Scott Harrison: From Nightclub Promoter to Charity Water Founder

You know, it turns out that the Red Cross is not looking for a nightclub promoter. Doctors without voters are they're looking for credible doctors, not, you know Called DJs. Or or promoters. So I remember being so uh Dej it. By the rejections.

And then one organization Wrote me back and said If you are willing to pay us five hundred dollars a month to volunteer. And if you're willing to go live in the poorest country in the world. A country I'd never even heard of.

called Liberia. Uh, and it was at the bottom of the United Nations development chart because it had just come out of a fourteen year civil war. And there was finally data. On the country. that they could stack rank it at the bottom of the world.

And they said we are taking a medical mission into this country. And we'll take you if you pay us. What's up? Uh I have Scott Harrison here. We've been I don't know maybe planning to do At least in my head, I've been planning to do an episode like this for a long time. Um, let's be honest. You did invite yourself on

But that's something I love about you. That's because I like you. You are you're also like kinda unashamed. You you are unashamed at like doing getting the right thing done. Um I met this guy once and he said if your intentions are good You can get away with anything. And I don't know if that's you know, I don't know if that's a hundred percent true, but I but I I do think it's uh It's it's a good motto. Don't don't be don't be too shy. So yes, you invited yourself on, but I think it's gonna be a good one. Well the alternative was you want people to die of bad water. So I mean Right, yeah.

Well which one is it? Just kidding. Um Scott's a good friend. Uh we met through uh mutual friend Michael Birch and then Uh I went on a trip to Africa with Scott and saw the work that he was doing, so that was kinda cool. I I'll say this. So A lot of people click on this podcast because they're schemers and dreamers. They're trying to figure out how to make money and we don't shy away from the fact that we enjoy making money and we enjoy the game of business. I think

For most people, here's their mindset coming in. It's gonna be Charity episode. Uh okay, you know, maybe if I'm in the mood. But I'm going to tell you this. So that person who's a little on the fence, let me tell you this right now. You're gonna love this episode way more than the normal one for two reasons. The first is you're gonna be inspired. Scott's story is is very inspiring. I've heard him tell it many times. I'm giving gonna give him the opportunity to tell it here because it's kinda one of these like real life movies in a way. And um he started off as a not so do-gooder and turned into a very do-gooder, and I think the story is very good.

Um And two, he's He's an entrepreneur. And he took an entrepreneurial approach to charity, which I think very few Uh I I know I know personally of very few examples of that. And he's a very good storyteller. And for all of you people who reach out to me saying, Oh, Sean, I love your stories.

Well, the master is here. He's a much better storyteller than me. So if you take nothing else away from this, you'll pick up a lot on storytelling. That's what those are my promises to you. Uh Scott, how did I do do you think I'm used to properly? Uh no pressure. Yeah. Luckily you've told this story once or twice before. Well, I okay, I I like schemers and dreamers. So I was definitely a schemer and dreamer at eighteen years old. Uh I was born in Philadelphia, raised in a conservative Christian family, and when I was four

My mom passed out on the bedroom floor uh due to a carbon monoxide gas leak in our house. So we just moved into this new house. Uh, my dad was excited'cause it was reducing his commute. He wanted to spend more time with me.

Have a big family. And she was the canary in the coal mine. Which unconchusness. led to the discovery of this gas leak. And life was never the same again. Uh Mom never recovered. It affected her because she was at home all the time. You guys were twenty four seven. That's right. She was unpacking boxes from the move, you know, putting frames on the walls.

Uh, dad was working, you know, long hours at a job. I was at school playing with my friends. Uh at their houses and she was she she bore the brunt of it. And we my dad and I actually got sick, so we had some weird food allergies, some migraines. But she got really sick. And

This led to the discovery of the gas leak. My dad ripped out the furnace with his bare hands, he threw it out on the curb. And from that point on her immune system was irreparably Disabled. And

Unfortunately, I have forty years of experience. With the three m family of masks, so my mom was always masked. From that point on. Charcoal mass, uh N ninety five mass. Everything chemical made her sick.

So she was able to survive by creating Isolation rooms for herself. Um, this sounds strange, but my mom lived in a tinfoil covered bathroom. And she slept on an army cot.

That had been washed in baking soda twenty times. She was so sensitive. that if she wanted to read a book I would have to either bake her book in the oven. Or set it outside for a couple days in the sun.

To get that smell of print out. Then I would knock on the door, I would hear the tin foil rustle. I would hand her the lightly baked book. And with her mask on and a pair of gloves, she would receive the book from me and shut the door. So all that to say a very weird

Childhood. uh in a caregiver role, doing the cooking, doing the cleaning. Yeah, helping my dad. My dad was an amazing loyal man, stock buyer. Uh believe that one day God would make sense of all this. And you know, my mom just lived with this for the rest of her life. So

You know, the first kind of chapter of my life, if you'd run into me As a young teenager I was gonna be a doctor, I was gonna cure mom and everybody else sick. With a condition like hers. Uh

And then I became a schemer and a dreamer. And at eighteen. Yeah, I moved to New York City and Just had that wake up moment. Now it's my turn. Now it's my turn to break the rules. I don't want to take care of anyone anymore. I want to take care of myself.

