Scott Harrison

Published Mar 31, 2022, 2:03 PM

On leaving the depraved club scene and giving clean drinking water to millions.

Scott Harrison was a club promoter selling boujee water to models for $10 a pop, until he saw a 13 year old girl drinking dirty water on a volunteer trip to Africa. That’s when he decided to create his nonprofit charity:water— and changed his life (and the lives of millions) forever. Bethenny and Scott also dissect how to spot a phony charity. If you’re thinking of making a donation to a charity, you should listen to their advice.

Plus, Bethenny rants on birth control ads. She says they’re a scam and describes the ad she’d make. It’s hilariously accurate! 

If you're considering having children or going on birth control. I think a wonderful idea is go to a public pool. Go to a public pool and spend the day there, just sit there and observe what goes on. Or go Christmas break. Spring break I think is even bigger. I think President's Weekend might be one of the biggest weekends of the year. Pick a mock five kids holiday weekend. Go to an all inclusive resort, like a place where everything is included in, Free drinks are included in, parents are just and just sit by the pool, and then you decide if parenting is correct for yourself. Because birth control pills are always just like tampon commercials are kind of just about like women and women's choices and what they you know, they're always just like they look like tampon commercials. And I just don't think the birth control pills should look like tampon commercials. Birth control pills should look like a beach side Marriott on the busiest holiday weekend, or like the Jersey Shore on Memorial Day Monday, you know, like or Saturday night. Um, like a six o'clock sort of dinner buffet, like a good a good pool side, big barbecue all you can eat kids event with Like there's a barbecue and then there's a pool, like any real serious kids event. That's what a birth control commercial should be. Like, I mean just saying, if this isn't for you, then you should consider birth control. I just think that that would be a better you know, oh, a cruise. Go on, get on a cruise. So if you could do a day pass, call up management. I'm considering parenting. And I heard this is like a Disney cruise. I mean a lot of kids on here, all excited, and I just want to come on, go to Universal for the day. Universal, go to Disney. Just go on like a Saturday, fourth of July weekend. Just show up there. It's like, I'm thinking of having kids. This is how I'm going to decide by the end of the day. Please report back. I just want to hear what you decide, and if you maybe decided about the number of kids may be changing, because I know that one kid is one kid and that's you know, got its challenges. It's fairly easy like running gun to Now you've gotta like, you know, you gotta ask more than one person what they want to do, because we do are we are our kids assistants and we do work for them. I serve at the pleasure of my daughter, um. And then you have three and and two kids is two kids, and three becomes nine. So you just it's your body and your choice. And children are wonderful. But I just think you should enter into that lifelong commitment with both eyes open. And I think you should go to a massive pool that definitely has a water slide. Uh, definitely is a frozen drink machine behind the behind the bar typically a bar that is located inside a pool, so you could pee while drinking alcohol. That's kind of the places that I think you should decide what you're parenting journey is going to entail. Today's guest is Scott Harrison, founder and CEO of a nonprofit called Charity Water, which aims to bring clean drinking water to every person on the planet. Scott got a start in the nightclub and party scene, working as a promoter in Manhattan. Uninspired by the luxury of nightclub culture, shocking, he completely changed the trajectory of his career. Scott traveled to the coast of Liberia a volunteer as a photo journalist and got inspired to change the realities of areas without access to clean drinking water. With the help of over one million donors, the organization has brought in more than six D forty million dollars. This has helped fund over nine water projects in twenty nine countries. The charity continues to go today, expanding access to clean water worldwide. Scott's journey from nightclub connoisseur to businessman and humanitarian is an inspiring tale that I'm sure you will love. I hope you enjoyed day's show. You moved from l A because a lot of people did that, right, Yeah, I mean, you know, we lived in Tribeca, soho for you know, quarter of a century and uh just moved out during the pandemic and are kind of liking life outside the city for a while. Wow. Okay, well this will be uh interesting, this will be different. Some things I read about you are similar to my partner Michael, who's on the ground right now in Poland, and he had to use your word or what I think you described as hedonistic nightclub background. He used to be like, you know, friends with Madonna and ingrac Saris and did all the Miami nightclubs. And you know, then built like thirty to fifty million dollar houses for rich people in Miami. UM and then he fell on hard times, which I would let him tell the story on his own, but it was like basically homeless. But he's dedicated his life to UM disaster relief. So and