#AskGaryVee Episode 210: Scott Harrison, Charity Water & Running a Nonprofit

“establishing
Charity: Water story? “How have you been able
to connect so well?” – Oh man, I think the biggest
key was understanding what people thought was wrong
about charities. And I think that’s true
for a lot of entrepreneurs. They start and say what
problem am I trying to solve? – I apologize for a lot of
people and there are so many youngsters and these are things
that maybe you just aren’t aware of one of the things that people
start really worrying about is wait a minute if I give a dollar why is the cause only
getting $.14. – Yep. – Why is the thing only getting
$.31 and you start unwinding, wait a minute, big
salaries, bureaucracy, politics, kickbacks. Really gnarly stuff and that
is absolutely, take it from somebody who came from very
little when you work your face off to amass what you have if
you’re giving it away to things you really want to feel good
about where it’s going and a lot of people struggled
with that and I said that was an absolute pillar for you guys. – And that was
problem number one. So 42% of Americans
don’t trust charity. Think about that. We have this amazing
heritage as this giving country. – We are the giving country. – But almost half the people that could give don’t
trust the system. And it’s all around money. So that was really
problem number one. – I don’t trust the
mainstream system. – And a lot of people don’t. – I actually have said this,
I actually think you and two or three others biggest impact ever is that you guys have become the cool versions for the next
generation and every kid growing up right now wants to have
an organization that’s more transparent and that you guys
will all solve and tackle and move the ball in your causes
but your impact on all the 13 to 22-year-olds right now
that look up to three or four organizations are the most
progressive, that you have been at the forefront of, I think your impact
is far greater on what you do to the entire
landscape of NGOs then just the
mission you have here. – Well, that was the vision. The beginning was
to reinvent charity. So most people just know
us through the mission– – Yep. – and I believe those
are very different. The mission is to give
clean drinking water. Make sure there’s a day when
we are not doing this interview talking about water. All of our kids, who are about
the same age, are growing up. – Solve it. Next. – My team is not coming in to
their school showing pictures of kids drinking nasty water. That’s the mission. But you’re right the vision
was to do charity differently. Charity is a virtue. There’s a lot of talk these
days about good businesses. – Right. – There is a role and a place
for pure philanthropic capital. There are companies out there
that are trying to solve the water crisis through
selling bottled water. They sell at $2.30 bottle of
water and five cents goes. Okay? It’s better to just get a bunch
of people to give five cents instead of buying the water. I believe there’s
a place for it. – Like every model you have
certain people that start with a good mission at hand
where buy one, give one and then every huckster comes along and here I want
to raise $15 million for my umbrella company. Gary, good
news for everybody who buys an umbrella I’m going to give
an umbrella to some kid that doesn’t need it. It becomes
tactics over religion. – But that was it. 100% of the public’s money would
be the way we’d solve it. We would go find a group of
visionary people who didn’t distrust charity and we can
get fund the staff and the operations that
we would have. That’s a group
of 110 people today, many who have been on your show. I know you and your wife have
been long-term supporters of that but it is a very
simple model: there are two bank accounts. 110 people pay
for the overhead, 1 million people have been
able to give in a pure way. So we say you don’t trust where
the money’s going how about this: 100% of your money, we
even pay back credit card fees. This costs us hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year so if someone were to give $100
bucks on their Amex because Lizzie and I you can give your
$17 and every one of them and I’m not joking and every
one of those pennies goes– – And we don’t get 17. We get $16.81.
– Yeah. – We actually take your
money to make up the difference. So that every dollar
can go to the field. – Don’t steal
those 19 cents, DRock. – We just try to connect people
to the impact that was having. Because money was not fungible.
– Yes. – These bank accounts were
separate and they were audited separately we
could track dollars. So I could say to a kid, to your
daughter, she did a birthday campaign, she can see actual
photos and GPS of those wells. – Before we go here and
I need to move this along. The birthday campaign. I don’t want to miss it
before we get into it. This was a monumental thing from afar from a
marketing standpoint. – We got lucky.