And I wanna have sex and I want to do drugs and I wanna drink. And I wanna be rich and famous. And I stumbled into this job. As a New York City nightclub promoter, where you had a pretty good shot at achieving Those markers of success.

And I I became really good at throwing parties uh at the high end. selling thousand dollar bottles of crystal, selling twenty five dollar Bodga Red Bulls that cost us twenty five cents. And creating spaces for movie stars and actors and

musicians and You know, fashion moguls and designers. To party. And You know, it couldn't have been more opposite, maybe from the the slightly repressed

Christian. And You know, a picture of my life ten years later was Me in a DJ booth with a famous DJ I'm spraying champagne down over the crowd. Puppy's at table one, Jay Z at table three.

And I'm at table two. thinking I'm a rock star because we have prettier girls at our table. Then Chasey or Poppy. And and this was you know, it it was dinner at ten. The nightclub at twelve.

And then after hours at five AM. And to bed at noon taking Ambient to come down. With a whole lot of self loathing. You know, if it if it caught up to us. Which it it did, you know, far too often towards the end of that.

So Uh, it was ten years for me to realize that I had made a mess of my life. I had come so far from the spirituality from the morality that my parents had tried to instill in me. Wanting to become a doctor to help others.

And one day half my body went numb. And uh you know, maybe no surprise to Anybody listening as I just described what I was doing. But I just remember thinking like I'm gonna die.

I'm gonna die. I've been living like I'm gonna live forever and now I'm gonna die in a week. I've got some brain tumor, I've got something very wrong with me. 'Cause I can't feel half my body. And I'm Went to doctors and had MRIs and C T scans and you know, they hooked diodes up to me and

Electromagnetic pulsing, all that, and they couldn't figure out anything wrong with me. Uh but it was a wake up call. Sean, that if I did die My tombstone, the best it could read. Would be here lies a man who's gotten a million people wasted.

It was the only thing I had to show before. When you were in the doctor's office, did you fill out the little form where you're just like yes. On all the questions, it's like have you in the last six months consumed any drugs? I remember being brutally honest, yeah. Right?'Cause I think everybody kinda cheats a little, like how many alcoholic drinks, right? You you shave that by half typically. I think I was honest. I'm like how many alcoholic drinks? Like a hundred and sixty five a week. Yeah, something to Yeah. How many packs of cigarettes? Two and a half a day. Um

You know, but anyway, they they couldn't find anything wrong with me, but this led to, you know, a pretty radical life change and and maybe the close of chapter two. As this sycophantic, hedonistic nightclub promoter living Only for himself. Um, and I I wondered whether I could start life over at twenty eight. And

Really ask myself, what would the opposite You know, I realized a pivot was not in order. Yeah, this was Uh th this was not a small course correction that needed to happen. This was like

Do and think and say The hundred and eighty degree opposite of everything you've And done and thought and said for the last ten years and see how that plays out. And I live for these kind of like These moments. These self talk moments. I think most of life is just in my own head. It's me it's me with me. And we're having a conversation. And so a lot of times it's small talk, it's surface level stuff. And then there are these times where I have the like

the real conversation with myself in my head. Do you Do you remember what that like what Those days or like what made you really like have that That That conversation with yourself at that point. Yeah. Well there was a faith piece, so I started praying again and

Yeah, kind of Going back and like, hey, what do I believe any of that stuff from childhood? You know, there was a lot of religion, there was a lot of rules. You know, but but there was a lot of good in there as well. So I sort of you know try to kind of come back to faith again. So there was a lot of prayer. Like

You know, God are you there. Uh and what should I be doing? And is there Is there anything else for me? And I remember the self talk.

Uh really say okay well if you're If you're exploring the opposite of your life Um what would that look like? And I thought well it would be volunteering. On a humanitarian mission.

In the poorest country in the world. That was the spec. That would be the opposite of a nightclub m you know, bottles and models. Lifestyle. And

I remember from a I I was I'd taken some time driving just aimlessly north trying to, you know, find myself. I wound up in Maine. In an internet cafe on Moosehead Lake. Uh with dial up bell computers. And I started applying to humanitarian aid organizations that I tangentially heard of over the decade.

Certainly not that I had given any money to. But Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, Oxfam, World Vision. The Red Cross. And I I was very clear that this is what I wanted to do. Give one year Of the ten years that I had selfishly

Yeah, wasted or lived. And see if I could be useful. Well, maybe no surprise I was denied by the first ten organizations. You know, it turns out that the Red Cross is not looking for a nightclub promoter. Doctors without voters are they're looking for credible doctors, not you know Call DJs. Or or promoters.

So I remember being so uh Dejected. And then one organization Wrote me back and said If you are willing to pay us five hundred dollars a month to volunteer.

And if you're willing to go live in the poorest country in the world. A country I'd never even heard of. Called Liberia. Uh, and it was at the bottom of the United Nations development chart because it had just come out of a fourteen year civil war. And there was finally data.

On the country. that they could stack rank it at the bottom of the world. And they said we are taking a medical mission into this country. And we'll take you. If you pay us.

every month. And uh the the job or the the volunteer role I signed up for was a photojournalist. So I was gonna be taking pictures and writing. And I was always a pretty good writer and a pretty good hobby photographer, you know, through the club. Club years and I'd gotten a Degree part time at NYU.