and it's funny because in the two of us have a big production background, him doing clubs and me I used to do like events on Alcatraz, big events for Disney, like million dollar, multimillion dollar events, and the logistics really do tie into philanthropy and UM as does business. So when people ask me about it, I always think about an interesting, weird background that sort of could make you good at philanthropy. So I just wanted to kind of at some talk about that with you, and we're you know, I'm I'm still promoting. I've been promoting something different for fifteen years, right than than the velvet rope. You are a nightclub promoter like him, so you're just promoting something different. Yeah, you gotta be a hype man too to get people to to believe in you because there are so many other efforts to so UM All right, so where did you grow up great? I was born in Philadelphia and middle class family. My dad was a business guy, my mom was a writer, and when I was four, there was a carbon monoxide gas leak in our house and we all almost died. Bethany, So my mom on New Year's Day walks across the bedroom collapses like the canary in the coal mine. You really don't smell it. Nothing, No carbon monoxide is nothing. And we know people who have you know who have died with this. So it was a crack in the heat exchanger. Thank god Mom passed out. This led to the series of blood tests. It led to discovery, the discovery of carbonoxide in her bloodstream, and then my dad found the leak and ripped it out after the gas company had come a couple of times and said, oh, no, everything's fine here, we can't We don't think there's any problems. So you know, life changed for me at four. Mom became an invalid for the rest of permanently disabled really from the rest of her life. This experience, from this experience, what happened was her immune system just irreparably shut down, and everything in the world made her sick from this point on, So car fumes would make her sick. Soap would make her sick. I mean, if you brought cologne or perfume anywhere near here, you know, she would she would break out, she would get migraines. So we kind of moved her into a bubble. They actually made a movie about this with Julianne Moore many years ago, called Safe and She Was. My mom was allergic to the world. So as a child, I remember, it's like, it's kind of like the like bubble boy, right, So I remember she lived in a in a bathroom upstairs covered in aluminum foil. She slept on an army cup that had been washed twenty times in baking soda to get all the smells out. And she wore three m masks. So I I never really saw my mom's face growing up. I mean, I'm from Gosh. For the last forty years or so, my mom would wear you know, and masks and charcoal masks because you know, to woid explosion. She was so sick. Bethany, I remember that the ink, the print from books, new books would make her sick. So my dad and I would bake her books in the oven that she wanted to read, try to outgask get that smell. Out, and then I would walk upstairs. I would knock on her bathroom door. She would open it. It would kind of make the sound of tinfoil, you know, flapping. She would greet me with a mask on and a cellophane bag and cotton gloves, and she would take the book for me and she would put it inside this cellophane bag and then she would be able to read. So that was childhood. That sounds traumatic for you, I mean beyond her. I mean it sounds traumatic for her, But that sounds like a traumatic childhood. You must be that's your tremendous caretaker, because you had just walked on eggshell as your whole life. It was all I knew. You know. I wrote a book a couple of years ago, and um, the writer that I was working with, you know, she said the same thing. She's like, oh my gosh. Like I was crying, like, you know, just imagining you as a little boy, and I'm like, I had such a normal childhood. What are you talking about? Everything was fine. You know. I was a caregiver and I did the cooking and the cleaning for mom, and I was needed and I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up to help you know, sick people like my mom. And yeah, so I wasn't kind of aware. I don't think at the time. This was just the only life that I'd ever known, which was you know, dealing with hardship. Uh and and you know, a life of grit and determination. Well, um, it took a long road to get you into philanthropy. So what did you want to be when you grow up? And what what did you do for a living for most of your life? Yeah? Well I always had, you know, the entrepreneurial genes growing up. So I would sell holiday cards door to the door. I would you know, borrow money for a leaf blower, and then I would go and you know, blow the leaves off neighbors lawns. And but I the answer would have been doctor. I was going to be a doctor. I was gonna help cure my mom and others. And my my parents were They were Christians, kind of nondenominational, and so I grew up in a family of faith. I went to church every Sunday. I played piano, and I was that good kid that didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't swear, didn't have sex. You know, I was just I was. I was a good kid. So then all that changed, act to eighteen years old. I moved to New York City with the band and I joined a rock band, and I was gonna, you know, get our band a record deal. We were going to become rich and famous. We were going