundation that my parents had tried to lay for me in my childhood as helping others, as this idea of being a doctor.

I'd served nobody but myself for 10 years. And that really led me to this moment of kind of cathartic self-discovery and saying, I need a change, this is not working out. And I've got to go not find a pivot here, I need to kind of explore 180 degree change.

What's the opposite of everything I've been doing for 10 years? What's the opposite of everything I've been thinking and speaking? And being a pretty radical guy, I had this one idea, what if I sold everything I owned and I volunteered for one year on a humanitarian mission? What if I gave back one year of the 10 years that I'd selfishly wasted and could I be useful?

So it was pretty quick. I remember from this dial-up internet cafe, putting in all these applications to the famous humanitarian organizations I had tangentially heard of. You know, the Save the Children's and Oxfam's and Doctors Without Borders and World Visions and Red Crosses of the World. And then I put in my 10 applications and I waited.

And maybe no surprise to anybody listening, I'm denied by all 10 organizations. You know, it turns out they are not looking for nightclub promoters or ex-nightclub promoters to work alongside. And I just remember being so sad, so disappointed, that I thought I was ready for change. I take this first step and nobody will have me.

Well, I was very fortunate that there was one organization that actually at first denied me and then they were about to start their mission and they couldn't fill that position. So they went back through the rejected resumes and they called me up and said, if I'm willing to pay them $500 a month, and if I'm willing to go live in the poorest country in the world, a country called Liberia in West Africa, then I could join their humanitarian mission.

And the role that they had for me was a photojournalist. Now, I was technically not a photojournalist, but I had gone to NYU part-time. I'd gotten a communications degree and I was a pretty decent photographer and a pretty decent writer. So my life changed so dramatically as I left nightlife and set foot in the poorest country in the world, a country with no electricity, no running water, no sewage system, no mail system, a country that had just come out of a 14-year civil war.

And I joined this mission of humanitarian doctors and surgeons, people who had come from 40 countries to volunteer their time and offer free medical services to people who couldn't afford it, where those services didn't exist. And that really was the beginning of Act III, which then eventually led to my discovery of the need for clean water and then founding Charity Water.

- We're gonna get through to a lot of these things. And when I think about that hard change you made, did it really just, was something inspire you? Did it build up over time? How, you know, I know countless people who don't feel like they're doing their life's work and, you know, maybe it hasn't, they haven't hit that moment.

Maybe they also haven't been as far from their life's work in their previous career as you were, but what advice do you have for that transition point? - I think it did build up over time. And then there was this catalyst where, I remember I started having some health issues and one day half my body went numb and I couldn't feel my hand or my arm.

I remember walking over my loft, turning on the water, steaming hot water in the sink and I put my hand and arm under it and I can't feel anything. So I am convinced something is terribly wrong with me. I have some brain tumor, I have some incurable disease and I'm gonna die.

And that actually led me to really consider, you know, existential questions of the heaven and hell that I was raised with as a kid, questions about legacy, questions about, you know, did it matter that I was here at all? What had I done for others? It turned out that nobody could find anything wrong with me.

So after a series of brain tests and MRIs and EKG scans, I mean, it could have been my lifestyle of going to dinner at 10, going to the club at 12, going to the after hours to do cocaine from five to noon and then taking Ambien, you know, 1 p.m.

to come down. It might have had something to do with my body just crying out and shutting down or at least half of it. But that was an event that I think caused me to really stop and take stock of life and legacy and want to just change everything, you know, not even get back on track, you know, create a completely new path or a new track.

- And when you created that path, you didn't know what it would be. And I think a lot of people assume that if I don't love what I'm doing, I need to find what I love before I can kind of make a change. Would you argue that maybe that is kind of incorrect common wisdom?

- I stumbled, I completely stumbled into it. You know, I should say, when I went to join this medical mission, I quit all the stuff that I mentioned. You know, I remember having my last cigarette. I remember, you know, saying I'm never going to touch drugs again. I'm never going to look at a pornographic image again.

I really want to kind of shed all of these vices that have gripped me for a decade. And what was so important for me was also changing community and environment. It was much easier not to smoke two packs of Marlboro Reds or, you know, get high when you're surrounded by humanitarian doctors.

Not so easy when your job is nightlife and filling clubs five nights a week. So for me, I think I was so fortunate that the intention was there to change, but then my environment also changed. I don't know that I would have had the self-control to just quit all that stuff cold turkey while I'm still surrounded by, you know, thousands of drunk partying people.

- And you probably didn't know the goal going into this one-year adventure was to get into charitable work for your life. - Correct, correct. - Just to kind of reset and start over, I guess. - It's just where it took me. Yeah, and in fact, at the end of the year, I just signed up for another year 'cause I just didn't know what was next, but I wanted more life, more impact like this.

And, you know, the cool thing, Chris, was when I landed in Liberia as a photojournalist for this medical mission, I had about 15,000 emails that I brought with me. And back then, you know, email open rates were close to 100%. So I was taking this whole group of people that I had invited to 40 different clubs over a decade and was sharing what I was seeing.

So they were living vicariously through this guy that they had known and partied with who is now embedded with, you know, really badass, like life-changing doctors and surgeons in this country, you know, that's 14 years post-war and with these people trying to pick up the pieces and serve some of the greatest needs, like some of the greatest human needs, you know, maybe even on the planet at that time.

So, you know, I joke that there were certainly a few unsubscribes in the beginning. You know, people were saying, "Look, that Prada party that you said, you know, that was awesome. That store party you threw for the opening, you know, that MTV thing you did with Perry Farrell was awesome, but I'm not signing up for cleft lips and cleft tumors." That was really the small minority.

I mean, maybe the ability to tell stories visually of what I was seeing actually grew the list and people began to donate money and sponsor surgeries. And then people began to volunteer and say, "Well, Scott can go and find a way to be useful." You know, I work at Chanel.

I'd like some of that feeling of purpose in my life as well. So I was kind of able to redeem some of the things that I learned over those 10 years, even though they were directed selfishly or they were directed, you know, in, you know, maybe a hedonistic way.

I think the thing that I had learned was how to tell stories. You know, the story I was telling then, Chris, was get past my velvet rope, you know, get seen by us looking through the one-way glass, get picked to come in, then sit with all the beautiful, rich, famous people, spend a whole lot of money, and your life has great meaning.

You have arrived. I'd gotten so good at telling that story that I was just telling the wrong story. So when I started telling a very different story of doctors who had passionately given up their vacation time, who had not flown to the Four Seasons in the Maldives, but had come to the poorest country in the world for a couple months to serve and get nothing in return, people were really moved by that.