For that. You basically did the real life version. I I don't even watch Seinfeld, but I know about this episode where George is like, Jerry I'm doing the opposite now. Whatever I used to do, I do the opposite. You basically have the real life version of that where you're like Go from New York City nightlife.

you know, rich, famous, fast living to I'm gonna go to the poorest country on earth, pay to volunteer. And uh and basically donate a year of my time just to kind of course correct and like sh Break my own frame and shift. Just

It sounds like you didn't even have like a long term plan or like this grand vision for yourself. It's like I just need to shift Like where I'm this direction I'm going now into some other I need a swerve in a in a hard hard turn. And then a couple of things happened. Yeah, that that's exactly right. I wouldn't have told you more than a year. Of line of sight. Um, I met the chief medical officer. So I was gonna be living on a hospital ship, a five hundred

Foot Converted ocean liner that was fifty plus years old, so not you know, not a nice cruise liner. Um, and it had been gutted and turned into a state of the art hospital with a very simple idea for this charity. Let's sail a giant hospital ship with the best doctors in the world. On their vacation time and let's take it to people who can't afford medical care.

And and because we can control the environment, let's bring them on the hospital ship. Perform these life changing surgeries and then set them Yeah, back on land. with transformed lives and transformed hell. So I met the guy who is running this whole thing.

And his name was Doctor Gary Parker. And I learned that he was a plastic surgeon from California who had heard about this opportunity. And he signed up for three months. And when I walked up the gangway of this hospital ship to To surrender my passport.

He had been there twenty one years. So he never went back to his California plastic surgery. Practice and he dedicated. Two decades. Of his life.

to this work. So I remember just thinking What if that's me? What if it's not a year? And I wanted to know everything I could about him.

And What two decades of service would look like or feel like or the imp That a person could have. So my third day there Um

Is the patient screening. So the the ship's arrival has been announced. By an advanced team. Flyers have been posted throughout the country. And

We have been given the football stadium. In the center. Of town. The the soccer stadium by the government. to triage the people who might come to visit our doctors.

Now I know we have fifteen hundred available surgery slots to fill. I remember thinking to myself, like, are there fifteen hundred sick people? With facial tumors or cleft lips or blind or lame. Uh with leprosy, like it You know, that sounds like a lot of people.

And I remember At five fifteen or five thirty AM putting on hospital scrubs. It was still pitch black out, jumping into this convoy of land rovers. With doctors and surgeons and nurses, and we kinda snaked through the city. And we came to the stadium and there were five thousand people.

Standing in the dark. In the parking lot waiting for us to open the doors. And that was such a powerful moment for me. Realizing Oh rap.

We're gonna send. Three thousand five hundred of these people home. Without seeing a doctor. Without any answer.

And I later learned to uh You probably used to have a long line outside the door. That was a different kind of thing now. The the parallels, you know, there there have been some interesting ones. Um I later learned some of these people had walked for more than a month. With their children. From neighboring countries.

Just hoping that a doctor might save their child's life. So I remember Doctor Gary uh said to me, Focus on the hope. You know, don't focus on the thirty five hundred people we're gonna send home.

Focus on the fifteen hundred people who are gonna help, and that's what I really did for that first year. on the ship and I was documenting every single one of them before surgery. and after surgery for the medical library. And That

You know, Mercy Ships would be able to use those photos to raise money and spread awareness of the work. The other cool thing that happened was I was blasting my club list of fifteen thousand emails. With pictures of facial tumors. And flesh eating disease and leprosy being healed.

And Ye you know, or or are patients being operated on. And you know, back then email open rates were like a hundred percent. So there were definitely a lot of unsubscribes. You know.

I signed up for that cool Prada party you threw once, but not like the tumor party. Um You know, most people were intrigued. They were fascinated. I had no idea that they were doctors on a ship. Saving people's lives. How do I get a piece of this? How do I sponsor a surgery?

How do I come on the ship, like you? I remember somebody writing me from Chanel once. She's like I sit here In a brightly lit. Cosmetic headquarters and I'm weeping. You know, because

I want more! I I want more! Then to sell makeup. Every day. I want more for my life.

I one more purpose. So I I learned that maybe the same gift uh of promoting Getting people to stand outside a velvet rope. To Q. To hope to get into a nightclub telling the story.

That if you came in my club and you spent thousands of dollars and you left with a cute boy or a cute girl. Then your life had meaning. Yeah, that same maybe gift or skill of s of promoting Could be used to promote something.

Entirely different. And redemptive and important. For other people. So the year ended and I just sign up for a second year. 'Cause I didn't know what was next. So let me go do this again for another year.

And that was when I found water. So the second year I got off of the ship, I spent more and more time. I bought a motorcycle. Uh, so I'm driving around West Africa, Liberia, you know. With fourteen thousand United Nations peace keepers and soldiers, and I've got this little press badge. And I'm spending time in these rural areas and I see

The water people are drinking. And they're drinking from swamps and ponds and rivers. Brown, green, viscous water. And I learned two things. I learn half the country. Is drinking dirty water.

