Scott Harrison
Founder and CEO of charity:water
Discussion
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Scott Harrison
@scottharrison
Hi everyone, Scott here. So a little about me; I spent 10 years as a nightclub promoter in New York City before leaving to volunteer on a hospital ship off the coast of Liberia, West Africa as a volunteer photojournalist. When I returned home to New York City two years later, I founded the non-profit organization charity: water. Turning my full attention to the global water crisis and the world's 800 million people without clean water to drink, I created public installations and online fundraising platforms to spread international awareness of the issue.
In eight years, with the help of more than 500,000 donors worldwide, charity: water has raised over $180 million and funded over 16,000 water projects in 25 countries. When completed, those projects will provide over 5.2 million people with clean, safe drinking water. Ask me anything!
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Aaron Fife
@fifeaaron
@scottharrison What does the next phase of Charity Water look like for you? How do you see the organization expanding?
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Scott Harrison
@scottharrison
@fifeaaron Aaron - when I first started, I was actually calling the organization simply "charity:" ... water was the first "campaign" or "initiative" but I thought one day I would go all Richard Branson and launch a bunch of others: charity: education, charity: shelter, charity: vision, charity: health, etc etc ... What we learned though as we got deeper and deeper into water is that A. It's a really really hard problem to solve and we have so much more work to do to really make a significant dent, B. the more time we spend focused on this, the more expertise we develop, the smarter our programming gets, and the more we're able to innovate and C. water touches SO many things. It makes a huge impact on health, on education (we fund lots of water projects at schools that include toilets for both boys and girls), on HIV/Aids, and even on sight (trachoma is water-borne)... It also impacts local economies and besides making people "healthier" makes them "wealthier" .... An 88 page report from Hutton/ Hailer out of the UN found every $1 invested in water and sanitation (toilets) makes rural communities 4 - 10X wealthier... So $1 = $4 - $12 of impact. We've toyed with the idea of extending water into drip irrigation or agricultural, but so far have remained focused on the 663 million people who don't have their most basic need met, and making sure our projects are sustainable and working for years to come.
Sam Smale
@nomenclatured · manager
Charity:Water is known for its story telling. What is the secret? do you have guiding principles for your stories?
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Scott Harrison
@scottharrison
@nomenclatured I think storytelling is one of the things we do best. We just love stories. We seem them everywhere, and use stories to convey values that we care deeply about. I'll give you an example. We crowdsourced a drilling rig once in Ethiopia... More than 10,000 donors contributed just over $1M, and we painted it yellow, mounted a GPS unit to it and gave it a Twitter account. About 6 months later, we heard that our rig had had an accident in Ethiopia, and had slipped off the road. Belly up, basically. Our amazing local partners in Ethiopia were a bit sheepish about it, and were working hard to get it back in operation (they did quickly), but when I heard about it, I tried to rush a photographer out there to capture the accident. I wanted to email the photo of our up-ended rig to the 10,000 donors to say: 1. It's really hard to work in these conditions, and stuff happens. 2. Our local partners are tenacious, incredibly hard-working and they are working in the most remote villages, sometimes on roads that they shouldn't even necessarily be on to reach the most marginalized people - NOT taking the easy route drilling by main roads and finally 3. It's just true. Two of my favorite charity: water stories over time are sad but profoundly moving stories: https://medium.com/charity-water... (Letikiros) and http://www.charitywater.org/blog... (Rachel's)
Jonny Goodchild
@jonny_goodchild
@scottharrison has the quick growth of charity: water been a challenge in terms of team dynamics and keeping the same values?
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Scott Harrison
@scottharrison
@jonny_goodchild I think in some ways, we haven't grown that quickly - or at least not in startup terms. We've got about 75 full-time people now, and 20 interns, but the growth has been manageable. A business coach and mentor that I worked with for years went from 0 - 2000 employees in under 3 years. I think they definitely had more challenges. We're pretty clear about our values, and use them through the hiring and onboarding process, and have found that if you hire people with share values, they will hire people with similar shared values.
Ariana Malushi
@amalushi · Brand Strategist
@scottharrison what is your opinion of using a microfinance model to increase access to clean water?
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Scott Harrison
@scottharrison
@amalushi I think water.org is doing some really interesting work with microfinance, though our focus is very different (they are primarily focused on urban / peri-urban areas and on communities that might be making $2 - 4 a day - we're focused almost exclusively on rural communities and most of our work is serving people closer to the $1 a day or even less) ... I know they've had some great successes in India, and have been working hard to prove the model in Africa as well...
Trevor Young
@_tyoung · Product Designer @ Digit
In your view, how well do charities and non-profits leverage available technology to promote/further their cause?
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
Scott - Welcome!
1) The jump from nightclub promoter to Charity: Water is a big one. Connecting the dots looking backwards, how do you make sense of it?
2) What is your core competence - what are you best at ? How and when did you realize you were great at said skill?
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Scott Harrison
@scottharrison
@eriktorenberg Liquid! I promoted drinking alcohol for 10 years and now I'm promoting clean water for 663 million people! I'm only half kidding, I think I'm an optimist, and love telling stories and promoting other people and ideas. The beauty of our community of now more than 1M donors is that there is such a wealth of stories. Our partners are heroes in the field - some of our drillers working 29/30 days each month and being away from their families in rural areas for months at a time to serve communities... Or 6-year-old girls running 12 lemonade stands for clean water - some even in the rain... I think I just needed a massive change in lifestyle / heart / faith and after the decadent selfish decade in nightlife, I was glad I was given that chance to serve in Liberia for two years. What I saw there changed me forever, and I came back determined to try to redeem a lost decade, and use some of those promoting skills that I'd learned for good.
Alexandra
@alexandrabenet · Product Designer at Facebook
@scottharrison How did you raise $180M for such a good cause? And how do you get people to give their time, energy and resources to help with the projects?
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Scott Harrison
@scottharrison
@alexandrabenet We have a great story (people need water!), great organizational values (ie. transparency, excellence) and most importantly a passionate team that could all be working anywhere else and making way more money, but have chosen to use their gifts and talents in the service of others... I think we've also been careful not to guilt and shame people into giving, but invite them to be a part of what we're doing. We have a saying here, Opportunity not guilt. It's an amazing opportunity to be able to give of your time, talent, money to a cause like this. We don't need to (or ever want to) guilt people into engaging with us.
Pierre Paslier
@ppaslier
Hi, Pierre here, cofounder of Ooho! the edible water bottle. Any advice on how/where to get funded by investors who are not here for the profit but for the impact?
michal Naka
@michalnaka · Product @moovel
@scottharrison I am a big fan of the "The 100% Model". What is the back story with that and how did you initially set that up?
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Scott Harrison
@scottharrison
@michalnaka I realized that the reason so many of my friends weren't giving to charities was a lack of trust - and all of that primarily around money. They thought charities were black holes, they didn't know how much of their money would reach the people they were trying to serve, and everyone seemed to have a horror story of a bad charity that robbed people of their money.
I thought the 100% model would take that objection completely off the table, and not allow people to use that excuse for why not to give. Said more positively, give them a reason to take another look, and to be generous. We've carefully protected the integrity of the 100% over time, and even pay back credit card fees (which at our size, is expensive!) ... For example, if you gave $1k online using your Amex, we'd get $970, separately raise the $30 from private donors, and send the whole $1k to the field. We have KPMG come in and specifically audit the 100% model every year as well.
A little more online here: http://www.charitywater.org/100p...