Scott Harrison: From Nightclub Promoter to Charity Water Founder (#443)

Scott Harrison

Know it turns out that the Red Cross is not looking for a nightclub promoter. Doctors Without Borders are looking for credible doctors, not, you know, DJs or promoters. I remember being so dejected by the rejections. Then one organization wrote me back and said, "If you are willing to pay us $500 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—and it was at the bottom of the United Nations development chart because it had just come out of a 14-year civil war. There was finally data on the country that they could stack rank at the bottom of the world. They said, 'We are taking a medical mission into this country and we'll take you if you pay us.'"

Shaan Puri

What's up? 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.

Scott Harrison

so but I invited myself on let's be honest

Shaan Puri

you did invite yourself on but that's not that I love about you

Scott Harrison

that's because I like you

Shaan Puri

You are also kind of unashamed. You're unashamed at doing... getting the right thing done. I met this guy once and he said, "If your intentions are good, you can get away with anything." I don't know if that's, you know, 100% true, but I do think it's a good motto. Don't be too shy. So yes, you invited yourself on, but I think it's going to be a good one.

Scott Harrison

well the alternative was you want people to die of bad water so I mean

Shaan Puri

right yeah well which one is it

Scott Harrison

just kidding

Shaan Puri

Scott's a good friend. We met through our mutual friend, Michael Birch. Then, I went on a trip to Africa with Scott and saw the work that he was doing. That was kind of cool. I'll say this: 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 a charity episode. Okay, you know, maybe if I'm in the mood." But I'm going to tell you this: for that person who's a little on the fence, let me tell you right now, you're going to love this episode way more than the normal one for two reasons. The first is you're going to be inspired. Scott's story is very inspiring. I've heard him tell it many times, and I'm going to give him the opportunity to tell it here because it's kind of one of these real-life movies in a way. He started off as a not-so-do-gooder and turned into a very do-gooder. I think the story is very good. Second, he's an entrepreneur, and he took an entrepreneurial approach to charity, which I think very few people do. I know personally very few examples of that. He's also a very good storyteller. For all of you 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. Those are my promises to you. Scott, how did I do? Do you think I set a high bar? Properly? I know.

Scott Harrison

you know

Shaan Puri

no pressure luckily you've told this story once or twice before

Scott Harrison

Well, I... okay, I like schemers and dreamers. So, I was definitely a schemer and dreamer at 18 years old. I was born in Philadelphia and raised in a conservative Christian family. When I was 4, my mom passed out on the bedroom floor due to a carbon monoxide gas leak in our house. We had just moved into this new house. My dad was excited because it was reducing his commute; he wanted to spend more time with me and have a big family. She was the canary in the coal mine. Her unconsciousness led to the discovery of this gas leak, and life was never the same again. Mom never recovered.

Shaan Puri

affected her because she was at home all the time you guys

Scott Harrison

she was 24:7 that's right she was unpacking boxes from the move you know putting frames on the walls dad was working you know long hours at a job I was at school playing with my friends 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 of the curb and from that. On her immune system was irreparably disabled and unfortunately I have 40 years of experience with the 3 m family of masks so my mom was always masked from that. On charcoal mask n 95 mask everything chemical made her sick so she was able to survive by creating isolation rooms for herself 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 20 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 tinfoil 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 in a caregiver role doing the cooking doing the cleaning you know helping my dad my dad was an amazing loyal man stuck by her 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 instead I became a schemer and a dreamer and at 18 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 wanna take care of anyone anymore I wanna 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 at the high end selling $1,000 bottles of cristal selling $25 vodka red bulls that cost us 25¢ 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 upbringing and you know a picture of my life 10 years later was me in a dj booth with a famous dj I'm spraying champagne down over the crowd puffy's at table 1 jay z's at table 3 and I'm at table 2 thinking I'm a rock star because we have prettier girls at our table than jay z or poppy and and this was you know there was dinner at 10 the nightclub at 12 and then after hours at 5 am and to bed at noon taking ambien 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 it was 10 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 so far from wanting to become a doctor to help others and one day half my body went numb and

Shaan Puri

you

Scott Harrison

Know, maybe no surprise to anybody listening, as I just described what I was doing. But I just remember thinking, "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 because I can't feel half my body. I went to doctors and had MRIs and CT scans. They hooked diodes up to me and did electromagnetic pulsing, all that. They couldn't figure out anything wrong with me. 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," because the only thing I had to show for my...