And I learn half the disease in the country. It's because people are drinking dirty water. So You know, for contrast You know, a year previously, I'd been selling Voss water for ten dollars a bottle.

To people who would just order twenty bottles for the table and not open any of them. They were drinking vodka champagne. So there was just something so you know profoundly uh c contrastful Uh Watching a human

Drink dirty water that was making them sick in real time. And knowing the excess. Of my former life. And I remember showing these photos to Doctor Gary. And I'm like

Doctor Gary, no wonder five thousand sick people are standing outside a parking lot of a stadium. You should see what they're drinking. And he said, Yeah, I know. And in fact a billion. Drink this water every day. One in six people alive on the planet.

He said, Why don't you go do something about it? Why don't you make this Your mission. Instead of raising money for, you know, the next fifteen hundred surgeries on this ship, why don't you just go get everybody in the world clean water? He said.

Yeah, something like you'll be the you'd be the greatest medical professional in the The history of the world If you just brought people the most basic nine. For health. The most basic need for life.

And I was thirty at the time. I'm like Well okay, Doctor Gary. That sounds good. You know, and I came back to New York City. And Said, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna try to bring clean and safe drinking water to every single human

On earth before I die. Because that seems like a good idea. And it'd be great if five thousand people didn't have to stand outside a stadium if three thousand five hundred people didn't have to get turned away because they had clean water. In their villages.

And that was really the start of charity water, you know, now seventeen years ago. And you um This story I would say two things. One is Your stories So good that the first time I heard it

I thought That sounds almost too good like too good to be true. Like the story is almost like Hollywood in that in that sense. Um As I got to know you, I learned that you're the real deal. I went with you to Africa. I saw the wells that you guys have created. I saw the drinking water. We did the water carry of

Yeah, how far The women and children have to carry w water. That's not even that clean, but the cleaner water back to back home just so that they have water. Uh you know, we saw the schools that were like, you know, now could function because they had this. We saw so much stuff. So I've seen the impact of it on that side. Yeah. I remember thinking this this almost sounds too good to be true. It it it it turns out to be the real deal. That's the first thing I want to say. The second thing is

When you have that moment where you're like, All right. Here's what I should do with my life. I know I've felt this. I'm sure other people felt this too. The difference between what you feel like you should do and what you actually do. is often held back by some sort of fear or limitation.

Did you like Once you left Africa and you get back to the to to New York Did doubt creep in or did you have any second thoughts of like ah, well, maybe I'll just send the check and Go get a job somewhere, like you know, or were you really are you just wired differently where you were just sort of gung ho like no, I'm doing this. I think what helped was that I had lived there for almost a year.

You know, you hear about a lot of people that go on a mission trip with their church. And they spend five days in Guatemala. Or in Africa. Five days is not enough to change. But y you change everything about your life. For for most people.

Um a year? of immersive Proximity. to an issue was. So there was a responsibility to do something about what I'd seen.

That that took more than a week. Or even a month. Right. Um so I I remember coming home, um i in fact the ship was sailing to South Africa while it was gonna be dry docked every year, so they would kind of make repairs on the ship and everybody went on vacation to Wine Region for a month.

I'm like, I don't wanna waste my time doing that. I'm gonna go back to New York City. And I'm gonna put on a gallery exhibition. Of all the photos that I've taken. And I'm gonna invite all my club friends in and I'm gonna ask him for money. And I did that. I got a galler donated in Chelsea.

Uh I got a bunch of, you know, uh printers to donate. you know, high res giant photographs and I put together a hundred and eight Of my before and afters. In a gallery and I invited everybody from the clubs to come in and we raised about a hundred thousand dollars. And then I went back on the ship to show people

What we had done with their money. Uh to kind of follow the donation. And so let's talk about the approach that you use to build shared water. So first let's zoom out. At this point, charity water's been around for how many years and how much money has been Uh donated

And how many people have been given clean drinking water since that's the work at this moment? We're in year seventeen, just start of year seventeen. We've raised seven hundred and fifty million dollars. And we've helped uh sixteen point eight million people get clean water. And and in the world there are

Seven hundred and seventy million people without water. So it's now one in ten people alive as we record this are drinking dirty water. Eighty two percent of them live in rural areas. So seventeen years later, now Back to year one of that. Your approach. So you took a very interesting approach to this. I want to start with a quote that I had heard you say once. It's like this toothpaste quote. Uh you'll you'll tell it better than me, but I remember I still remember this. I you first told me this like eight years ago or something.

And that one stood out to me. It stuck with me ever since then. You you want to say the quotes on butcher the exact wording? This was Nick Christoph of the New York Times toothpaste. Is peddled with far more sophistication. than all the world's life saving causes. Exactly.

Is better. Than Doctors Without Borders. At telling the story. Right. The marketing, the sophistication, the photography, the story storytelling, all of it that goes into selling Random commodity products.

The odor in toothpaste. Um And I and what I what stood out to me when I c kind of encountered what you guys were doing at Charity Water was It was like best in class marketing, best in class product, best in class storytelling, like you would find With the way that yeah

traditional consumer packaged good brands are are run. But you were doing it with charity. And I had never seen that. I was used to going to a charity website that was some old and crusty, Craigslist looking site and I push a button and it asked me for money through some old payment method that I don't even know how to use. And then I'm like clicking accept, accept, accept. I have no idea where this money is going. Never hear from them again. Um, you know, and That was my charity experience. And then Charity Water is very, very different. So talk about How you decided to approach it from like first principles and what were those like core tenets Uh that you you you built on top of.

