Qualy #80 - The four pillars of charity： water that helped it overcome the stigma of nonprofits and become successful
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
191.82568
Summary
In this episode of the Qualies podcast, we speak to the founder of Charity Water, a non-fungible, non-black hole scenario where you can give 100 and get 97% of it back to the field.
Transcript
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welcome to the qualies a subscriber exclusive podcast qualies is just a shorthand slang for
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a qualification round which is something you do prior to the race just a little bit quicker
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qualies podcast features episodes that are short and we're hoping for less than 10 minutes each
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which highlight the best questions topics tactics etc discussed on previous episodes of the drive
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subscribe so without further delay i hope you enjoy today's quali what i think is elegant about the way
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you've done it is you've literally separated the financial streams yeah they get audited separately
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yeah that is different numbers that is so brilliant fungible no that is so brilliant and we took it a
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step farther than robin hood because i just i i love like black and white before and after like i
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just i don't do well with gray so i said well if we're going to be out there that is the theme of
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your life scott you do not despite the fact that you're sitting there in a gray sweatshirt right now
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you do not do well in gray so you'll you'll like this i say well i can't be up there talking about
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a hundred percent unless we also pay back all the credit card fees so from day one and to this day if
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you went online right now you pulled out your american express and you go to charitywater.org
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and you give a hundred bucks amex gets three percent of you got it so i get 97 but what did
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you give 100 so what do you expect 100 to go to the field so in the other bank accounts and i can
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talk about how we do that later and all the trials and that but we actually pay back that three dollars
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and we send your hundred dollars your intended hundred dollars to the field so that was pillar number
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one pillar number two was then when you have two bank accounts i just realized okay we've just
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created a non-fungible non-black hole scenario so why can't we use technology to track these dollars
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as they go out and just show people where they landed so if we were going to build a well in malawi
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you know we could say your money went here or to bangladesh or to india or to cambodia or to bolivia
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and you know i lucked into meeting the google earth founder when i was starting charity water
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i met him at a conference and they were building google earth and google maps and i just realized
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i was going to be able from day one to geolocate every water project using their free platform
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and all it was going to cost me was 50 handheld gps devices i think they were garmin device at the time
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you could go buy a best buy and we would be able to fund a water project that helped people get
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clean water turn on a gps device take a picture of the gps take a picture of the project and then
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upload it and say this is proof you'd be able to see a satellite image of your well so if 100 was the
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first pillar proof then became the second pillar and proof would look very different in many different
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ways we would have hopefully myriad ways of being creative and connecting people to what their money did
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the third thing that i wanted to do differently was i wanted to i wanted the brand to feel unlike any
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other charity that i'd ever encountered i wanted to build an epic brand a beautiful brand and an
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imaginative inspiring brand and when i saw most charities i saw marketing that i didn't want any part
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of i saw shame and guilt and almost toxic marketing and you may remember the commercials from the 80s and
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the 90s with sally struthers and the flies that land on the kids faces in slow motion as they look up and
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lock their sad eyes with the camera and then the 800 number slowly creeps across the screen and you give
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and you give out of and you give out of like shame often or guilt for feeling that you're in your
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comfortable living room and these kids in africa flies crawling on their face and dude that is so
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amazing that you brought that image up like i remember the commercial you're talking about i would
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have i would have never pulled that out of my the recesses of my brain had you not mentioned that
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that's literally 35 40 years ago i just went and watched them recently um to make sure that they
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were as bad as i remember and they're worse so to me the vestiges of shame and guilt and even the
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the language by the way this this is still pervasive today the language giving back this is unhelpful
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if i snatch the mic from in front of you you know you'd say give it back as if i've taken it from you
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and the language implies we have you know we've pillaged and plundered to such extent we should
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probably throw a few scraps back to the poor let's give a little back that we've taken and
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it implies giving out of debt or obligation all unhealthy things without and i come across a quote
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by nick christophe in the new york times and he said toothpaste is being peddled with far more
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sophistication than all the world's life-saving causes charity brands suck doritos will spend hundreds
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of millions of dollars cleverly marketing you know stuff that kills us and our children but the most
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important life-saving humanitarian efforts often have an anemic brands or they guilt and shame people