Shaan Puri

In the doctor's office, did you fill out the little form? Were you just like "yes" on all the questions? It's like, "Have you, in the last 6 months, consumed any drugs?"

Scott Harrison

Alcohol... I remember being brutally honest. Yeah, right. Because I think everybody kind of cheats a little. Like, how many alcoholic drinks? You shave that by half typically. I think I was honest. I'm like, "How many alcoholic drinks?" Like, 165 a week, you know, something just... yeah. How many packs of cigarettes? Two and a half a day, you know? Anyway, they couldn't find anything wrong with me, but this led to a pretty radical life change. Maybe the close of Chapter 2 as this sycophantic, hedonistic nightclub promoter living only for himself. I wondered whether I could start life over at 28 and really ask myself, "What would the opposite of my life look like?" You know, I realized a pivot was not in order. This was not a small course correction that needed to happen. This was like, do, think, and say the 180-degree opposite of everything you've done, thought, and said for the last 10 years and see how that plays out.

Shaan Puri

I live for these kinds of 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. So a lot of times it's small talk, it's surface-level stuff, and then there are these times where I have the *real* conversation with myself in my head. Do you remember what those days were like? Or what made you really have that conversation with yourself at that time?

Scott Harrison

Yeah well there was a faith piece so I started praying again and you know 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 started 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 and what should I be doing and is there is there anything else for me and I remember the self talk really saying okay well if you're if you're exploring the opposite of your life 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 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 with dial up dell computers and I started applying to humanitarian aid organizations that I tangentially heard of over the decade certainly not that I'd 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 1 year of the 10 years that I had selfishly wasted or lived and see if I could be useful well maybe no surprise I was denied by the first 10 organizations you know it turns out that the red cross is not looking for a nightclub promoter doctors without borders are they're looking for credible doctors not you know djs or or promoters so I remember being so dejected by the rejections and then one organization wrote me back and said if you are willing to pay us $500 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 and it was at the bottom of the united nations development chart because it had just come out of a 14 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 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 because it was

Shaan Puri

It was the easiest degree. You basically did the real-life version. 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 going from New York City nightlife—rich, famous, fast living—to "I'm going to go to the poorest country on earth, pay to volunteer, and basically donate a year of my time just to kind of course correct." It sounds like you didn't even have a long-term plan or like this grand vision for yourself. It's like, "I just need to shift where this direction I'm going now into something else. I need to swerve in a hard, hard turn."

Scott Harrison

and then a couple of things happen yeah that that's exactly right I wouldn't have told you more than a year of line of sight I met the chief medical officer so I was gonna be living on a hospital ship a 500 foot converted ocean liner that was 50 + years old so not you know not a nice cruise liner 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 you know back on land with transformed lives and transformed health 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 3 months and when I walked up the gangway of this hospital ship to to surrender my passport he had been there 21 years so he never went back to his california plastic surgery practice and he dedicated 2 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 2 decades of service would look like or feel like or the impact that a person could have so my 3rd day there 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 1500 available surgery slots to fill I remember thinking to myself like are there 1500 sick people with facial tumors or cleft lips or blind or lame with leprosy like you know that sounds like a lot of people and I remember at 5:15 or 5:30 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 5,000 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 crap we're gonna send 3,500 of these people home without seeing a doctor without any answer for their affliction and I later learned