Well, I had the advantage of not knowing what I was doing. Uh w with many entrepreneurs to start you know anything. That becomes the entrepreneurial advantage. I didn't know any better. I didn't come from the established. So I knew nothing about traditional philanthropy. How to set up a charity. Actually went and bought

The yellow dummies book. You know, nonprofits for dummies. Okay. And then I bought dummies because I'm like, Well, I don't have money for a web designer, so I need to also You know, build our website. So I was living on a closet floor. At the time in Soho, New York, my old club partner took me in for free rent.

And I was sleeping on his walk in closet. And but I had a very clear mission. So if you'd run into me seventeen years ago I'm gonna bring clean water to everybody in the world. Same thing I'm I'm saying, you know, now. Um

The As I talk to everyday people. Who worked at MTV or VH One at the time. Who worked at Sephora. Who worked at Chase Bank?

I realized they were cynical and skeptical about charities. They just didn't trust. Charities. Writ large. And I remember coming across a USA Today poll found forty two percent of Americans Just flat out said

Distrustful of charities. Seventy percent of Americans in a more recent poll. Said they believe charities waste their money. So seven out of ten. Potentially generous people think charities are wasting

Their donations. So I thought this was a huge opportunity. and a new business model Could solve some of this. Uh skepticism.

So I thought well what if we could open up two separate bank accounts? And in one bank account. I would raise all of that nasty overhead. The staff salaries, the office costs, the toner for the Epson copy machine. The flights

to Africa and Indian Asian where we'd eventually build our projects. What if I could raise that In a separate bank account. And then In the main bank account. A hundred percent.

Of every donation. Whether it was a dollar or a pound or a euro Or a million dollars or a million pounds or a million euros could go directly To build water projects that saves people's lives. And you know, nobody was doing this at the time. I mean this would have

you know, made us different than ninety nine point nine nine percent of charities in the world. Um because it's very difficult to do. But I just thought this would be clear. I could say to a six year old Go sell lemonade. Turn in seventy five cents.

At all seventy five cents. We'll go directly. To help people get clean water. So that was kind of number one idea. Number two was then kind of realizing Wow.

Money's not fungible. So we can build technology tools to track. These small amounts of money. Down to The project.

That they funded. And I remember meeting the the founder of Google Earth and he pressed this medallion into my palm. So Charity Water started right before Google Earth and Google Maps. And he says, you know, I'm building a place where you can put every single well. Every water plate.

And you can show people where their money went. So I'm like, great, we're gonna be the first charity to geo locate every Completed project and we're gonna build the most transparent charity the world has ever seen. So proof became the second pillar. And then the third thing was this idea of building an epic brand.

Uh charities so often use shame and guilt. To peddle their wares. Where would the apple? Where was the Nike? You know Nike doesn't

Sell shoes by telling people they're fat and lazy. Yeah, Nike sell shoes by Telling inspirational stories of people overcoming adversity. And Nike believes if you have one leg You can win a marathon.

You know, if you have one arm, you can win the shot put competition at the Olympics. With your other arm. And you know, Nike believes greatness is inside you and that's the way that they market. And someone's like, Maybe I should turn off the TV. And stop eating Cheetos. And try and go run a quarter of a mile.

So I I wanted charity water to be modeled on, you know, the whimsy of version. the kind of beautiful design of Apple and then this uh you know, this opportunity or inspiration of of Nike and I just didn't see it out there. So brand was kind of the third thing.

The third pillar. And then to actually get the work done, I believed You know, as we built wells and built gravity fed systems and filtration systems and It would need to be led by the locals in each of these countries. To be culturally appropriate and sustainable.

Um when you came with me to Ethiopia, there were three hundred and fifty. Local staff. Working on the charity water projects, running eight different drilling rigs. There wasn't a single person. Who look like you or me.

Uh in that entire program of three hundred and fifty people. And we just believed that we would create thousands of local jobs as we scaled. Um, and our our role would be to get people to care about this issue. Get people to say It's never okay on my watch. That we are looking

For water on a planet over a hundred million miles away. And seven hundred and seventy million people. are risking their life every day'cause they don't have clean water here on our planet. So our job would be to Get people to reject the apathy.

That You know, is is easy to assume with any of these paralyzing global issues and say Let's do something about this. Let's get everybody on earth clean water. Like we can all agree on that. Republicans can agree on that, Democrats and independents and libertarians.

And Jews and Christians and Muslims and atheists and Mormons like everybody can think that clean Drinking water. is a good idea. So It started in a nightclub.

I mean the only idea I had seventeen years ago was to throw my thirty first birthday party I got the club donated. I got open bar donated. And then I charged everybody twenty bucks to get in as a donation. And at the end of that night we collected fifteen thousand dollars.

In this big plexi box. And we counted it and then we counted it again and then we photographed everybody counting it. And then we took a hundred percent of the money to Uganda and we built our first well. And then We sent the photos.