But the skill had been learned in a very different-- - Yeah, you talked about the person at Chanel trying to have a bit more purpose. At what point in time did you find that doing this was your purpose? Or I guess, what is your purpose now? - I think almost immediately.

I loved it. I mean, I remember getting asked a lot like, "Oh, isn't it hard? "You're living in this 120-square-foot cabin "with two roommates." And the ship was not a cruise liner. This was not a carnival cruise. The thing was 53 years old, had rats and mice and cockroaches.

And it was a very, very old kind of broken-down ship, which actually had to be retired a couple years later. But I was so inspired by being surrounded with people who served others. I think it was really that simple, who were just asking the question, "How can I take what I've been blessed with?

"How can I take my time, my talent, my money, "and use it to help others, "use it to end some of this needless suffering "out there in the world?" So I think I was just surrounded, Chris, with people with the exact opposite intention for the life I'd lived for 10 years and the lives of the people that I was curating or that I was surrounded, which was really, how much pleasure can we bring to ourself at any given moment of any given day and all the moments of all the days versus how can we help?

How can we serve? And do you think that is a formula for a more fulfilling life? I'm very careful to tell others. I mean, I think I have my personal experience. I have found there's a real freedom that comes with service. We've had donors over the years. Someone's about to go buy a BMW and will come across Charity Water and will buy a Toyota Prius instead and donate the difference to go help a couple communities get access to clean water.

So I have seen sacrificial giving. I've seen purpose-driven work improve the lives of so many people now through our community. We've had millions of donors around the world. I believe so, certainly true for me and certainly true from what I've observed. I will say, Chris, there was never enough.

Somebody always had a more beautiful girlfriend who was more famous. Somebody always had a better car, a better plane. If I was with a group of people gambling $10,000 a hand at Blackjack, somebody else was gambling 100,000 a hand. So it was this insatiable lust for more, but there was no end point.

And I think looking back at that, I mean, there was never going to be enough. And in fact, I still know people who are out at the clubs and they are now dating girls younger than their daughters. You know, just continually looking for more, looking for more, looking for those markers of success, knowing that somebody's always got a little bit more than you.

And it's not like that when you embrace a life of service. I guess it's more to a different degree. There's more work to be done. One of my favorite quotes, somebody sent me from a New York City bodega like almost 20 years ago, and it was a sign outside of Delhi that says, "Do not be afraid of work with no end." And that's really how I see 17 years at Charity Water now, is there's always another person to help.

There's always another community that needs clean water. Let's say we get to the end of the water crisis, which I truly believe is possible and I truly hope we do. You know, people are always asking me, so you're just going to put yourself out of business, right? Oh, Charity should put themselves out of business.

I think that's one of the stupidest concepts I've ever heard. Yeah, if we've helped 17 million people get clean water, if we get to 100 million served, 300 million served, if we eradicate this problem, you know, I would hope we would take everything we have learned over decades of working with donors, building trust, building relationship.

I would hope we'd take everything we've learned, operating in 30 really difficult countries around the world, and we'd say, great, everybody now has water. What else could we do together? What else could we do with our donors? What else could we do with our team members and all this expertise?

Are there people hungry? Are there people without access to healthcare? Are there people that don't have a roof over their heads? Let's take everything we've learned, let's go focus on that next critical human need or that next group of people who are needlessly suffering, rather than let's drop the mic, shut down the organization, and go all try to become, you know, millionaires finally.

- Well, let's talk about that because, you know, the mission is never ending, right? You've dedicated yourself and the organization you built to a life of service. There's no end in sight, right? There will always probably be something, unfortunately, that the world needs to be less suffering and people in a better place.

How do you make time for yourself in that world? How do you, you mentioned, you know, the selfishness of your past. Is a little bit of selfishness okay? Can you take yourself out to dinner? Can you go on a vacation or, you know, because you've been so close to it, I can't remember the number, but it's, you know, a very small amount of money each month to provide someone with water.

So how do you not want to give everything? - I think it's personality. I'm both optimistic, but I'm also very pragmatic. And I think maybe, you know, my experience in 10 years of clubs has helped me take a long view at this. And, you know, I realized going out to dinner with my wife is really important.

Going out to family dinners is important for our family. There are certain things that I try to be a really, really good steward of money with. I mean, I know a lot of people, you know, are a fan of your travel hacks. And we were talking about this offline before.

You know, I'm on about a hundred planes a year and I just fly coach. You know, we have never used a single donor dollar to fly me or any other executive, you know, or anybody at the organization in business class because we take that extra money, which in my case would be, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

And we put that back in the mission. So there are certain things that, you know, you're taking an austerity stance on. But, you know, there are other things that, I mean, I think I live a pretty normal life. You know, I've got a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old and we just had a, I have one that's nine weeks old now.

We had our surprise third. I'm almost 50, my wife's 40, but, you know, I really think about just making sure my kids are able to go play sports and live in a safe house in a safe neighborhood. And, you know, when they need bikes, I go and buy them bikes.

I'm not thinking, oh my gosh, if my nine-year-old goes without a bike, I can go give two more people in Africa access to clean water. I think it kind of take a long, sustainable view. If my family is healthy, if my relationship with my wife is healthy, you know, I'm probably going to be able to do this a whole lot longer and hopefully impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people, you know, by sustaining the energy or the passion or the mission.

I'm also surrounded, you know, I spend a lot of time in proximity to extraordinary wealth. And I know it does not make people happy. I mean, I do know some of the most unhappy people I know are some of the wealthiest people that I know. And just because, you know, you've got hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars does not make for a healthy, flourishing relationship, family, you know, holistic life.

So, there's no mystery, I think, around money or capital that I'm chasing anymore. In fact, sometimes even the opposite. - And how has that changed your own outlook on building, you know, your wealth or saving? - We have one family that gives to us that I'm really inspired by.

They are a family in Texas. They've given over $13 million to Charity Water. And the family caps their spending at $180,000 a year. This is a family of four. And that's just the number that, you know, I think the house is paid for and their couple cars are paid for, but they just don't spend any more than $180,000 a year.

And they give away everything else, everything from investments, everything from, you know, he was a successful businessman. And I'm really inspired by that. You know, so I kind of, I mean, I appreciate the extremes. We were talking earlier about, I think you've got a family member who's a Franciscan monk.

I mean, that is compelling to me. I just don't know that I'm cut out for, you know, I will say this, in the fundraising business, I find sometimes people who have a really unhealthy view of money will then shame people who do have money and they become terrible fundraisers.

