The Peter Attia Drive - Qualy #80 - The four pillars of charity： water that helped it overcome the stigma of nonprofits and become successful

00:00:00.000 welcome to the qualies a subscriber exclusive podcast qualies is just a shorthand slang for

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00:00:59.240 subscribe so without further delay i hope you enjoy today's quali what i think is elegant about the way

00:01:06.820 you've done it is you've literally separated the financial streams yeah they get audited separately

00:01:11.260 yeah that is different numbers that is so brilliant fungible no that is so brilliant and we took it a

00:01:16.800 step farther than robin hood because i just i i love like black and white before and after like i

00:01:22.280 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

00:01:27.300 your life scott you do not despite the fact that you're sitting there in a gray sweatshirt right now

00:01:31.580 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

00:01:38.200 a hundred percent unless we also pay back all the credit card fees so from day one and to this day if

00:01:44.800 you went online right now you pulled out your american express and you go to charitywater.org

00:01:48.600 and you give a hundred bucks amex gets three percent of you got it so i get 97 but what did

00:01:55.040 you give 100 so what do you expect 100 to go to the field so in the other bank accounts and i can

00:02:01.700 talk about how we do that later and all the trials and that but we actually pay back that three dollars

00:02:06.180 and we send your hundred dollars your intended hundred dollars to the field so that was pillar number

00:02:09.960 one pillar number two was then when you have two bank accounts i just realized okay we've just

00:02:17.620 created a non-fungible non-black hole scenario so why can't we use technology to track these dollars

00:02:25.440 as they go out and just show people where they landed so if we were going to build a well in malawi

00:02:30.140 you know we could say your money went here or to bangladesh or to india or to cambodia or to bolivia

00:02:35.340 and you know i lucked into meeting the google earth founder when i was starting charity water

00:02:42.400 i met him at a conference and they were building google earth and google maps and i just realized

00:02:47.300 i was going to be able from day one to geolocate every water project using their free platform

00:02:54.660 and all it was going to cost me was 50 handheld gps devices i think they were garmin device at the time

00:03:01.080 you could go buy a best buy and we would be able to fund a water project that helped people get

00:03:05.880 clean water turn on a gps device take a picture of the gps take a picture of the project and then

00:03:10.720 upload it and say this is proof you'd be able to see a satellite image of your well so if 100 was the

00:03:19.320 first pillar proof then became the second pillar and proof would look very different in many different

00:03:25.160 ways we would have hopefully myriad ways of being creative and connecting people to what their money did

00:03:30.480 the third thing that i wanted to do differently was i wanted to i wanted the brand to feel unlike any

00:03:39.340 other charity that i'd ever encountered i wanted to build an epic brand a beautiful brand and an

00:03:46.040 imaginative inspiring brand and when i saw most charities i saw marketing that i didn't want any part

00:03:53.320 of i saw shame and guilt and almost toxic marketing and you may remember the commercials from the 80s and

00:04:01.220 the 90s with sally struthers and the flies that land on the kids faces in slow motion as they look up and

00:04:08.720 lock their sad eyes with the camera and then the 800 number slowly creeps across the screen and you give

00:04:14.960 and you give out of and you give out of like shame often or guilt for feeling that you're in your

00:04:21.580 comfortable living room and these kids in africa flies crawling on their face and dude that is so 1.00

00:04:25.640 amazing that you brought that image up like i remember the commercial you're talking about i would

00:04:29.760 have i would have never pulled that out of my the recesses of my brain had you not mentioned that

00:04:35.680 that's literally 35 40 years ago i just went and watched them recently um to make sure that they

00:04:40.100 were as bad as i remember and they're worse so to me the vestiges of shame and guilt and even the

00:04:48.280 the language by the way this this is still pervasive today the language giving back this is unhelpful

00:04:55.260 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

00:05:02.700 and the language implies we have you know we've pillaged and plundered to such extent we should

00:05:09.900 probably throw a few scraps back to the poor let's give a little back that we've taken and

00:05:16.220 it implies giving out of debt or obligation all unhealthy things without and i come across a quote

00:05:23.420 by nick christophe in the new york times and he said toothpaste is being peddled with far more

00:05:28.900 sophistication than all the world's life-saving causes charity brands suck doritos will spend hundreds

00:05:36.080 of millions of dollars cleverly marketing you know stuff that kills us and our children but the most

00:05:40.860 important life-saving humanitarian efforts often have an anemic brands or they guilt and shame people

00:05:47.360 into giving to them and by the way this comes back in some way to the overhead problem and this is sort

00:05:51.780 of one of the challenges in the non-profit world that i think is really toxic which is we have this

00:05:56.280 belief that we shouldn't be able to pay people in a non-profit talent should be free people should be

00:06:02.300 willing to work for under market the reason doritos can sell doritos like you can't imagine the reason

00:06:09.620 they can push these things on you is not just because well they taste great it's because they