to be you know, opening up for you two at Madison Square Garden. In like a period of months. We were pretty good. I mean we played at CBGB's and you know some of the legendary clubs. We were discovered by, you know, the Scorpions and some big managers. The band we weren't the worst. We we we we could have been a thing, but the band all hated each other and everybody was doing drugs. So that lasted about six months. Okay, what was it called Sunday River after after a ski resort in New Hampshire that none of us had ever been to. Okay, it sounds authentic. So I moved to the city. Uh, for a time, I thought I wanted to be an actor. So I was, you know, auditioning for commercials. I put on a David Mammitt playoff Broadway. Then I was working in a music store, and then at nineteen I stumbled into the nightclub business, and I realized there was this extraordinary job in New York City where if you could get the right rich and beautiful people into the right clubs, you could make a ton of money selling the alcohol. Can I ask how old you are? Nineteen? So two years before I'm legally allowed now six, we're gonna because I know this language, because I lime like going to the Palladium. Yeah, I know Palladium. Well. So my first job was for Peter Gation, working at Limelight and working at the Tunnel, and worked at Lotus for many years and Pejia, and you know, a bunch of the next ten years kind of went by very quickly. I worked at forty clubs across Manhattan, and you know, you you know this scene. I mean jay Z at table one, Puffy at table three, and you know, the club promoters with the model sitting at table two thinking we're fantastic and fabulous, and Spray Champagne from the DJ booth, and Mark and Eugene and Noah and Jason and yep, yep, yep, yeah, I know them all very well. So you know, I picked up all the vices that you would imagine would come with that territory, lots of smoking, drinking, uh, you know, sleeping around, chasing models to Milan in Paris and you know London fashion shows. Then the drugs, then the you know, the gambling and the pornography and the strip clubs, and just this kind of dark descent which looked like the exact opposite of doctor. You know, medical school never really happened. I like that. See that would have been That would have been a great cut title for a book. Hi. So at eight, I was, you know, at a nice loft in Midtown. I had a grand piano in my apartment. I drove a bm W, I had the stupid Rolex watch, and I started having some health issues. Yeah, we'd go to the Hampton's, we go to Point to do Lesta and busios and we'd follow g from circue to slay around. It was a whole scene, and I was miserable. Bethany was completely miserable. I was drunk and you know, drugged down, and we'd we'd go to the we go to dinner at ten pm, we'd go to the club at twelve, we go to after hours at five, and I'd be taking an ambient at noon, trying to go to sleep looking out my window at other people, you know, having salads on their lunch breaks, have worked like productive jobs all day. So I one day half my body goes numb, and I remember my club partners like, dude, no wonder, like it's amazing you're even alive, you know, like how you can't feel your body? Like I had no idea, Bethany. I thought I had a neurological disease, and I it's gonna die, you know. So I got the brain scans, I got the CT scans, I got uh you know, nodes hooked up and electric you know, pulses. Nobody could find anything wrong with me. And for me, it was a real wake up call that yeah, I was mortal, and I've been living like I was gonna live forever. And I just asked myself the question, like, oh my gosh, Like what if I die in the next couple of months, what has my life been about? Your legacy is nothing? Literally nothing, My tombstone would read, here lies a club promoter who got a million people wasted. But the only thing you would have been able to say not that I volunteered for a charity or gave or like did anything constructive except get people into a club and get him messed up. Right, Oh my god, you've got to talk to Michael my part. You can't even believe your lives are like you don't understand. He's that he's recovered on his own. He did it, uh and never done anything since, Like it's crazy, but he's dedicated his life to philanthropy. You have to talk to him. Almost gonna suggest today that we do it another day and that I have you both on to talk. But you guys talk to each other like I've never said that before. You got to meet him. But anyway, Okay, so you have a worthless life and a useless empty tombstone. And then and then I'm a pretty radical guy. So I wind up asking myself the question, you know, what would the opposite of my life look like? And I think the realization was a pivot is not needed here. This is not a small course correction, like go find the exact opposite of everything I say, think and do. But were you tied into anyone where like you owed and you were like shackle because sometimes I feel like it's hard to get off the treadmill when you're shackled to something and then one thing keeps you tied back in and then you do another thing, or like or would you just you were just a want like you would just do a party, make money? Do a party, make money so you could totally get out. No, no actual club, no kind of ownership. You know, we were we were like mercenaries. The minute nobody wanted to go to the club, we found the next one