Nobody wants to be around them. You know, you don't get invited to go on a vacation, you know, with somebody who has the capacity to give you a million dollars or $10 million or, you know, $50 million, if you're going to make them feel judged, if you're going to make them feel terrible about themselves.

So I think it's just, maybe it has to do with my past or what I was able to do in New York for 10 years or just a lot of the people that I'm in a relationship with now at Charity Water. I look at wealth as an opportunity to do more good in the world.

Wealth as an opportunity to serve, to put that money to work in human flourishing, in ending suffering. And it's my job, when I'm around people who have extraordinary wealth or, you know, middle-class wealth, to tell compelling enough stories, to create a compelling organization that can be a vehicle for turning their money into the transformation of human life and then creating a circle back to them so that they know it happened.

And if I can do all that, which I've been trying to do for almost 20 years, you know, we find we're restoring a lot of people's faith in charity. And charity means love. It's a really beautiful word that has become something that many people are skeptical or cynical about.

I remember when I started, 42% of Americans, you know, polled by USA Today, said they didn't trust charities. A more recent New York University study found 70% of Americans believe charities waste their money in some part, waste their donations. So, so many of the things that we've tried to do at Charity Water is restore that lost faith and, you know, almost get people addicted to generosity.

And it could be generosity of time. It could be generosity of money. It could be both. - Yeah, I mean, the thing that I first learned about Charity Water that made me realize you guys were different is that you have two separate sources for money, right? One covers all the overhead, all the way down to the credit card processing fees, and then the other is just directly to go towards causes and pay your money.

I mean, I think that was an intentional decision early on. - That's right. - How much of your success do you think would you attribute to, you know, in my mind, there's two things. You've ran it completely differently and then you've become masterful at storytelling. How do you think about those two things and is maybe there another thing that you think drove such success?

- Well, yeah, when I started, I was 30. I'd just come back from two years in Africa as a photojournalist. And I think I had the advantage, Chris, of not knowing anything about how to build a charity or run a charity. And I didn't really know anyone in institutional philanthropy.

I know people who worked at Goldman Sachs or at Sephora or at MTV VH1 at the time, everyday people. And I remember actually going and buying nonprofits for dummies. You know, the yellow book. How do you start a 501(c)(3)? What is a 501(c)(3)? Okay, we need some lawyers and you have to file this application with the federal government and you need a board.

I really had no idea at the beginning. But I think that then allowed me to go out and do just some informal market research. And as I talked to my friends, they loved the noble mission of getting everybody on earth clean water. I mean, everybody I talked to could stand for clean water for humans.

Republicans and Democrats and people of faith and people who are agnostic or atheists, like everybody could think water is a good idea for people. But really this pervasive kind of underlying skepticism, everyone also seemed to have a horror story of a charity gone wrong. You know, a charity where the money didn't get to the people that it was intended to get to, or a charity where they'd hired aunts and uncles and distant relatives and was just racked with nepotism.

So the model for Charity Water really came out of just listening to everyday people. I said, "Well, what would make you compelled to give?" And the 100% model just came out of that. Well, people said, "If I knew that 100% of what I gave "would actually help people, I'd be more likely to give." I said, "All right, well, this just needs to look like "two separately audited bank accounts.

"And in one bank account, I'm gonna raise my hand "and go try to find business leaders and entrepreneurs "who are not skeptical and actually who wouldn't mind paying "those unsexy overhead costs like staff salaries "and office rent and phone bills "and the toner for the Epson copy machine "if they knew we were efficient with those donations "and transparent.

"And then I can go out to the public and say, "Great, not your problem. "If you give a dollar or a million dollars, "every single penny, every dollar will go directly "to build these water projects "which get people clean water." And as you mentioned, you know, so that there would be kind of perfect integrity with the 100% model, we said, "Well, even pay back your credit card fees.

"If you give 100 bucks on your Amex, sadly, we get 96, "but we will pay that $4 back from the overhead account "and we'll send your $100 to the field." And then the second thing that came out of listening was people wanted just to see where their money went.

So we said, "All right, well, we're gonna prove "where this money goes. "Money's not fungible. "We can build technology in the water bank account "where all the public is giving towards "and we could track a $92 donation to a well in Malawi "or $114 donation to a spring protection in Nepal." And we actually became the first charity in the world just to geolocate all of our completed water projects up on Google Earth and then later Google Maps.

So there was this theme of hyper-transparency, but, you know, again, could we wrap that with a story? And then the third kind of pillar was just this belief that, yeah, I remember looking around the sector and saying, "Where are the apples of charity? "Where's the Nike? "Where's the Virgin?" Or later, "Where's the Tesla?

"Where are these inspiring, imaginative, creative brands "that capture the imagination of people?" And I saw a lot of shame and guilt-based marketing. I saw a lot of charities with bad websites and terrible checkout forms and PDFs that they expected people to read, you know, white papers about their issue.

So I think this just came through listening and these became really core distinctives for Charity Water, the 100% model, always looking for ways to connect people to their money, proving it, trying to build this really inspiring, design-forward brand. And then maybe the most important thing was really what we wouldn't do.

We wouldn't send anyone that looked like me over to Africa or India or Southeast Asia to go drill wells. And I believed just from day one for this work to be culturally appropriate, for it to be sustainable in the long run, it had to be led by the locals in each of these countries where we worked.

And if we were successful, we would help grow the teams of local hydrogeologists and local well drillers and technicians. And as we scaled, we would create thousands of local jobs in the process, and they would be the ones leading their communities and leading their countries forward in the future.

They'd also be the ones getting the credit. And that's, you know, maybe what I've been really most proud of, you know, 17 years later, we employ, you know, well over 2,500 people through our partner network now across 21 active countries. And they are taking the money that we're raising and turning it into clean water for the people living in their communities in their countries every single day.

So just to kind of finish on this, day one, I put all these things together, and my best idea for the launch of Charity Water was to get a nightclub donated during Fashion Week and to get Open Bar donated, and then to just email everyone I knew and invite them to my 31st birthday party.

And 700 people came, probably less for me, more for the club and the Open Bar. And on their way in, we put out this big plexi box and they had to drop $20 in the box to get in the club. And at the end of the night, we'd collected $15,000.

And we took 100% of the money to a refugee camp in Northern Uganda. We built our very first well, and then we sent the photo, proof, and the GPS coordinates and the satellite images back to the 700 people who came. And we said, "You came, you gave $20. "It mattered, and here, watch, see.

"See the impact you made." And I mean, that sounds so simple, but nobody else was doing that at the time. And it turned out to be such a competitive advantage in the early days. - You had no experience in this space and have built, you know, not the biggest, but definitely one of the most innovative charities that I'm familiar with.