00:06:13.520 can afford the best talent to figure out how to a b test all of these different things and i think a lot

00:06:21.080 of non-profits haven't really figured out that there is a bit of a war for talent and non-profits are

00:06:26.760 generally losing it in a big age demographic in my experience non-profits can do a really good job

00:06:32.940 getting really young people fresh out of college who want some experience before going to grad school

00:06:37.960 and they can do a pretty good job getting you know really talented sort of graybeards that are you know 0.74

00:06:42.680 at the end of their careers and looking to quote unquote give back with respect to time but it's

00:06:47.980 pretty tough to get an ultra talented 40 year old to go into a non-profit when the alternative for many

00:06:53.780 people even those who are mission driven is to go and serve a mission in a for-profit setting

00:06:58.160 versus a not-for-profit setting absolutely and that that is a real challenge even to this day

00:07:03.960 you know i'll give you an example that though we had posted a job for receptionists at charity

00:07:09.180 water recently and 1300 people applied so that's great yeah young yeah it's it's a really young talent

00:07:14.860 pool but you're right the executive hires have been have been much harder and people like their charity

00:07:20.540 people poor and you know dan has been fighting this for a long time you know i joke all the time

00:07:26.280 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

00:07:33.040 and not a $20,000 mercedes because of the perception forget about the cost of the car right

00:07:38.560 people are totally happy with me in a you know what's the big the toyota highlander right i gotta

00:07:42.760 have like load that thing up i could probably have a $70,000 toyota suv or a gmc but not a

00:07:48.440 $24,000 bmw oh he's reaching that's why we were even talking about the watch i mean i'm not wearing

00:07:54.620 a watch today all this stuff matters you know the perception becomes reality so okay let me go back

00:07:59.560 just to that bit so the brand so our brand would feel different it would be imagined if it inspired

00:08:04.540 to be hope-based the last analogy i just want to make i think nike is such a great analogy if nike were

00:08:10.420 a bad old charity their marketing might go like this hey peter you're fat and you're lazy turn off

00:08:20.160 the tv put away the junk food why don't you go for a run why don't you exercise now instead of just

00:08:28.260 do our buy our stuff yeah yeah no so nike for years has been telling um inspirational stories of people

00:08:33.940 overcoming adversity overcoming impossible odds right nike believes that if you've lost your legs

00:08:40.060 you can complete a marathon you can get over the finish line you know you you lost your arm you can

00:08:44.980 still be a shot putter right i mean they they kind of for years have said we believe there's greatness

00:08:50.860 within you right and and then you want to buy the shoes and then you want that symbol next to your

00:08:57.120 heart that says you know just do it because the company believes that about you in their marketing

00:09:03.180 so charities you know don't do that so we wanted ours to be like we believe you have a mind-blowing

00:09:10.520 capacity for compassion for empathy we believe your capacity to be deeply generous and to extend your

00:09:19.880 arm across an ocean and help people you don't have to help you don't have a debt or an obligation to

00:09:25.580 help but you can end the suffering because you choose to and you'll be blessed in the process and

00:09:32.220 you know you might even find yourself redeemed in the process of moving from selfishness and

00:09:36.560 accumulation to helping others so there were there was a lot of soft stuff i mean now i have language

00:09:42.020 to it years later but i just i wanted charity water to feel very different i wanted to feel like apple

00:09:46.440 or virgin and have a personality and have a brand and then the fourth pillar was i was not going to send

00:09:52.980 anybody that looked like some white guy from new york city to africa to go drill a well

00:09:57.220 or to india or to southeast asia i believed in my travels just what i'd seen in benin and liberia and

00:10:04.260 then uganda and kenya as i traveled around looking for water partners i just believe that for the work

00:10:09.360 to be sustainable and culturally appropriate it had to be led by the locals so our job would be to find 0.78

00:10:16.560 the local organizations who could go and build these water projects our job would be to scale them

00:10:21.720 maybe buy them more drilling rigs or trucks or help them hire the hydrologist they need but they

00:10:26.880 would be the ones getting the credit i just i love that idea that our role could be let's raise

00:10:31.560 awareness for this important issue let's build a movement of people who say we can and will bring

00:10:38.060 clean drinking water to everybody on the planet let's raise money as efficiently as possible and as

00:10:42.740 transparently as possible and then let's have all the work be done by the locals leading their

00:10:48.520 communities in their countries forward i hope you enjoyed today's quali now sit tight for that legal

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00:11:22.300 medical advice for any medical condition they have and should seek the assistance of their health care

00:11:26.880 professionals for any such conditions lastly and perhaps most importantly i take conflicts of interest

00:11:32.900 very seriously for all of my disclosures the companies i invest in and or advise please visit

00:11:38.620 peter atia md.com forward slash about

The Peter Attia Drive - December 20, 2019

Qualy #80 - The four pillars of charity： water that helped it overcome the stigma of nonprofits and become successful

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