they wanted to go to and tried to try to make money there. So, you know, I asked this question, what's the opposite of my life looked like? And the only thing I could think of was what if I took one year And this was kind of a childhood biblical idea of a tithe what if I gave ten percent of the decade that I had wasted in service to others? And I got this idea, like what if I volunteered somewhere and and money do you have money saved? How much money do you have? Not? Really? I mean you know, we were we were making great money, and whatever we made, we spent a little more. Yeah, so you were broke at that point too. I was. I was pretty broke. Yeah, I mean my the clubs were still going, the parties were still going. There was some money coming in, not much, but yeah, no I didn't. I didn't have anything saved, nothing saved. Put it this way the apartment, and you can't you can't sustain. You have to can't sustain in that life right then, unless I literally liquidated my entire life. I sold, you know, watches, I sold my video camera, I sold my speaker system. I just got rid of everything, and I started applying to some of the famous humanitarian aid agencies or charities that I've heard of over the years, like Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross, and UNI staff and World Vision. And you know, maybe to the surprise of no one listening, I'm denied by every organization I applied to. You know, they are not looking for you know, drunk drug drug adult nightclub promoters. Well what a minute. I don't understand. You wanted a paid position at it. No, I wanted a volunteer. You're telling me that not of these places would let you volunteer. You didn't know about be strong then, I didn't know that. By the way, we could go into the big orgs for days and the money that's the bureaucracy and all that. It's my entire life, but very interesting. So so one organization wrote me back and they said if I was willing to pay them five a month for the pleasure of volunteering, and I was willing to go live on a hospital ship in Liberia, West Africa, a country it was actually Bethany, the poorest country in the world at that time. It was it had fallen off the United Nations development chart because there was no data for a fourteen year civil war that had just ended. And my role, my volunteer role that I was paying five a month, was going to be to be a photojournalist on the ship. And I was not a photojournalist, but I had been a pretty good writer. I had man managed to get a degree at n y U, just going part time in communications and while I was club promoting. So you always had a little angle of you that wanted to be or do something. You have some meaning, but you didn't get pulled into the dark side. And I was an only child and my dad had saved up, and it felt like, you know, I had to honor him at least by mailing him a diploma that I that I actually never saw. It just went straight to him. I was like, Dad, here I did this for you. Um, I was like a C minus student. But anyway, the degree helped me get this job as a photojournalist, which then, you know, changed the entire course of my life. So a couple of weeks later, I was in West Africa walking up the gangway of a five ft hospital ship full of three volunteers who had come from forty one countries, And they were doctors and surgeons and nurses who had come to offer free medical care in a country that had no electricity, no running water, no sewage system, and one doctor for every fifty thousand of its citizens. Here in America we have a doctor for every like two of us. So there was no health care system. Everything had been broken with a decade and a half of war, of terrible civil war led by kids, and this this terrible guy, Charles Taylor. So uh my life changed. Uh my third day there, I woke up at five in the morning and I was told that the whole mission started with a patient screening. And this was where we'd advertise that the ship was coming full of doctors, and people would turn up with their different you know, illnesses and sicknesses, and we would schedule them for treatment. We were scheduling for surgery on on the ship. Surgery what what? Why? Certainly surgery. So people had cleft We specialize in cleft lips and facial tumors and cataracts and uh, flesh sheeting disease. You know, tumors were were a really big thing, just growing on people's faces without access to a healthcare system. So I knew that we had fifteen hundred kind of passes to hand out, surgery passes to hand out, we'd be able to help fifteen people. And then I learned the government had given us a football stadium like the soccer stadium in the center of the city to triage the people that would come. And at five thirty in the morning, I jumped in a Landrover. I was in hospital scrubs. I had two Nikon D one X cameras and we kind of snaked through the city and we come up on the stadium and there's more than five thousand people standing in the parking lot waiting for us to open the doors. And yeah, and I will never forget that that moment where we sent eventually over three thousand six people home without the chance to see a doctor, with no hope. We later learned many of them had walked for more than a month from neighboring countries with their children. They'd walked from Sierra Leone or Cotauvoir, Guinea or Togo just hoping to see a doctor, but we didn't have enough doctors. That turned into a year of