I wanna jump into a few lessons because, you know, it seems like, wow, you just did this one thing and then it took off from there. I know you've had your fair share of setbacks along the way. So, you know, you were passionate about this space, but I know that takes patience and resilience.

How do you handle that? What advice would you give to people who are dealing with similar things in life, whether it's charities or anything, just to kind of build that resilience in their own pursuits? - Well, a lot of things didn't work. I remember, you know, the 100% model sounds great until you run out of people who are willing to pay for overhead.

So we had this moment about a year and a half in where we were raising so much money for clean water projects 'cause the 100% model was resonating with the everyday public, but I just couldn't find people to hire that next incremental staff member soon enough. And I'll never remember, there was this really pivotal moment.

We had $881,000 in the water bank account that was headed out to the fields to build projects. And we had a couple weeks left in the overhead account to make payroll. And I remember the advice I was getting from people was to go borrow against the 881(k). You know, write a little IOU and transfer between accounts 'cause you gotta pay your people and, you know, you'll figure this out later.

And I remember calling lawyers and I was gonna start to unwind the charity and just say, this doesn't work. This is an untenable model. You know, I guess unless you have, you know, a huge amount of capital to start with or a billionaire backer. But I remember thinking if we borrowed one penny of the public's money, you know, and violated that promise, even if we paid it back later, there would just be a crack in the foundation of our integrity.

And I didn't wanna run that organization. I would rather fail and, you know, try again with maybe the traditional business model where you put all the money in one business, you know, one account. And we were very fortunate at that time. I met a young entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and I remember taking a meeting with him.

He was interested in what we were doing. And I remember thinking the meeting went terribly. And at the end of the meeting, he asked for our bank account details. And then three days later, he shot me a note well after midnight saying, I enjoyed meeting you. You know, really love the passion, love the work.

I just wired a million dollars into your overhead account. And we went from insolvent, you know, weeks away from insolvency to over a year of operating capital. And, you know, we really never looked back. Had that not happened, I'm probably not having this conversation with you. And what helped me so much was I think, one, I fell back on our values.

And I would have been proud to hold my head high and shut the organization down and just say this didn't work, but at least not compromise. And, you know, besides the money, that million dollars, which was so needed at the time, it was also that somebody believed in me.

And he believed that this was a tenable model. We just needed more time. We needed more time to work it out. And today, there are 131 families who pay the overhead. And that grows every single year. We invite 10 or 15 new people in. And, you know, we've never really looked back after that moment, after that time.

That forced us to be creative. It forced us to come up with a multi-year, multi-tier kind of operations giving program. And, you know, now we have so many people that actually prefer to give that way. They would prefer to support a software engineer or a UI/UX designer than actually give directly to the water projects.

- And so now can you give money the other way? If you have too much in the overhead, do you just save it for a rainy day? - Well, we never have too much in the overhead, Chris. We never have too much in the overhead. You know, that's always probably, it's always a slightly harder proposition.

You know, but all that to say, you know, it's, we're not going bankrupt. You know, we're always trying to grow that group. We're trying, that is where all the growth capital comes from. So unless we grow the amount of people who are willing to give on that side, we can't grow the team.

We really can't grow, you know, the scale of the organization. But, you know, I think that was one. I think in, you know, resiliency, you're talking about staying the course. I remember seeing, so we're 17 years in, and we've now helped 17.4 million people get access to clean water.

About 137,000 villages around the world. On my bad days, I try to fill Madison Square Garden with 17 million people. And you would have to build about a thousand Madison Square Gardens. So, you know, Charity Water has sold out Staples Center or The Garden or, you know, O2 Arena in London about a thousand times, you know, to contain the amount of people who now have water.

99% of my time, I put that 17 million against the 700 million, and it's 1/40th. Yes, two and a half percent of the way to goal, because goal really is creating a world where no one drinks disgusting water. Like no human being alive, as we're recording a podcast, is risking their life, is poisoning themselves.

Simply because of the environment they were born into. And especially because we know how to solve this problem. I mean, that's what makes this both wonderful and energizing and also frustrating, is there are a lot of problems, Chris, we don't know how to solve. My mom eventually died of pancreatic cancer.

It was four months from diagnosis to death. They had absolutely no idea how to help her. We don't know how to solve ALS or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's yet. We know how to solve water for people. There's not a single one of the 700 million people out there where we're scratching our heads saying, I just couldn't help them.

You know, wouldn't know how to get them water. Now, we haven't created the will to solve the problem. We haven't allocated the resources to solve the problem, but we actually know how to do it. So, you know, I really kind of believe the best is yet to come. I remember looking at a seven, what was it?

It was a 27-year stock chart of Amazon. And the quote was, had Jeff Bezos quit in year 20, he'd only created 7% of the company's value. 93% came in years 21 through 27. That number may even be bigger now as a ratio. It might be five and 95. So I think there is an animating idea of just continuing to show up.

And we're in year 17 now. And you never know who is waiting, who is watching. We still don't have a single philanthropist of note in the entire world who has raised their hand and said, hey, I'm gonna work on water. Y'all are working on health and education and women and girls and gender equality and economic development.

You know what? I found the one thing that sits underneath almost every problem related to extreme poverty, and that's water. So I'm gonna take that on. We still don't have that. You know, there is no Bloomberg, Gates, Elon, Bezos. There's nobody who's kind of raised their hand. No corporation has raised their hand and made any sort of significant commitment towards this to really move the needle forward.

So I think as we just, you know, keep our heads down and every year, you know, try to grow the organization, grow our community, grow our impact. We put ourselves in a situation where hopefully we build trust, we build credibility, we build the systems and the infrastructure now, you know, across over 20 countries to be able to absorb that future interest in water and hopefully the future capital that comes to this space.

- I think part of the reason I am so compelled by the story of Charity Water is your ability to tell it, both here in video, on your website. Did you know how important that aspect would be to your success when you started? - I didn't, I didn't. And I think it's a little bit innate.

I don't think in statistics, you know, they don't move me. I really think in stories and I'm also a visual thinker. You know, I took photos early on with Charity Water. Now we have far better, more accomplished photographers who are willing to, you know, often donate their time and go out and document this work.

But I just think, I think I've realized the power of it over the years. I mean, I'll just, I'll give you an example. I wrote this chapter in my book, which was probably the most moving and devastating story, you know, for me over 17 years. And, you know, if I gave you the statistics, okay, 700 million people in the world don't have water.