We stumbled into it. – But instead of giving the full
story you can look this up and Google it but give
them at least what it is. – People instead of throwing a
party or accepting gifts because we have enough crap
and we get stuff we don’t even need
for our birthday. And we don’t
really need parties. – It’s your 33rd birthday,– – you donate it and you
ask your age in dollars. 33-year-olds ask for $33. – Right so you ask your homies,
you send an email, put up social media posts instead of
getting me a gift, give $33. – And seven-year-olds
as for seven dollars and 89-year-olds ask for $89. This has helped a
million people get water. – I was just going to say,
what has been the impact of this campaign? – The average for person raises
$1,000 from 15 of their friends. So as an idea a million
birthdays could be billion dollars for clean water. – Right because not everybody gives just $33 on
their 33rd birthday. – Some add zero,
some give $3.30. – Great.
– Every dollar goes in– – Who’s the first
person to do it? – So I was birthday number
one on my 32nd but then this seven-year-old kid in Austin
starts knocking on doors and he raises 22 grand. And then like holy crap. And then Jack Dorsey
did three birthdays. And Will Smith
did their birthday. – And away we went. – And away we went and
89-year-olds No-No Nguyen gave up her 89th birthday and wrote a mission
statement and said, “You know, I’d like other people
to have chance to turn 89.” It’s a really beautiful idea. Our birthdays can help people
actually have more birthdays. You can actually pledge
charitywater.org/birthdays/. – Link it up. – Even if your birthday
is a year from now. You’ve done them,
I’ve done seven now. Your kid’s done one. It’s a great thing. – [India] Half birthdays.
– Half birthdays, I like that. – Yeah, I’m 26 and a half–
– and you raise on $26.50? – Yeah.
– Done. DRock, book it. – [India] Actually this segues

“What should people look for
in a charity to know that “donations are going
to a good cause?” – Let’s go very utilitarian
here because I got a hard stop. – Go to CharityNavigator.org. – This I love. Go ahead.
CharityNavigator.org. – You can check out a charity,
however overhead is I would go to Charity Navigator and then I
would read Dan Pallotta’s work. – And Dan’s main book?
– Is “Uncharitable.” So there’s two things, you get
the numbers of how a charity spends it’s money– – And you can create more
cynicism by reading the book. – You get a different view
reading the book saying that overhead is not bad and
that we made overhead back. We have overhead
110 people cover it. – Got it. – Then looking at how
much of your money what we push for
is transparency. I’m happy to give to a charity
where $.25 of my dollar might go to a smart team
running good programs. I don’t want 50% of my dollar. I don’t want my
90% of my dollar. – Let me ask you this.
– But I want to know. – Let’s take this tact
since it’s slippery slope. You know me
very, very well. If I said I’m the marketing
genius of a generation but I need the other 17, I need DRock and he’s fancy now he
makes movies. I need $.50 but I’m going to
kill it you think you can wrap your head around that? In theory you could, right? – Dan Pallotta would
and that is one camp that says 50% is fine. – You’re so close to it but that
feels so aggressive but at some level I guess the energy of it
could be, the punch line is if you can feel
that the overhead actually justifies
the mission at hand– – But that’s it. So the transparency is
what we are pushing for. So you might be willing to
write $100,000 check and have 50 grand go.
– Yes. – The problem is some many people
don’t know how money’s handled. – That’s right. – But I may not be or maybe
you and I are both willing. Maybe India you’re
like $.50 is too much. That’s the only thing that
we have been pushing for. I’m not telling people
to adopt the 100% model. It works for us–
– Because you’re able– – the problem I was
trying to solve. – Well members that
have covered your raise. – That’s right. And people gived
for the first time. I hear it all the time this is the first charitable gift
I’ve ever made my life. I just heard it last
week someone on Twitter. Made the first charitable gift
of my life, A, that’s a little sad but that’s the kind of
person I want who doesn’t trust. – I would argue it’s not sad. I think back to that 42%. I was a grown man with a lot of
thoughts and a very decent dude when we sat, forget about Omaha,
downstairs, me, you and Sacca at that pool place and you said
that statement and it was right. – Now you have
schools in your name. And seriously, you’ve been
able to impact the world. – And not only that to be honest
with you, I’ve been able to impact other
things, not just this. Sit on boards and
do other things. It changed the way
that I thought about it. In the same way that it is
my hope and dream that a 28-year-old hustler right now
who’s made a couple bucks doing Snapchat filters ’cause he got
my advice 40 episodes ago to do that says you know what I’m good
at donate $28 right now and give away my 29th birthday.