Shaan Puri

you probably used to having a long line outside the door that was

Scott Harrison

a good one a bad

Shaan Puri

thing now

Scott Harrison

the the parallels you know there there have been some interesting ones 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 said to me focus on the hope you know don't focus on the 35100 people we're gonna send home focus on the 1500 people who we're gonna help and that's what I really did for that 1st 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 to the work the other cool thing that happened was I was blasting my club list of 15,000 emails with pictures of facial tumors and flesh eating disease and leprosy you know being healed and you know or or patients being operated on and you know back then email open rates were like a 100% 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 but then you know most people were intrigued they were fascinated I had no idea that there 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 than to sell makeup every day I want more for my life I want more purpose so I I learned that maybe the same gift of promoting getting people to stand outside of velvet rope to queue to hope to get into a nightclub telling the story that if you came in my club and you spent 1,000 of dollars and you left with a cute boy or a cute girl then your life had meaning you know that same maybe gift or skill of of promoting could be used to promote something entirely different and redemptive and important for other people so the year ended and I just signed up for a second year because 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 2nd year I got off of the ship I spent more and more time I I bought a motorcycle so I'm driving around west africa liberia you know with 14,000 united nations peacekeepers 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 round green viscous water and I learned 2 things I learned half the country is drinking dirty water and I learned half the disease in the country is because people are drinking dirty water so you know for contrast you know a year previously I've been selling voss water for $10 a bottle to people who would just order 20 bottles for the table and not open any of them because they were drinking vodka or champagne so there was just something so you know profoundly contrastful of 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 5,000 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 1000000000 people drink this water every day 1 in 6 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 1500 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'll be the greatest medical professional in the the history of the world if you just brought people the most basic need for health the most basic need for life and I was 30 at the time I'm like oh 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 5,000 people didn't have to stand outside a stadium if 3,500 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 17 years ago

Shaan Puri

And you, this story... I would say two things. **First**, your story is so good that the first time I heard it, I thought, "That sounds almost too good to be true." The story is almost like Hollywood in that sense. 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, you know, how far the women and children have to carry water that's not even that clean, but the cleaner water back home just so they have water. We saw the schools that could now function because they had this. We saw so much stuff. So I've seen the impact of it on that side. I remember thinking, "This almost sounds too good to be true." It turned out to be the real deal. **Second**, when you have that moment where you're like, "Alright, here's what I should do with my life," I know I've felt this, and I'm sure other people have 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 got back to New York, did doubt creep in? Did you have any second thoughts, like, "Well, maybe I'll just send the check and go get a job somewhere"? Or were you really... are you just wired differently, where you were just sort of gung-ho, like, "No, I'm doing this"?

Scott Harrison

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 5 days in Guatemala or in Africa. Five days is not enough to change. You change everything about your life for most people. A year of immersive proximity to an issue creates a responsibility to do something about what I'd seen. That takes more than a week or even a month. I remember coming home. In fact, the ship was sailing to South Africa while it was going to be drydocked every year. They would kind of make repairs on the ship, and everybody went on vacation to the wine region for a month. I thought, "I don't want to waste my time doing that." I'm going to go back to New York City and put on a gallery exhibition of all the photos that I've taken. I'm going to invite all my club friends in and ask them for money. I did that. I got a gallery donated in Chelsea. I got a bunch of printers to donate high-resolution giant photographs. I put together 108 of my before and afters in a gallery and invited everybody from the clubs to come in. We raised about $100,000, and then I went back on the ship to show people what we had done with their money, to kind of follow the donation.

Shaan Puri

And so let's talk about the approach that you used to build Charity Water. First, let's zoom out at this. Charity Water has been around for how many years? And how much money has been donated? How many people have been given clean drinking water? Since that's... so we're at this moment.

Scott Harrison

We're in year 17. We just started year 17. We've raised $750,000,000 and we've helped 16,800,000 people get clean water.

Shaan Puri

amazing

Scott Harrison

And in the world, there are **770 million** people without water. So, it's now **1 in 10** people alive, as we record this, who are drinking dirty water. **82%** of them live in rural areas.

Shaan Puri

So, 17 years later, now back to year 1 of that... Your approach... 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. You'll tell it better than me, but I still remember this. I think you first told me this like 8 years ago or something, and that one stood out to me. It stuck with me ever since then. Do you want to say the quote?