And the GPS coordinates of that well back to the seven hundred people. And we say you did this. Here's where your twenty dollars went. And That sounds so simple. But that was so revolutionary.

People never expected to hear from the charity again. I mean they went to some party in a club for some dude's Thirty first birthday and they threw twenty bucks in a bin. And That idea we said let's just put that at the core.

of charity water and in everything we do. Let's try to connect people. To what their money accomplished to the people who they helped. And so you

You kick it off like that with a nightclub. Go back you go back to the to to your kind of roots as as far as what do I know how to do. Okay, I can throw out a great party, but this time I'll I'll I'll do it with a twist. And then tell the story about Mark Zuckerberg And uh Michael Birch trying to uh scale this up because I thought this was an amazing story. Yeah, and this is where At some point your your genius business model of not shooting all the overheads, all the overhead separate

And letting all the donations, one hundred percent of the donations go to the cause. Sounds good in theory, but there's a reason why charities don't do this. Yeah. Because it's hard to cover the overheads. So Talk about how you got into a little bit of a pickle and then what happened from there. Yeah, so about a year and a half in Well let's just say the hundred percent model was working.

And w we'd raised a few million dollars just right out of the gate. People love that idea. Um in the other bank account. A lot harder to raise that overhead. So we had a moment Where are we at eight hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars ready to go out to build water projects. And we're about to miss payroll.

And the overhead bank account. And it was interesting, the advice I was getting From people was Hey go borrow. From that eight hundred eighty seven.

Right? I mean you gotta pay your people. Like you'll pay it back later. Write a little IOU in that account. And I remember thinking If we borrow one penny We've compromised our integrity.

There's a crack at the foundation. And I don't wanna work here and nobody will wanna work here again. So I'm just gonna shut the charity down. And say that this business model didn't work. And I started calling lawyers to say I how do you wind down a charity? eighteen months in, because

All the naysayers were right. It's too hard getting people excited about overhead. At the same time, um I had just Come up with this idea of trying to scale The birthday party

But not a birthday party in a nightclub. Taking it online. And uh for year two, uh or the the the one year anniversary of charity water, I donated my thirty second birthday. And instead of throwing a party, I just asked everyone to give thirty two dollars. For my thirty second birthday.

And I wound up raising sixty grand. Four X because a lot of people had thirty two dollars to give. Especially if they could see exactly where it went. So I had uh Googled, you know, top three social networks. And you know, MySpace was number one at the time, so I emailed Tom

Uh Facebook was number two, emailed Zuck. Uh A site called Bebo that I hadn't heard of was number three. So I remember scraping uh Michael Birch's name from the domain registry, you know, who is Uh.net.

And I emailed him and I said, Hey, I'm this kid, I'm trying to bring clean water to the world and I'd like everybody on your social network to donate their birthdays. To my cause. It's your Asian dollars.

Hundred percent goes, Yeah, this is a great idea. Well Duck didn't write me back, Tom didn't write me back, Michael did. And he said I actually love this idea. And on the side I have the site called Birthday Alarm, which reminds people of their birthdays.

And um he said Yeah, the timing for me is terrible right now, but You know, keep up the great work and by the way, the website design looks awesome. So this was six months before the bankruptcy moment. And around this time when we're about to wind down

You know, I remember praying, I'm like on my knees, like God, I thought you gave me this dream. Where's the money? Like show me the money. Uh y you show me the money in the wrong bank account. And uh I I was praying I had no faith. uh that anything would happen. And at this time, Michael Birchtime turns up and he says, Hey, I'm going to be in New York. Um, I've got an hour, you know, can I stop by and and see your office?

And I remember sitting with him. And taking him through a presentation on my laptop and just being really honest about how hard it was to raise money for overhead. And I remember thinking he just didn't like me. I mean he was British, you know, he wasn't smiling. Not not a lot of warmth.

Uh or encouragement. But two days later, he emailed me at midnight. And he says, Hey, I really enjoyed meeting you. I just wired a million dollars into your overhead account. And I remember logging on to the bank. And I saw it. One comma zero zero zero. It was thirteen months of overhead funding.

So we went from insolvent. And he said, I think he said, Keep rocking. Just You just need more time. Love the idea. You just need more time.

And again, that was seven hundred and fifty million dollars ago. And today We have a hundred and thirty one. Entrepreneurs. And

And families that pay all the overhead. And we have never been close to the line. Sense. Uh, and and you know, we grow that group by selecting twenty new entrepreneurs and twenty new families or so every single year. as the organization grows.

And you know, Michael and Zochie have been very generous. They've given over twenty million dollars. They've come and come to fourteen or fifteen countries with me now. bringing their kids all over the world to see the impact that they've they've made. But that was And a moment. I've asked Michael, I was like, you know, you've done all these different projects so he did

Multiple internet companies. He uh Did the battery. He's got the battery, so he's got this members club, like you know, a physical building, a giant, beautiful sixty thousand square foot building. He's done. Yeah, hundred investments, whatever.

I was like, you know, what's your favorite? What's the best thing you've done? Um And instantly he just goes, Charity Water. He goes, uh yeah, he goes the most fulfilling work that I have done is Basically help you know.