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into giving to them and by the way this comes back in some way to the overhead problem and this is sort
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of one of the challenges in the non-profit world that i think is really toxic which is we have this
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belief that we shouldn't be able to pay people in a non-profit talent should be free people should be
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willing to work for under market the reason doritos can sell doritos like you can't imagine the reason
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they can push these things on you is not just because well they taste great it's because they
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can afford the best talent to figure out how to a b test all of these different things and i think a lot
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of non-profits haven't really figured out that there is a bit of a war for talent and non-profits are
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generally losing it in a big age demographic in my experience non-profits can do a really good job
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getting really young people fresh out of college who want some experience before going to grad school
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and they can do a pretty good job getting you know really talented sort of graybeards that are you know
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at the end of their careers and looking to quote unquote give back with respect to time but it's
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pretty tough to get an ultra talented 40 year old to go into a non-profit when the alternative for many
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people even those who are mission driven is to go and serve a mission in a for-profit setting
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versus a not-for-profit setting absolutely and that that is a real challenge even to this day
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you know i'll give you an example that though we had posted a job for receptionists at charity
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water recently and 1300 people applied so that's great yeah young yeah it's it's a really young talent
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pool but you're right the executive hires have been have been much harder and people like their charity
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people poor and you know dan has been fighting this for a long time you know i joke all the time
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that even now you know i'm 43 years old i've got a wife i've got kids i could drive a $60,000 toyota
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and not a $20,000 mercedes because of the perception forget about the cost of the car right
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people are totally happy with me in a you know what's the big the toyota highlander right i gotta
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have like load that thing up i could probably have a $70,000 toyota suv or a gmc but not a
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$24,000 bmw oh he's reaching that's why we were even talking about the watch i mean i'm not wearing
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a watch today all this stuff matters you know the perception becomes reality so okay let me go back
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just to that bit so the brand so our brand would feel different it would be imagined if it inspired
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to be hope-based the last analogy i just want to make i think nike is such a great analogy if nike were
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a bad old charity their marketing might go like this hey peter you're fat and you're lazy turn off
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the tv put away the junk food why don't you go for a run why don't you exercise now instead of just
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do our buy our stuff yeah yeah no so nike for years has been telling um inspirational stories of people
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overcoming adversity overcoming impossible odds right nike believes that if you've lost your legs
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you can complete a marathon you can get over the finish line you know you you lost your arm you can
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still be a shot putter right i mean they they kind of for years have said we believe there's greatness
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within you right and and then you want to buy the shoes and then you want that symbol next to your
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heart that says you know just do it because the company believes that about you in their marketing
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so charities you know don't do that so we wanted ours to be like we believe you have a mind-blowing
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capacity for compassion for empathy we believe your capacity to be deeply generous and to extend your
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arm across an ocean and help people you don't have to help you don't have a debt or an obligation to
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help but you can end the suffering because you choose to and you'll be blessed in the process and
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you know you might even find yourself redeemed in the process of moving from selfishness and
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accumulation to helping others so there were there was a lot of soft stuff i mean now i have language
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to it years later but i just i wanted charity water to feel very different i wanted to feel like apple
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or virgin and have a personality and have a brand and then the fourth pillar was i was not going to send
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anybody that looked like some white guy from new york city to africa to go drill a well
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or to india or to southeast asia i believed in my travels just what i'd seen in benin and liberia and
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then uganda and kenya as i traveled around looking for water partners i just believe that for the work
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to be sustainable and culturally appropriate it had to be led by the locals so our job would be to find
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the local organizations who could go and build these water projects our job would be to scale them
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maybe buy them more drilling rigs or trucks or help them hire the hydrologist they need but they
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would be the ones getting the credit i just i love that idea that our role could be let's raise
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awareness for this important issue let's build a movement of people who say we can and will bring
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clean drinking water to everybody on the planet let's raise money as efficiently as possible and as
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transparently as possible and then let's have all the work be done by the locals leading their
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communities in their countries forward i hope you enjoyed today's quali now sit tight for that legal
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