Scott Harrison

That butchering the exact wording, this was Nick Kristof from The New York Times. Toothpaste is peddled with far more sophistication than all the world's life-saving causes.

Shaan Puri

exactly cold

Scott Harrison

Gates is better than Doctors Without Borders at telling their story.

Shaan Puri

Right, the marketing, the sophistication, the photography, the storytelling—all of it that goes into selling random commodity products like deodorant and toothpaste. What struck me when I encountered what you guys are doing at charity: water was that it was like best-in-class marketing, best-in-class product, and best-in-class storytelling. You would find this with the way that traditional consumer packaged goods brands are run, but you were doing it with charity. I had never seen that before. I was used to going to a charity website that was some old and crusty Craigslist-looking site. I would push a button, and it would ask me for money through some old payment method that I don't even know how to use.

Scott Harrison

it's 6 pages long right

Shaan Puri

And then I'm like clicking "accept, accept, accept." I have no idea where this money is going. I never hear from them again, you know? That was my charity experience. Charity: Water is very, very different. So, talk about how you decided to approach it from like first principles. What were those core tenets that you built on top of?

Scott Harrison

Well, I had the advantage of not knowing what I was doing with many entrepreneurs to start. You know, anything that becomes a good start.

Shaan Puri

the entrepreneurial advantage I didn't know any better

Scott Harrison

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 html for 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 17 years ago I'm gonna bring clean water to everybody in the world same thing I'm I'm saying you know now the as I talk to everyday people who worked at mtv or vh1 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 42% of americans just flat out said distrustful of charities 70% of americans in a more recent poll said they believe charities waste their money so 7 out of 10 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 skepticism or speak to the skeptic so I thought well what if we could open up 2 separate bank accounts and in one bank account I would raise all of that nasty overhead the staff salaries the office cost the toner for the epson copy machine the flights to africa and india and 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 100% of every donation whether it was a dollar or a pound or a euro or a $1,000,000 or £1,000,000 or €1,000,000 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 99.99% of charities in the world because it's very difficult to do but I just thought this would be clear I could say to a 6 year old go sell lemonade turn in 75¢ and all 75¢ will go directly to help people get clean water so that was kind of number one idea number 2 was then kind of realizing wow money is 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.

Scott Harrison

And you can show people where their money went so I'm like great we're gonna be the 1st charity to geolocate every completed project and we're gonna build the most transparent charity the world has ever seen so proof became the 2nd pillar and then the third thing was this idea of building an epic brand charities so often use shame and guilt to peddle their wares where would the apple of charities where was the nike you know nike doesn't sell shoes by telling people they're fat and lazy you know nike sells 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 virgin the kind of beautiful design of apple and then this 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 3rd 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 when you came with me to ethiopia there were 350 local staff working on the charity water projects running 8 different drilling rigs there wasn't a single person who looked like you or me in that entire program of 350 people and we just believe that we would create thousands of local jobs as we scaled and our our role would be to get people to care about this issue get people to say it's not okay on my watch that we are looking for water on a planet over a 100,000,000 miles away and 770,000,000 people are risking their life every day because they don't have clean water here in 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 17 years ago was to throw my 31st birthday party I got the club donated I got open bar donated and then I charged everybody $20 to get in as a donation and at the end of that night we collected $15,000 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 100% 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 700 people and we say you did this here's where your $20 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 31st birthday and they threw $20 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 I can't find this client info

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Shaan Puri

And so, you kick it off like that with a nightclub. You go back to your kind of roots as far as, "What do I know how to do?" Okay, I can throw out a great party, but this time I'll do it with a twist. Then, tell the story about Mark Zuckerberg and Michael Birch and trying to scale this up because I thought this was an amazing story.

Scott Harrison

yeah

Shaan Puri

And this is where, at some point, your genius business model of not having a big overhead and letting 100% of the donations go to the cause sounds good in theory. However, there's a reason why charities don't do this: 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.