Donating and then helping helping Scott. And And taking my family, my kids to Africa. They go I think they go like almost every year or every other year or something like that to go and see the work And the projects and he's like I love those trips with my family. My kids love it. It's taught them so much.

And uh You know, it it's like that's the best thing I've done. Hands down. And I thought that was pretty impressive. Made like a billion dollars and

built social networks with, you know, whatever, millions and millions of users and all that good stuff. And and I thought that was pretty um Pretty remarkable. And it sounds like Because when I met you Uh I went to one of your events and then I went to the Ethiopia trip with you and the Ethiopia trip uh you know, it was like the who's who was like, you know, famous tech founders

Actors, actresses, people from Hollywood, people from the music industry. Ferris was on that trip, I think. Ferris was on that trip. Fun group of people. Yeah, it was a kinda an amazing group and um You know, just like the kind of bus ride conversations were were were just incredible for the group. And then um Uh then I played Wonderwall at the fire, and people saw that.

People saw that I I only know three of the four chords of Wonderwall and uh and so then we we go there and I'm like, This is an incredible way to like You know, the best products in the world Are products where you can either Show somebody a before and after photo. Even better, you just put a product in their hands. Or

Even better what you were doing, which was If I let you see it. You're gonna believe. And so what have you learned in that process of like Going from Almost uh almost bankruptcy to now raising seven hundred fifty million dollars for charity. Which by the way, is a fraction of what we need to raise to make the impact that we want to make. So

Yeah, seventeen million people, that's great. That's one forty seventh of the way there. So you know we are We believe we're in like the second inning. Of this. Right. I looked at the twenty seven stock uh twenty seven year uh Justin Kahn tweeted this a couple years ago. Twenty seven

Year stock chart of Amazon. Seven percent of the value was created in the first twenty years. Ninety three percent of the value. Years twenty one through twenty seven. So I you know, things take time.

You know, and we believe that Yeah, this is just a mile marker on you know, hopefully the expansiveness of the charity water community And the generosity that is Yet untapped.

As we Again, try to get everybody clean water. I mean there's probably nobody listening. That thin people should die by drinking bad water. Simply because of where they were born. Right, we all agree. And uh what is the cost to give someone clean drinking water, Rough? I I I know you you

I remember there was a number of and then I remember you were like, Hey, that number's outdated, it doesn't take into account these other things, let's raise it. And I remember being like well, I don't know, that Do we want to should we just round the number? And you're like, No, we don't round the number. We just say what the actual cost is. Like yeah, I I really appreciate the integrity of it. Uh, and I think last year was it's forty dollars to give one person clean water on average. We work across twenty two countries. I think last year's actual was thirty nine sixty seven. And so forty dollars and that's for a year or that's for a lifetime. What is that? That's for ten, ten plus years. You know, for the life of the project. Some of these projects forty, twenty years. You can change you can absolutely change somebody's life. Forty bucks. I know. And um

W talk about some of the things that you've tried. So now let's kinda go into the the slightly entrepreneurial uh section of like, you know, s stories of stuff you've tried or or opportunities that you see Um, more in the spirit of kind of how we typically brainstorm things around here. Yeah, I mean we've You know, innovation has been a real core of the organization, as you say, trying new things. We made one of the first virtual reality films seven years ago.

This is before they had VR cameras that you could buy. We got GoPros donated, made a modified rig and shot. A six day journey? Where a thirteen year old girl gets clean water for the first time in her life. Uh we debut that at a gala where we put headsets on foreigner people in black tie. We press press play in synchronicity.

We took them all to Ethiopia. For this week. Uh You know. Water magic.

And then the minute the film ended, we just asked him for money. And raise a couple million dollars. So, you know, that that was a fun one. Um, you know, a couple years ago, uh we got into the Bitcoin space and we started a trust. Uh, called the Bitcoin Water Trust. Where we raised a hundred bitcoin to start.

And we said We're gonna lock'em all up in cold storage until at least twenty twenty five. So we're not gonna sell it. Charity water charities typically when you give them stock, you know, they immediately liquidate. Who are we to ever take a position on any asset?

Right. And we said, We're gonna take a position on this. And we think You know, there will be people who would only give us A bitcoin donation.

You know, to hold. past, you know, the next halving and and and and maybe even longer. But would never give us a bitcoin. you know, to immediately liquidate. They'd rather give us cash or some other asset. Um so we raised over a hundred there and that's that that

Campaign is open, is still going. With that same promise that a hundred percent Well then, you know, get unlocked at some point twenty twenty five and beyond. And then go to have as much impact as as possible. Um

Gosh, I mean we You know, the birthday idea raised over a hundred million dollars, um, by getting over a million people involved just in that simple idea, and that's now been taken by Lots of other charities. And what's the open up a physical space in the My birthday's in two weeks. I want to give up my birthday. All right. It's it's at least worth it to set up the page in thirty seconds. Is it still at my charitywater dot com or where do I go now to do that? I think you just I think it's probably on the homepage now.

Okay. Wonderful. Yeah, so that's another way people can get and then we have um we have an amazing subscription community called the Spring. Um which is That has really helped the organization triple.

Over the last Uh five years. And it's yeah, I remember being in a land rubber with Daniel Eck. From Spotify. And he's like, Scott, your business model sucks. Every January one All that money you raised last year?