Women are walking hundreds of millions of hours every year that they're wasting. Up to 50% of the disease in many of these countries is caused simply by bad water. Half the schools throughout the developing world don't have water or toilets for their students, right? I mean, I could, I could, I could, statistic after statistic, you know, but if I told you that I was in Northern Ethiopia once and somebody came up to me in a $5 a night hotel room lobby, kind of the restaurant lobby and said, "Hey, you're the charity water guy.

We've heard of you. We know the impact you're making up here. Let me tell you a story." He sits down and he says, "I'm from a remote village. The women in my village, they used to all walk eight hours a day." And he goes, "There was this one woman.

And at the end of one of her walks, before she got home, she slipped and she fell. And all the water that she had just walked for spilled out into the ground. And she had this clay pot on her back and the clay pot shattered. And there were shards all over the path." And he said, "She didn't go get another pot.

She didn't go back and go refill the water." He said, "She took a rope and she climbed a tree and she tied a noose around her neck and she hung herself. It's in the center of my village. And we found her body swinging from a tree." And he let that sit.

And he said, "The work you're doing is important." And he walked back into the kitchen. I remember thinking at first, that's not true. You know, that's what you tell the humanitarian aid worker to make us feel great about the work we're doing in the country. But I think the power of story, you know, that nagged at me.

And a couple of months later, I told my wife, I said, "I need to go and see if this is true. I need to go and see if this woman lived. And I need to see the tree." And I wound up flying back to Ethiopia and flying up to the north and then driving four hours, got to the end of the road, renting a donkey and a camel and putting a little backpack and tent, and then walking nine hours over the mountains to reach this village.

It was called Maida. And over the next week, I lived in this village and I walked in her footsteps and I met her mother. And I met the friend, her best friend, who walked for water with her that day. And they had kind of split at the end of the walk, her friend going to her house.

And her name was Letakiros, walking towards her house. And what I didn't know until I lived in this village was that she was 13 years old when she died. I was imagining someone towards the end of her life when she was described to me as a woman. She was a teenage girl.

And I saw where she got her water. I visited her grave. I talked to the priest who gave her ceremony. I interviewed her friends who told me what she was like. She had vision. She wanted to get out of this village. She wanted to become a doctor, a nurse to help people.

And I remember just standing next to the tree, which was this frail little tree. And there was a dirt path that ran next to the tree. You know, imagining a 13-year-old girl's body hanging with a noose around her neck and water off in the dust and shards of clay pot.

And it angered me. I came back with a driving desire to do more because kids shouldn't be hanging themselves because they were born in a village without water. And I remember the last thing just about this story, what struck me as I thought of, well, this is a tough story.

You know, I almost need to be careful telling the story, but I asked her best friend, I said, "Why do you think she took her life?" And her friend said, this is through a translator in the local language, Degrenia. Her friend said, "Shame." Because it was her role to go and get the water for the family.

And not only had she let the family down through her carelessness, slipping and falling, she'd also broken the clay pot, which was a valuable asset. And the shame of her failure would have been probably too much for her to go back and face her family. So there's statistics. And then there is the story of a real life person who's just one of those 703 million people that certainly resonated with me.

I was able to connect to the idea of shame. I was able to connect to futility, to a situation that you just don't know how to get out of. So you just have to keep doing it every single day. And wanting, Chris, to be a part of that answer to the next 13-year-old girl that I could get to.

- I don't even, it makes me wanna make sure if there's not a well in that village, can we start, do a fundraiser to put a well in that village? I'm hoping there already is. So I hear you, the storytelling there pales in comparison to the numbers. And when I think about my own ability to storytell, I think you're far superior and I need to work on that.

Is that something you learned? Is that something that was practiced? How did you, how can you draw people in? How can you, yeah. - I go to the movies a lot by myself. I mean, I think we're creatures of story. I'm fascinated, my wife was laughing at me the other day.

I spent three and a half hours alone in the new Scorsese movie. Because I grew up and I did a couple years in film school and I think he's a great storyteller. So I'm constantly trying to immerse myself in stories that have nothing to do with charity water and nothing to do with our work, but watch people who are masters of the craft.

There's no formula. I mean, I'm never sitting down and like saying this, then that, then this, you know, the hero's journey, or I've never read Joseph Campbell's work. I mean, I'm familiar kind of with the idea of the hero's journey, but I'm a chronological thinker. So it's kind of this, then that, then this, then that, then this.

I feel like just because I put everybody on such a downer there, I'll tell just one other kind of story on the opposite end of that. One of my favorites over the years, and we have so many stories, myriad stories that we've come across of just extraordinary people and extraordinary lives impacted by not having water, impacted by having water.

There's this woman named Helen that we met in Northern Uganda. And Helen was, you know, kind of the end of middle age and she was a mom, she had a bunch of kids. And our team was visiting Charity Water Completed Projects. And when the community knows you're coming, Chris, there's a lot of fanfare.

I mean, they roll out the red carpet, they're bringing goats and chickens and eggs, and there are speeches and there's dancing and there's singing. You know, there's a real honoring of the people who have come to, you know, just to learn more about the community. So I think we, the team had done four with fanfare, and this was like the fifth at the end of the day.

And they were trying to sneak into this village just to see the water point in action and kind of almost sneak up on it and say, "Hey, were people using it? And what did it feel like around the well?" Well, Helen had somehow gotten wind. So she leads this welcoming party of women and they're dancing and they're singing and they're welcoming the team in.

And after that stops, we sit down with Helen and we said, "Just tell us your story. You know, now you have water. It's feet from your home. How is your life different now?" And Helen begins to tell us the story of what her life was like before. She used to go get 10 gallons of water.

So two kind of big yellow jugs. Think of what you've got in your garage for your riding mower or the little gas tank. And she would carry two of these very heavy, 40 pounds each. And she said, "Because the water was so far away, I always had to make these choices.

There's never enough water. So what would I do with the water today?" And then she listed, "Well, I could cook. I could clean. I could garden. I could wash my kids' bodies. I could wash my kids' school uniforms." And she said, "There was just never enough water." And she said, "As a Ugandan woman, we put our families first." She said, "Now that I have clean water, feet from my house," she said this, she said, "Now I am beautiful." And our team didn't quite get it.

We're like, "Helen, of course, you're this beautiful Ugandan woman." And she goes, "No, I don't think you understand." She goes, "Now I finally, for the first time in my life, in this village, have enough water to wash my face and my body and my clothes." And she said, "I am beautiful." She said, "Look at me, I'm looking so smart." And we'd never quite thought of water in that way before until we sat down with a woman and just listened to her simply tell her story.