meeting extraordinary doctors and surgeons from all over the world. I had to document all fifteen hundred people pre op and postop. So I'm getting to know these you know, kids that are that are blind with cataracts, or sixty five year old women who live their entire life with a cleft lip because they didn't have a hundred eighty dollars to fix it, and even if they did, what surgeon would they have gone to? So it was an amazing experience. The cool thing is I had about fifteen thousand people on my email list, and this was back when open rates for so people went from getting invited to Lotus or the product megastore in Soho, you know, to a fashion party, two pictures of leprosy and tumors and you know, cleft lips being repaired, and you know, of course my list got a little smaller. There are bunch people who unsubscribed and said, you know, did not sign up for this. This is not fashion, this is not fun. But so many people were really moved and you know, began to give money. Like you said, I changed my life. I dedicated my life to this. Yeah. I mean I've been doing cocaine with these people, like, you know, four weeks previous, you know, at a club. So I think they were just they're fascinated just to see you know, it felt bizarre, like where's this guy, where's this country? Like a hospital ship, like leprosy. I mean, you know, it's just so foreign. And over the next year, I kind of just let them see what I was seeing through the eyes of of you know, a lay person, through the eyes of the doctors, and through some of the you know, the extraordinary nurses. And I want up raising a lot of money for that organization and a bunch of awareness and getting published in the Wall Street Journal and you know, papers in London of of my photos and stories. So I came back to New York after a year. I didn't know what was next, so I just signed up for another year. And it was really that second year when I saw people same people went back to Liberia, and it's there that I saw people drinking dirty water for the first time in the rural villages, and I was really determined to get off the ship, you know, out of the city and understand how people were living throughout the country. And I remember seeing a thirteen year old girl drink from a green swamp. And you know, Bethany, I've been selling vost water for ten dollars. People would order ten ten bottles of water for hunder bucks and not even drink the water. The would drink champagne or Vodkins day table. So I just couldn't. I had never seen children, you know, I mean, I had known clean water. I'd taken it for granted my entire life. And I learned two things. I learned half the country didn't have clean water to drink, and half the disease in the country was because people were drinking disgusting water and didn't have access to hygiene or sanitation. So, you know, I kind of stumbled into the root cause of so much of the sickness that we were seeing, so many of these conditions that we didn't even have enough resources to treat. And there were you know, like a couple million people that didn't have the most basic need for health met. So maybe this this full circle back to the wanting to be a doctor. The chief medical officer, the chief surgeon who had been there for twenty five years, and I said something to the effect of Scott, you care about medicine, you care about global health. You know you want to be a doctor. Just go get everybody in the world clean water. You would be the greatest doctor that the world has ever seen. Because I'm thinking more about this now with myself and with what you know, how much money I've been able to raise and what we've been able to resolve in different uh relief efforts, and the circuitous route to get there, meaning you're better served doing what you've done than actually being just operating on one person. You know, not that that's not a very noble, but if you're operating on one person at a time, you wouldn't be able to be this voice. That's really your skill set to be a connector and a hustler and go get people to donate and make this thing known. So it's interesting how people end up finding their true uh they're true not they're true passion, the true calling. Yeah, that's wild. So I did, and then I came back after that second year, I was thirty. I was very broke by then because I've given all my money to the organization and many of the people that I've met there. And I was crashing on a closet floor on Spring and Mercer on a second floor loft department in in Soho, New York City, for free, and just said, Hey, I'm gonna try to bring clean and safe drinking water to everybody in the world before I die. And the only idea I had was charity Water, a charity that helps people get water. So not very creative, but that was you know, that was fifteen years ago. And and and you've dedicated your life to this, uh fifteen years. Yeah, we've raised now over you know, seven hundred million dollars and and helped fifteen million people get water across twenty nine countries. Are you and how is that? What's the vessel of the water? Yeah? We we found now fourteen different technologies, from you know, a ten thousand dollar well to a sixty five dollar you know, personal bios sand filter for a family, to rainwater harvesting systems to these huge you know, multimillion dollars solar gravity fed systems all across you know countries. Um, okay, So uh, now do you travel