Your ticker starts at zero. You gotta go re raise all that and then grow. He said, Why don't you build A community of people. Who will sign up every single month to give what they can. And that's the spring. Um that now has members from a hundred and forty nine countries.

And is really the core of so much of our growth. The average is about thirty bucks a month. So it's it's a little less than one person getting clean water. But there are a lot of people They can Give.

one person clean water every single month and not even miss it. Not even think about it. You know, it's two Netflixes and a Spotify. Right, or two HBO Maxes. And uh and instead of you know getting

Probably don't even need to watch more of anyway. You know, humans are getting clean water. As a hundred percent of that goes. So that's People could learn more about that at the spring dot com. And there's also a video there that's gotten over a hundred million views, which

Is a is a short telling of our story with some of the visuals that you mentioned. And I'm gonna ask you one impossible question, which is kinda like, you know, you ask Michael Jordan, how do you do how do you do it, right? It's like You've told me little things in passing around'cause I I kind of admire your brand building, your storytelling and your event thing also. Like we didn't even talk about the events that you guys throw and how those drum up so much interest and passion and and and donations. And y you had told me one thing about the events that I shared on the podcast that a lot of people liked, which was

When I asked you why are your events so good, why why do people rave about the events and you said Oh I got this from from Vic, my wife, she she says uh You know It's about the moments between the moments. Um and you gave me that little philosophy. And I I don't even think I understand eighty percent of that.

But it's not. We should get my wife in here. It's provocative, right? It g it gave you something to think about. I'm curious, do you feel like is there anything that you've kind of Is your f your personal philosophies or isms or s sort of like Life hacks when it comes to either the storytelling, the sales, the marketing side, the brand building, like

Do you have any other Moments between the moments that I can I can take with me this time? The more you give The more you give. So I think it's like a muscle.

And practicing generosity, practicing saying yes. Just makes you want to say yes more. It makes you want to help more people. Um, you know, I think a lot of people just they have the walls up. Oh my gosh, if I say yes to this charity, I'm gonna have to say next to the next one. Yes to the next one. And like everybody's gonna be asking me. Like, that's okay. Try that. Yeah, and and and if

Yeah, if you have to take the amount that you're giving down to all of them so you can say yes to more, try encouraging. A social entrepreneur. Try encouraging someone who has mustered the courage. Ask you to support their run. Or yeah, their son's leukemia treatment.

or the food pantry or cause like water around the world, like say yes. And it's a joy to give. It it's it's a blessing to give. Three letters in the word fundraising. It's fun.

Like it should be fun. To raise money For important causes to raise money. uh to give money to end needless suffering around the world. And I think the more you do it, the more you want to do it.

Um and the more you say no, the more you're inclined to say no and miss out. Right. Well, I will uh I will take your challenge. I will say yes. So I'm gonna set up a a birthday uh my birthday's in a couple of weeks. I'm gonna set up a birthday campaign right now. I'm gonna put the link in the Description of this podcast. Awesome. I love it. So If you if you love this podcast, if you love me, normally that we have this thing called the gentleman's agreement or the lady's understanding, which is basically says go subscribe to our channel. Today it's a little bit of a different uh gentleman's agreement. Donate your age in dollars. How old are you gonna be? Thirty five. So the g is if you want to give me a gift, thirty five bucks towards charity water, I'm gonna put the link in the description and then I will donate

thirty five thousand dollars on top of whatever gets donated from people to to charity water as well. And so that will be my uh My my gift. Uh and and Scott, thanks for coming on. I promised you I'd get you out of here on time. So I gotta I gotta wrap it here. But thanks for coming on. So generous. That's that's really incredible. That means so much to me. And uh and thank you for kind of showing uh I don't know, I've learned a lot from you. That's a little bit of my education from you on on brand building. Storytelling and

Doing things you know, like I don't know, you Yeah, the You have a lot of courage. You do you chose to spend your life doing something that matters. Like you you didn't care about this stuff, but I remember when I went to Ethiopia with you and we went to one of the schools where a well had been built And literally when we were coming in I was like, are the Beatles behind us? What is this pr giant crowd?

Huge crowd, like the whole town was there lined up. And literally I was like Scott is like Jesus to them. Like there were signs with your name, and I was like, Of course there should be because Of the impact. And i you know, for somebody who You work on the internet, like I'm sitting here in my box house right now doing a podcast, like

We live a pretty charmed life. Uh we get to do things that are are are Pretty pretty you know. Easy in the grand h history of the world. Um

I think it's pretty easy just to be disconnected from from reality and what's going on for billions of people out there. And so, you know, I thank you for for giving me that experience. And uh, you know, if if anybody has the opportunity to kind of Turn a little bit of your attention away from kind of the Twitter and the TikToks of the world and take a look at what's going on in the world. I think it will It'll help you and kind of make uh make an impact for them the same way it did for me. Well man, I I appreciate the the chance to to tell the story. And thanks again for your generosity. That means that means a lot to me and More more importantly, the people who'll be on the

Receiving end of it. And if people wanna go learn more about you, the charity, where uh shout out where you wanna send people to. Uh I would just say charitywater dot org and the spring dot com. Okay, awesome. Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having me.

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