And water to her meant dignity. Water meant beauty. We'd been talking about water as health and rattling off statistics of disease and water is educated. Water to her meant something deeply personal. And when I tell that story, for me, it also, what an extraordinary thing to be able to give a woman, especially a woman who is sacrificially giving for her family.

She wasn't using the water for herself. She was using her limited water that she was walking hours for, for others, for the benefit of others. And now she finally had enough to take care of herself. I mean, who doesn't want to be a part of that? - Yeah, it's, I don't even know what to say.

I feel like just personally, I'm not going to keep this in. I'm like, I'm more interested in an interview that I'm like, I'm not sure there's the tactics. Like, I just want to keep talking. So that's between us and I guess my editor. Well, here's what I think I'll say.

I feel like what you've just given everyone listening is not only an incredible story about water and the impact it can have, but an example of how taking the time to pull stories, whether it's from your life, whether it's from the lives of people that you work with, the companies you work with, and turning them into something that's not tangible, instead of figures or facts.

And I so often default to the transactional information like, oh, water could give someone this, this, this, this. And I just need to stop and pause in the future and really realize that taking the time to tell that story, which you'd think as someone who talks to a microphone for a living would kind of innately have as a common practice, but I just think if there's a lesson that I've taken away from the last few minutes, it's just how powerful that can be and how it's not limited to someone in your role.

It's not a skill that only matters if you're raising money. It's something that probably matters in all aspects of life. - That's right. I mean, some of the greatest entrepreneurs are storytellers. It has to be true. I'll say that, Chris, it has to be true. - Yes. - I mean, I think sometimes there can be over embellishment and people can get really carried away.

So, you know, a story is powerful when it is true and often the details in a story, you know, make it true. It would not have been true for me had I not lived in Leta Quiros's village, had I not stood next to that tree, had I not walked in her footsteps down the ravine, had I not talked to the other women at that same source of water.

So, you know, for me, the proximity and the immersion to the story was really important. And then the details emerge from those, which I think, you know, can really move people because the details also remind people that it's true. You know what I mean? It's not a general, the specificity.

You know, Helen, I mean, I have a picture of her in her dress. So if I were to do this on stage, I would show you Helen dancing and I would show you the two yellow cans. And then I would show you a portrait we took of Helen as she is radiantly beaming.

And you would look at her green kind of paisley dress and you would notice, wow, it really does look clean. I can't see any dirt on that. So I think showing as well as telling is often really, really important. - And it's not just for story. I mean, let's take an example.

You've taken a lot of these stories and made videos, put them on the site. I'm referencing one in particular that you happened to share before we got started, the financial impact to the organization of telling these stories is also great. So it's not just storytelling for storytelling sake. The time you spend in that village, which I think sometimes comes across as not from you, but like you're brainstorming these ideas and you're like, do I really want to spend a week of my life collecting a story?

And I think one thing I've taken from our conversations, the value of that story could be even greater than the time you spent collecting. - I agree. I agree. I mean, look, stories can move people. I mean, I really think about storytelling is are we bringing out, is this story going to bring out something valuable in the people that might encounter it?

I'll just give you one other example. We'll probably talk about the film that the people could go actually see some of these images, but there's a famous donor story where there was a nine-year-old girl named Rachel Beckwith in Seattle, Washington. And she saw me talk. And at the time I would ask everyone in the audience to donate their next birthday to Charity Water.

And I'd say, you don't need any more stuff. You don't need toys. You know, women, you don't need handbags. Guys, you don't need wallets. Like we have enough stuff. Humans don't even have water. So turn your birthday into a giving moment. And I thought the sticky marketing message would be ask for your age in dollars.

So if you're turning nine, ask everyone for $9. If you're turning 89, ask everyone for $89. And Rachel took me seriously at this and she donates her ninth birthday and she sets a goal of $300, which was gonna help the time 10 people get access to water. And she cancels her birthday party, won't accept gifts, and she raises $220.

So she falls short in her goal and she tells her mom, she feels like she's failed and she's gonna try harder next year. And her mom's like, hey, I think you're pretty awesome. I mean, you raised $220 and just, you know, you care so much about people you've never met living an ocean away.

I mean, we should all be inspired by you. Well, right after her birthday, she dies in a car crash. There's a 25 car pile up on an interstate in Seattle. She's the only fatality, tractor trailer, jackknifes. Her mom was driving, her sister was in the front. She was smashed in the backseat.

And I was in Africa at the time. I was in Central African Republic. I remember landing the next day at JFK, turning on my phone, the BlackBerry at the time. And her pastor had emailed me to let me know of this little girl in his Seattle congregation who had donated her birthday, had raised $220, and then had passed away.

And he asked me, could we reopen her campaign? And he was gonna just ask everybody in the church to donate $9. Long story short, people get wind of this campaign. And a lot of people, Chris, donate $9. And it spreads to the New York Times, and Nick Kristof picks it up.

It spreads to the morning shows, starts spreading to Europe. And then one of the coolest things was people in Africa start donating $9 in Rachel's name. She goes from $220 to $1.3 million in donations. She inspired almost 60,000 complete strangers to give. And what was even cooler was so many of those givers then went on to donate their next birthday that inspired by this sacrificial nine-year-old girl who really should want toys or Taylor Swift cons, whatever the thing that a nine-year-old should want for themselves.

I think it so inspired 60,000 people. They said, not only can we give to honor her last wish, but we could also follow the lead of a nine-year-old girl. And I think that story, as tragic as it is, has put so much good into the world, beyond the 100,000 people that now have clean water.

I mean, she wanted to help 10 people while alive. She's now brought clean water to well over 100,000 people, actually got to take her mom and her grandparents on the one-year anniversary of her death, took them to Ethiopia, and they went village to village to village to village. And they personally met thousands of people who had clean water because of their daughter, because of their granddaughter.

But I think that story is good in the world. And maybe people have heard that story, didn't even donate a birthday to Charity Water, but they donated it for some other cause or for cancer research or to build a school. - I know the part of this story that changed for you was when you took this trip.

And you just talked about taking Rachel's family on a trip. How much of the perspective from travel and seeing people in other cultures and other circumstances has given you the perspective and gratitude you have? And how valuable do you think that is as a mechanism for changing anyone's perspective?

- Chris, I get asked a lot, having done this for close to 20 years, what keeps you going? Like, how can you still kind of get up and just do this day in and day out? The travel is a piece. So I make sure, it's never too long before I am in the ground in these communities, sorry, on the ground in these communities, connecting with the people we are hoping to serve and the people we're serving.