constantly? Yeah? I mean, gosh, I've been to seventy countries now I've been to Ethiopia thirty one times, so over the last fifteen years. You know, there's a lot of a lot of a lot of miles back and forth, um to to the places where we work. But you know you might find this interesting, just like kind of going back to day one of charity water. The first thing I did, because I didn't have any other ideas, was just to throw a party in a nightclub. So our first fundraiser was in the meatpacking district a place called ten June before the club had ever opened. Yeah, it hadn't opened yet. And and you know, Eugene and Mark gave it to me for free. And uh we got a bunch of great people to host the event, and I just charged everyone twenty dollars to get in as a as a donation. And that night we raised fifteen thousand dollar. It was my thirty first birthday. Uh, and we immediately took of the fifteen thousand dollars to Uganda. We did our first well we fixed a couple of others, and then we sent the photo proof, video proof and the GPS satellite images back to the seven hundred people that attended and we said, you came, you gave twenty dollars, and here's exactly where your money went and what it did. And that was that was not happening at scale and a lot of the big charities. And you know, my my kind of big idea. When I started charity Water, I had come across the statistic that of Americans don't trust charities. And more recently, uh N Yu Wagner did a study found seventy people believe charities waste their money. It's like you had one job, right, Like you know, seven out of ten donors think that a charity is going to waste their money in some parts. So you know, from from day one, fifteen years ago, we separate rated the overhead from the water project costs. So we have run with two separately audited bank accounts for fifteen years. And not only do we give a percent of all donation now for fifteen years to the field, we pay back credit card fees, which sounded to look a good idea when we're small and now costs, you know, three quarters of a million dollars. Number one. The transparency is the key the whole time. Like someone sends money to some celebrity who posts some link because there's a koala that's been burned in a fire, and then they never have any idea where I went. Like and if you constantly communicate and say okay, and your needs change. Sometimes you say, okay, this is what we need. We need money because we're doing a hundred thousand crisis kits for this and this is what they're gonna include. Then you get there and people don't need a blanket and they don't need this entire and then you say, okay, guess what we're finding that refugee relocation. That's what people and that or or if you donate, you're gonna be donating and this is going to the habbad, this is going to churches, this is going to children's schools, like you kind of you know, let people know that they're part of it, and you give them updates and that I couldn't agree with you more. And the same thing A hundred percent goes um to the effort because I'm an initiative, and so everything that comes into be strong goes, I pay my own way, my own travel anything, um. And then my partner has like a two and a half percent UH overhead, which is insane. It's like so low because he's super lean and we partner with volunteers, et cetera. But that's that goes in the overhead fund. Like if you donate to be strong, that's it. So I we think very similarly, and it's it solves a problem because people, you know, I've had the big organs come to me and say, send celebrities to me and say we can't do anything with them. They want to spend thirty dollars on a plane to go help in Puerto Rico, and we don't do that. And they say, we don't do this a lot because they're big ocean liners and they take a long time to get their ship together and it's always like one lane that they're in that they do this one thing. They can't like pivot and be nimble and figure out customized to what's going on right there. I'm sure you've seen every country has some different thing that you didn't think about and some different struggle to overcome. That's not it's like a new business. Every time. Sure, sure, sure, yeah, well that that has been absolute kind of key to our success is trying to restore trust. You know, there's so many people skeptical and disenchanted. It sounds like you're doing this really well also, and then just closing loop proving to people what the money has done. So we love you just said closing in the loop exactly. They feel like they're part of a crusade. Yeah, and you know we've got um now oh gosh, over fifty thousand water projects up on Google Earth on our website. Every single water project comes with a GPS cort at the satellite image, the information of the village. Uh. You know, so this we just believe like transparency is kind of the way to win, and and that has helped us, now, you know, help over a fifteen million people get access to water. I think without that model, we would have done far, far less, and the movement would be would be so much smaller. And you are the visionary of it. You are the strategist. It's your mission. You decide where you're going to do this, how it's gonna work. You we have a whole team now, Bethany. I mean, it's you know, much much smarter people than than me. Water experts with you know, decades of experience who are out there managing you