Scott Harrison

Yeah, so about a year and a half in, well, let's just say the 100% model was working. We had raised a few million dollars right out of the gate. People loved that idea. In the other bank account, it was a lot harder to raise that overhead. We had a moment where we had $887,000 ready to go out to build water projects, and we were about to miss payroll in the overhead bank account. It was interesting; the advice I was getting from people was, "Hey, go borrow from that $887,000, right? I mean, you gotta pay your people."

Shaan Puri

right

Scott Harrison

like you'll pay it back later write a little iou in that account and I remember thinking if we borrow 1p 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 like how do you wind down a charity 18 months in because all the naysayers were right it's too hard getting people excited about overhead at the same time 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 for year 2 or the the the 1 year anniversary of charity:water I donated my 32nd birthday and instead of throwing a party I just asked everyone to give $32 for my 32nd birthday and I wound up raising $60 4 x because a lot of people had $32 to give especially if they could see exactly where it went right so I had googled you know top 3 social networks and you know myspace was number 1 at the time so I emailed tom facebook was number 2 emailed zuck the site called bebo that I hadn't heard of was number 3 so I remember scraping michael birch's name from the domain registry you know who is dot 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 age in dollars a 100% 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 this site called birthday alarm which reminds people of their birthdays and he said you know 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 6 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 you know where's the money like show me the money you you showed me the money in the wrong bank account and I I was praying I had no faith that anything would happen and at this time michael birchstein turns up and he says hey I'm gonna be in new york 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 or encouragement but 2 days later he emails me at midnight and he says hey I really enjoyed meeting you I just wired a $1,000,000 into your overhead account and I remember logging on to the bank and I saw it 1, 0 it was 13 months of overhead funding so we went from insolvent and he said I think he said keep rocking

Shaan Puri

uh-huh

Scott Harrison

Just, you just need more time. I love the idea; you just need more time. And again, that was $750,000,000 ago. Today, we have 131 entrepreneurs and families that pay all the overhead, and we have never been close to the line since. We grow that group by selecting about 20 new entrepreneurs and 20 new families every single year as the organization grows. You know, Michael and Xochitl have been very generous. They've given over $20,000,000 and have come to 14 or 15 countries with me now, bringing their kids all over the world to see the impact that they've made. But that was...

Shaan Puri

and that was that was

Scott Harrison

a that was a moment

Shaan Puri

I've asked Michael, "You know, you've done all these different projects." He did multiple internet companies.

Scott Harrison

did the battery he

Shaan Puri

Did the battery... So, he's got this member's club, like, you know, a physical building—a giant, beautiful 60,000 square foot building. He's done, you know, 100 investments, whatever. As for like, "What's your favorite? What's the best thing you've done?" Instantly, he just goes, "Charity: Water." He goes, "Yeah, the most fulfilling work that I've done is basically helping, you know, donating and then helping Scott." He takes my family, my kids, to Africa. They, I think, go like almost every year or every other year or something like that to go and see the work and the projects. He's like, "I love those trips with my family. My kids love it. It's taught them so much." And, you know, he's like, "That's the best thing I've done, hands down." I thought that was pretty impressive. Here's a guy who's made like $1,000,000,000 and built social networks with, you know, whatever, a million and a million users and all that good stuff. I thought that was pretty remarkable. It sounds like, because when I met you, I went to one of your events and then I went to the Ethiopia trip with you. The Ethiopia trip, you know, was like the who's who. It was like, you know, famous tech founders, actors, actresses, people from Hollywood, people from the music industry.

Scott Harrison

was on that trip I think we had chris on that trip fun group of people

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it was an amazing group. You know, just like the kind of bus ride conversations were incredible for the group. Then, I played "Wonderwall" at the fire, and people saw that I only know 3 of the 4 chords of "Wonderwall." So then we go there, and I'm like, this is an incredible way to... 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 is, "If I let you see it, you're gonna believe." So, what have you learned in that process of going from almost bankruptcy to now raising $750,000,000 for charity?