So that grounds me, it roots me. I've been to Africa more than 55 times now. I've been to 72 countries around the world. And living in these villages, I just got to take my six and eight-year-old this March for the first time to Uganda, which is where Charity Waters' first well was.

And I had my kids carrying water. I had my kids asking questions of communities. And my kids are born into a middle-class life. They will never have to drink dirty water as long as they live. And I wanted to share that experience with them as well. And I got to bring some of our major donors' kids as well on that trip.

And it was just really impactful. So for me, it is very, very important. Bryan Stevenson at AGI talks a lot about proximity. There's a power, there's a credibility that comes when you are in proximity to your issue, to the passion and the purpose. I had that proximity for the first two years on that mercy ship, embedded with these doctors.

I had the proximity because I was scrubbed up with a camera in an eight-and-a-half-hour surgery, watching them remove a tumor or put somebody's body back together who had been burned by rebel soldiers during the war. And I think that has helped. So I'm always looking for that and trying to make sure that I'm never too far away from the issue that I'm advocating for or the people who we're serving.

And obviously travel to Africa with kids is a big trip that not everyone can take. What other things are you doing as a father or even for yourself to kind of create that culture of gratitude, of selflessness, of generosity, of giving in your family? I like that you started with gratitude because that is the one practice that I am very faithful to with the kids.

So we play the gratitude game every night. We go around. If I'm doing bedtime alone without my wife, it's 30. So everybody's got to do 10 and you can have one repeat. So we're looking at 27 unique things that we're grateful for every single night. And sometimes if it's an early bedtime, I'll push them to do 20.

And just the practice of... And sometimes you get like, I'm thankful for mom, I'm thankful for the dog, I'm thankful for our house, I'm thankful for church, I'm thankful for... But I've gotten some unbelievably creative, really profound things out of the kids and I think even out of myself, things that have kind of surprised me when you really go into that posture of gratitude.

So that is one practice that I think has really enriched the lives of our family. I think, right, not everybody can take a trip. And I mean, we got back, my wife's like, I'm never doing that again. I mean, seven flights in seven days, time zones, 14 hours on Emirates through Dubai, the back of the bus was all coach, yeah.

Actually, that was seven out and coach, seven out and back and coach with kids, it was rough. But we would have not traded that experience and of course, we would have done it again. I think my wife would have done it again too. - When it comes to the charitable world, I feel like I don't have the perspective you do and you've gotten to know this industry probably much more than most people.

I'm curious, as people think about causes they wanna support, obviously, you'll encourage them to take a look at what you're doing and I will as well. What advice do you have for people when they find a cause in actually finding the right organization? As much as I love the 100% model, I think it's fairly unique.

And so finding the right organizations can be tough. And I know in the recent past with different disasters and war zones, people have made these lists of 20 different organizations, but it seems very hard to kind of evaluate an organization in the nonprofit sector. - I think it starts with finding causes that you're passionate about, learning about those causes, maybe more than what you're asking ChatGBT or browsing one article, educating yourself on these causes and then trying to research organizations that are well-run and are transparent.

I certainly do not think, in fact, I don't even advocate other people starting charities to adopt the 100% model. It was right for us 17 years ago. It continues to be right for us going forward. But what I really was trying to say back then is people just wanna know where their money's going.

Yeah, they just wanna, they want transparency in that. You know, if I told your listeners today that the greatest need at Charity Water was a new expensive copy machine because we needed to print a bunch of paper copies and it was gonna be $3,000 or something, people would donate for a copy machine to meet a need, to meet a specific need if they knew how that would move the mission forward.

We don't need a copy machine, but you could argue that'd be like the unsexiest cost ever is like something that prints paper. But if those papers were valuable to the continuation of the mission, people would step up. It's often, I think, the opacity, it's the not knowing where the money goes.

You know, it's the fine print during many of the disasters where you find out actually $100 million that was given went into an endowment, which won't see the light of day because in that fine print, the organizations say, well, if we over-raise what we can spend, you know, we can do anything with this money.

I remember to that end, there was a very famous example years ago during the tsunami, I believe it was, where Doctors Without Borders over-raised significantly. And they tried to refund everybody's money. And they tried to say, here, take your money back. We got what we needed. Can't spend it in this intended way.

And what do you think 99% of people did? Said, keep the money. But thank you for telling us. You know, so that move would have built so much trust because it was integrity in that move. There was transparency in that move. And I think that's often what, you know, is lacking sometimes in the sector, where when you really follow the dollars, you know, you're not always thrilled with what happened with them.

- And how would the average person go through that process? Like, what would you practically-- - You'd read a 990, which is one. So you'd read a 990. I mean, every organization publishes their 990, so you can see how they're spending their money, how much on marketing, how much on office costs.

You know, you can really see where the money is going out. And I mean, so that's one document. I mean, a lot of organizations that don't put that up online. So that's one flag. Somebody sent me, you know, due diligence. Oh, check out this organization. I said, well, they've been around for seven years.

They haven't posted a single financial online. You know, that's not even legal. So a charity is forced to publish their federal filed, it's like your tax return, every single year, and that needs to be found online. So there's actually a lot of just simple best practices that aren't happening.

I'm a big Dan Pallotta fan. So I am, if people don't know him, he gave a very famous TED Talk on kind of the overhead myth. He wrote a book called "Uncharitable." He's got a film coming out in the next month or so. And I am not an advocate for these tiny overheads.

I'm really an advocate for well-run efficient organizations who are growing their impact, who are trying to put more and more money, you know, out into the field or directly to the cause. And that is driving everything at the organization. - Yeah, if you looked at their 990 trend, and it's like, well, they spent a lot on overhead for two years.

And then in the third year, they, you know, 20X the amount of money they could raise. That's, it wasn't necessarily a bad sign that they had a lot of overhead for a few years. - Yeah, I mean, I'm a, I'm, you know, the Wounded Warrior story is probably the most famous.

I remember, you know, they were much vilified for a long time. And I sat with Steve Nardizzi once, who was their kind of co-founder. And the way that he explained it to me was so simple. He said, "I took this organization over, and we were raising $8 million a year for, you know, for veterans." And I might get this slightly wrong, but he said $8 million was not even a fraction of what was needed.

And I learned that, you know, every dollar I would put into marketing, I could return about 50 cents. So that sounds, whoa, horribly inefficient. But he said, "I wanted to market and grow the organization. And then I would kind of worry about efficiency later when we got up to scale." And I think he took the thing to 450 million.

Now, again, I don't remember the exact ratio, but let's say at 450 million, half of the money was going directly to help veterans. Well, he just took an efficient organization at 8 million going out to, you know, you could argue a much less efficient organization, but $225 million was going out in impact.