Or whatever. And by the way I don’t judge,
you do what you want to do. You want to be 90 and
never give a dollar. Everybody does what they do.
– You’re missing out. You can really have, it’s
fun. It’s a blessing to give. We were taught this growing up. You get to live vicariously
through all of the good, your time and
your money is doing. It doesn’t need to
be Charity: Water. – I get it. – It’s a blast. – It’s a blast. – [Voiceover] Melissa asks,
“I do work in Uganda.

“After clean water is creating “sustainable jobs the best
way to see impact?” – I think they’re a bunch of
pillars people need food,– – You believe once
water is drilled it opens up the whole gamut. – I do but jobs are
incredibly important. Shelter is important. Food is important. Health is important. We’ve just started with water
because I get to touch jobs. We hear these amazing stories of
women who will use the time back in their day specifically Ashley
in Uganda sometimes and they will sell rice at the market,
they’ll sell peanuts. I was in Zambia– – By the way, we’re going very
quickly here, it’s how we roll. That’s how this show rolls. I know my audience
guys when he says, gals when he says time back these are women who would walk three
hours because an hour there, 30 minutes, 20 minutes
to scoop up the crap water. Brown. Brown. And then walk back. – 40 billion hours are wasted
just in Africa collecting water. We need to talk the workforce. They did a study, 88-page study
out of the UN, every $1 invested in water and sanitation makes
the community 4-8 times richer. It yields $4-8. Jobs are incredibly
important and that’s one of the things that’s attractive to us about water because
without the time. – What’s her name?
– [India] Her name is Melissa. – Melissa, thanks
for the work you do. – Yeah.
– Yeah.

– [Voiceover] Nayeli asks,
“What’s the best way to “fundraise for a church that is
also a community center with “limited resources?” – All right so let’s break
out of our thing and go more holistic.
– Yeah. – One more time? What’s the best
way for a church– – [India] For a church that is
also a community center with very limited resources? – The best church campaign that
ever happened was, I don’t know what kind of church she goes
to but this was a pretty young hipster pastor in Seattle and he
was trying to show his community that they actually
weren’t over religious. So he threw a keg party. He got a local band and he
created a smoking section outside the church and
they raised over $500,000. ‘Cause the community wouldn’t
necessarily have given to the church but he actually
chose us because we were not a
faith-based charity. He chose to make a statement and
say our church community we care about the world,
we care about clean water. What we don’t need to
do it with the strings. We don’t need to do
it with an agenda. That message resonated powerful
with the Seattle community. One of things now we’re trying
to get entire churches to donate the birthday of every
single person in the church. Same thing. Your friends Gary’s not going to
give to my church community but he would give to my
clean water campaign. It’s a great way to kind of
reach outside the walls and build bridges. – I think it comes down and it
was brought up right from the beginning. It’s storytelling right? What is your
community care about? What is going to
compel them to donate? You understand the context of
the people that are part of the church community and you need to
understand the people that are outside the community and I
still believe in the context of the show and there’s many ways
but in the context of this show I think getting very aggressive
around Snapchat and becoming the best Snapchat player in a small
town in South Carolina as a church and then going to the
local newspaper to write an article about how this church
is doing Snapchat better than anybody it’s always using new
mediums that give awareness to your mission at
hand through your execution of that storytelling. And so whether it’s Snapchat or
something else live streaming on Facebook Live
for 72 straight hours, something that everybody in the world is talking about use that platform to get you awareness over
what you’re doing. – We had a fundraiser run a
campaign where he listened to Nickelback for
seven straight days, day and night. He went to
sleep with headphones on. He raised $35,000 in
sympathy from the community. I would totally agree with that. We gave our Snapchat to a team
in Berlin a few days ago who did a takeover of Charity: Water’s
Snapchat and they were running marathons and banging
on yellow Jerry cans. Stuff that we would
have never thought of. They were spray painting
Jerry cans, creating art, creating content. – I know I’ve gotta run and
I know you’ve got to run but