Scott Harrison

Which, by the way, is a fraction of what we need to raise to make the impact that we want to make. So, you know, 17,000,000 people—that's great, but that's 1/47th of the way there. We believe we're in like the second inning of this, right? I looked at the 27-year stock chart of Amazon. Justin Kahn tweeted this a couple of years ago: 7% of the value was created in the first 20 years, while 93% of the value was created in years 21 through 27. So, you know, things take time. We believe that this is just a mile marker on the hopefully expansive journey 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 thinks people should die from drinking bad water simply because of where they were born.

Shaan Puri

Right, we all agree. What is the cost to give someone clean drinking water, Rafa? I know you remember the number, and then I remember you were like, "Hey, that number is outdated. It doesn't take into account these other things. Let's raise it." I remember being like, "Well, I don't know. 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." I really appreciate the integrity of it. So, I think that last...

Scott Harrison

The cost is $40 to provide one person with clean water on average. We work across 22 countries. I think last year's actual cost was $39.67.

Shaan Puri

and so so $40 and that's for

Scott Harrison

a year or that's for a lifetime that's for 10:10 + years

Shaan Puri

you know

Scott Harrison

for the lifetime project some of these projects so it's 40 to 20 years

Shaan Puri

you can change you can absolutely change somebody's life I know $40

Scott Harrison

I know

Shaan Puri

And talk about some of the things that you've tried. Now, let's kind of go into the slightly entrepreneurial section of stories about stuff you've tried or opportunities that you see. This is more in the spirit of how we typically brainstorm things around here.

Scott Harrison

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 was 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 30-year-old girl gets clean water for the first time in her life. We debuted that at a gala where we put headsets on foreign people in black tie. We pressed play in synchronicity and took them all to Ethiopia for this week of, you know, water magic. Then, the minute the film ended, we just asked them for money and raised a couple of $1,000,000. So, you know, that was a fun one. A couple of years ago, we got into the Bitcoin space and we started a trust called the Bitcoin Water Trust, where we raised 100 Bitcoin to start. We said we were going to lock them all up in cold storage until at least 2025. So, we're not going to 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? Right. And we said we're going to take a position on this. We think, you know, there will be people who would only give us a Bitcoin donation to hold past, you know, the next halving 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. So, we raised over 100 there, and that campaign is still open with that same promise that 100% will then, you know, get unlocked at some...

Scott Harrison

2025 and beyond, and then go to have as much impact as possible. Gosh, I mean, we... you know, the birthday idea raised over $100,000,000 by getting over 1,000,000 people involved just in that simple idea. That's now been taken by lots of other charities.

Shaan Puri

and what's the best deal to open up

Scott Harrison

a fizz my birthday

Shaan Puri

is in 2 weeks I wanna give up my birthday

Scott Harrison

oh do it I'll be your first donor alright it's it's at least worth it to set up the page in 30 seconds

Shaan Puri

is it still at my charity water dot com or where where do I go now to do that

Scott Harrison

I think you just I think it's probably on the homepage now

Shaan Puri

okay

Scott Harrison

Wonderful! Yeah, so that's another way people can contribute. We have an amazing subscription community called **The Spring**, which has really helped the organization triple over the last five years. I remember being in a Land Rover with Daniel Ek from Spotify, and he said, "Scott, your business model sucks. Every January 1, all that money you raised last year, your ticker starts at 0. You gotta go re-raise all that and then grow." He suggested, "Why don't you build a community of people who will sign up every single month to give what they can?" And that's how **The Spring** was born. It now has members from 149 countries and is really the core of so much of our growth. The average contribution is about $30 a month. So, it's a little less than what it costs to provide one person with clean water, but there are a lot of people who can give enough to provide clean water for one person every single month without even missing it. It's like the cost of two Netflix subscriptions or two HBO Max subscriptions. Instead of getting content that you probably don't even need to watch more of anyway, humans are getting clean water. **100%** of that goes directly to the cause. People can learn more about this at **thespring.com**. There's also a video there that has gotten over **100 million views**, which is a short telling of our story with some of the visuals that you mentioned.