And I think he never really got the chance with his team to dial it back down and go back to efficiency at scale, which was going to be possible because so many of those people were monthly givers. So there was a high cost to acquire, but then you got a long tail.

So when you shut off that marketing spend, you know, and by the way, I mean, Disney Plus, like they went from zero to 100 million users, I think in the first year, just by spending billions and billions of dollars of marketing. Well, that's not how, you know, we're not seeing that same marketing blitz in year two and year three.

So I'm with you that I believe that these are often really wise investments that people need to make. But you know, you ask these questions and you start to really understand more about the organization's leadership, more about their history. You can make some pretty good decisions with some more information.

- And are any of these sites that provide ratings, I'm sure maybe you don't want to speak ill of them, but how much faith do you put in your own research versus the rating from a charitable rating site? - Yeah, well, we've been fortunate. I mean, we've had the highest ratings from all the sites.

I am very cynical about the methodology. I mean, it's just a formula. You know, it's a 990 is getting put through a variety of metrics. And it's, I think that's a whole nother podcast. I'm like, man, do I want to even open that? I think they are a good place to start.

They're certainly a good place to start maybe weeding out some of the egregious actors. But is that, it's looking at overhead. It's looking at some very simple metrics that is not necessarily an indicator of the impact they are having by moving their mission forward in the world. And simply because it can't.

I mean, there's one and a half million charities or something in America. So, you know, imagine it's the same thing with like the IRS. Like imagine assigning, you know, 1.4 million, you know, let's go do deep dives in all these organizations. It's just, it's not even feasible. - So I know a big part of what you guys have done well is around tracking your impact and effectiveness as an organization.

I'm curious if you've ever thought about that perspective on a personal level and how you or anyone listening might be able to apply some of those lessons to track the impact they're having with their own lives or with their own wallets or in their own careers. - I mean, Chris, I'm probably a bad guy to ask that question to, because my KPIs are pretty simple because this is my life's work.

It's people that have access to clean water because of the organization we're built, because of the movement that we are growing and how effectively we're deploying capital to change lives. So we have a pretty simple output. I have a personal goal of helping at least 100 million people. So that is a benchmark that's out there for me.

And, you know, we've helped 17 million people. So if we continue to this path, I would be probably far too old to realize that. So some exponential growth is certainly required to achieve that personal goal through work. When I think about my family, it's all about character. It's all about virtue.

It's instilling compassion, integrity, generosity into the lives of my children. Do they tell the truth? Do they admit when they're wrong? I mean, it's all kind of soft stuff. I can care less if they come and work with me or, you know, go work at a bank. I'm really interested in the people that they become and the way that they do things, whatever they do.

You know, are they doing it with the utmost integrity? You know, are they doing it by telling the truth? Are they treating people with kindness and respect? So I think two very different metrics. You know, obviously I'm trying to do the same thing as we build the culture of the organization.

Are we living up to our values? Are we, you know, are we kind of good all the way to the core? You know, is there anything that is not working that we need to go and fix? Is there anything that's hypocritical? You know, are we saying anything that we actually can't deliver on?

So we're constantly asking ourselves those questions as a culture as well. - You mentioned legacy a bit earlier, and I know Charity Water's work has had a lasting impact on communities. And in a way, that impact is part of your legacy. I'd love to explore this concept of leaving a meaningful legacy and making a lasting difference in the world.

And is that something you think about a lot? - It's interesting. I probably think about it less for me and more of encouraging other people to think about it. But I guess I would think about it as it's really positional or it's an intention of a life. I don't think legacy is like, okay, well, I tick these five boxes or, you know, they're gonna read at my funeral, A, B, C, D.

I think of it more as going through life and really just, I mean, I said this earlier, but asking the question, how can I take what I have, what I've been blessed with? I mean, everybody listening to this has been blessed, has certainly many things to be grateful for.

And how can I use that in the service of others? I think it's that simple. And that is really then a legacy of giving. It's a legacy of compassion. It's a legacy of generosity that will manifest itself in different ways through different seasons of life. I mean, one of my dreams at some point is to write a million dollar check to a charity.

I have wanted to pay back or pay that forward for 17 years. You know, we've been able to turn that million dollar gift into now, you know, well over $800 million raised. And I think I was able to give that back to that donor saying you believed in me.

We've honored this 100% model with absolute integrity now for 17 years, and we've kind of turned that one talent into 800 more and growing. But I'd like to do it personally, Chris. You know, and we're not going to do it through my salary at Charity Water, but I'd love to not just give advice, not just fund water projects across 21 countries.

It'd be fun to write a check and change the game for a small charity the same way somebody changed the game. So, I don't know if I'll ever get the opportunity to do that, but I think, you know, if I came into money in some way where I had the ability to do that, I'd be more likely to do that than to try to go blow a million dollars on, I don't know.

I mean, I guess it doesn't buy that much anymore, but you know, rather than trying to upgrade myself to business class flights for the next, you know, five years or something. I'd want that to be useful. - This has been amazing. I appreciate you sharing your story and the story of Charity Water with everyone here.

We didn't even mention where people can find that video we referenced earlier. So, maybe let everyone know where we want to send them right now. - I think, you know, people want to know more. If you'd like to see the video or, you know, you're looking for some way to get involved with us, probably the best place to go is The Spring.

It's thespring.com. It's where that video lives. It's had over a hundred million views now across platforms. And The Spring is just very simply an online community of people who show up every month. It's like Netflix, you know, or Spotify, you pay them every month, except we will not send you any music for free.

We will not send you any TV or movies. We will take a hundred percent of your money every month and we will turn it into clean water for people in need around the world. And, you know, I was actually with Daniel Ek in Ethiopia who founded Spotify and, you know, was helping me kind of move a lot of our one-time giving to subscription.

And that idea and that community has been really transformative. We tripled the organization's impact since we started that. And, you know, the average is, you know, it's $40 to give one person clean water. So there's probably a lot of people listening, you know, who could donate $40 a month and not even really feel that pain, but know that every single month one more person is getting access to clean water.

So I guess, you know, if I had one ask of people to consider, yeah, there's people that give $10 a month that are broke college students. We have people in their nineties on their pensions who give $10 a month. And every four months, a person moves from dirty water to clean water, which is a real big impact.

So, you know, you could check out the video, share it with your friends. You know, a lot of the images, Rachel stories in that video, you get to see what she looked like and just some really cool stuff and images in there. - Well, Scott, I appreciate you being here.

I've been a charity water supporter throughout the years and will continue to be. Thank you for joining me. - Thanks for having me.