Shaan Puri

And I'm going to ask you one impossible question, which is kind of like, you know, when you ask Michael Jordan, "How do you do it?" It's like you've told me little things in passing because I kind of admire your brand building, your storytelling, and your event planning. Also, we didn't even talk about the events that you guys throw and how those drum up so much interest, passion, and donations. You had told me one thing about the events that I shared on the podcast that a lot of people liked. When I asked you, "Why are your events so good? Why do people rave about them?" you said, "Oh, I got this from Vic, my wife. She says, you know, it's about the moments between the moments." You gave me that little philosophy. I don't even think I understand 80% of that, but it gave...

Scott Harrison

me either we should get my wife in here

Shaan Puri

It's provocative, right? It gave me something to think about. I'm curious, do you feel like there is anything that you've kind of developed as your personal philosophies or isms? Or maybe set up some sort of life hacks when it comes to storytelling, sales, marketing, or brand building? Do you have any other moments between the moments that I can take with me this time?

Scott Harrison

Well, I think the more you give, the more you want to give. It's like a muscle. Practicing generosity and practicing saying "yes" just makes you want to say "yes" more. It makes you want to help more people. You know, I think a lot of people just have their walls up. They think, "Oh my gosh, if I say yes to this charity, I'm going to have to say yes to the next one." They worry that everyone is going to be asking them. That's okay! Try it. If you have to reduce the amount that you're giving to all of them so you can say "yes" to more, then do that. Try encouraging a social entrepreneur. Try encouraging someone who has mustered the courage to ask you to support their run, or their son's leukemia treatment, or the food pantry, or a cause like water around the world. Say "yes." It's a joy to give. It's a blessing to give. You know, the first three letters in the word "fundraising" are "fun." It should be fun to raise money for important causes, to give money to end needless suffering around the world. I think the more you do it, the more you want to do it. And the more you say "no," the more you're inclined to say "no" and miss out.

Shaan Puri

Right, well, I will take your challenge. I will say yes. So, I'm going to set up a birthday campaign. My birthday's in a couple of weeks, and I'm going to put the link in the description of this podcast. Awesome! I love it. So, if you love this podcast, if you love me, normally we have this thing called the "Gentleman's Agreement" or the "Ladies' Understanding," which basically says go subscribe to our channel today. It's a little bit of a different Gentleman's Agreement: donating your...

Scott Harrison

agent dollars how old are you gonna be 35 so there you go

Shaan Puri

Yes, if you want to give me a gift, $35 towards Charity: Water. I'm going to put the link in the description, and then I will donate $35,000 on top of whatever gets donated from people to Charity: Water as well. So that will be my gift. And Scott, thanks for coming on. I promised you I'd get you out of here on time, so I gotta wrap it up here. But thanks for coming on.

Scott Harrison

so generous that's that's really incredible that means so much to me

Shaan Puri

And thank you for kind of showing... I don't know, I've learned a lot from you. That's a little bit of my education from you on brand building, storytelling, and doing things. You know, like, I don't know, you have a lot of courage. You chose to spend your life doing something that matters. You didn't care about this stuff, but I remember when I went to Ethiopia with you. 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 giant crowd? Huge crowd! The whole town was there, lined up, and literally, I was like, "Scott is like Jesus to them." There were signs with your name.

Scott Harrison

was like

Shaan Puri

Of course, there should be, because of the impact. For somebody who works on the internet, like I'm sitting here in my box office right now doing a podcast, we live a pretty charmed life. We get to do things that are, you know, pretty easy in the grand history of the world. I think it's pretty easy to be disconnected from reality and what's going on for billions of people out there. So, you know, I thank you for giving me that experience. If anybody has the opportunity to turn a little bit of your attention away from the Twitter and TikToks of the world and take a look at what's going on globally, I think it will help you and make an impact for them the same way it did for me.

Scott Harrison

Oh man, I appreciate the chance to tell the story. Thanks again for your generosity; that means a lot to me. More importantly, it means a lot to the people who will be on the receiving end of it.

Shaan Puri

and if people wanna go learn more about you the charity shout out where you wanna send people to

Scott Harrison

I would just say charitywater.organdthespring.com

Shaan Puri

okay awesome thanks Scott

Scott Harrison

thanks ben thanks for having

Shaan Puri

me