know, sixteen hundred UM. You know, local staff working for forty nine partner organizations. So there's a whole kind of machine. Now how many people work not at not within those like just about a hundred at h Q at charity Water HQ. It's been in New York City, but now now people have distributed. UM. So we're our our team is across twenty seven states. We actually just got everybody together last week for for an organization meeting, which was great. So so so do you have like a board and they pay all the overhead so it's separate. Did you do like raise money just for overhead? It's on the board, it's not the board. We have a community called a well uh and there are a hundred and twenty nine families from all over the world and they give they started a hundred thousand dollars a year towards the overhead side. And we have some families giving in a million a year. So that pays for every single toner you know, package for the EPSOM copier, every flight, every credit card fee, every salary. UM. You know, every insurance costs or phone bill and they've been doing that for fifteen years. Yeah, it's something I should think about. I mean it's not been a problem at all because my partner always gets donations which go to the overhead UM in the warehouse and everything. But it's something to think about because they have so many billionaires. Every time something goes on, they want to donate and they get involved because they know me and I'm a business person. UM. But to make it more UM, you know, just something that is consistent, like you have certain people that are sort of almost like subscribers and they're just paying all year long, so you're always know you're good to go. UM. So how much money does it take for the overhead a year? Like how much you have to bring in every year? This year's budget budget UM is a hundred and twenty eight million dollars in total, and the overhead will be twenty two maybe, so we run it about every year. So eight percent of the money goes to the programs, even though we have two completely separate accounts. So HUD twenty nine families paying for the twenty cents on the dollar and then a million donors getting this pure way to give where all of it goes to the field. So are you're married. I am married. Yes, I married my second employee. That's a whole another story. Oh so you have this life of philanthropy together. Yep. We worked together for a decade and then started having kids and she took a break from charity water and she now coaches nonprofits on how to market and fundraise and UH and try to scale and and get noticed based on a decade of experience. It's amazing. And we've got a five and a half year old in a seven year seven and a half year old. Oh nice, and you're they're all happy in Nashville. Yeah. We we moved to a farm during COVID in Pennsylvania, a couple of hours outside of New York City. And we've been down in the South now for for six months. And you know, I'm I'm assistant coaching baseball and it's been it's been, it's been a lot of fun. I'm in New York City tomorrow. I mean, I'm I'm still incredibly connected to know our community in Manhattan, and you kept I'm there all the time. Now, we didn't, we didn't. We were just renting. No gosh, we couldn't even a dream of affording to to do that, nor could we ever afford to buy you know, in New York City. Um So, what's next? Like, what where is the big problem right now? Where are you know? I'm aware of this issue because only when it comes up when I'm doing relief work in Puerto Rico and we see that they have no clean water, and then people are sending water purifications systems in I've seen it in the Bahamas, but I only see it during like a disaster. Um So do you do that too, or you're really just about permanent infrastructure in places that never had clean water. We've done a little bit of disaster response, but only in the countries where we have a long history or a footprint. So you know, when Flint happened, when Puerto Rico happened, we sent our donors to other organizations who actually had been there. You know. Nobody needed a New York City based like you know, or with no experience trying to parachute into Michigan and grab donor dours. So typically when there's a disaster, we're we're you know, blogging about it or offering kind of a recommended list of partners that we have relationships with, and then you know, when the Nepal earthquake happened, We've been there for more than a decade, so we really leaned into relief efforts there. Uh, the same thing in Ethiopia with a crisis fund and the Haiti earthquake. Um, so we've we've done some stuff, but we need to be in a country and really have those relationships. You know, I think what's what's next? Like, so, okay, there's seven seventy one million people without water, that's one out of ten people alive. We've helped fifteen million. That's one of the work that needs to be done. Does that make you feel like positive or defeated? Because I know that Sometimes it feels like the situation in Ukraine feels like oh like hissing in the ocean. It feels like what's the point. It's like sad. It makes me feel like we're in the second inning, like the best better yet be ahead? Right now? When I get really depressed, I Philip Madison Square Garden with fifteen million people and it's seven fifty sold out Madison Square Gardens, So you know, imagine seeing Billy Joel seven nights in a row, right, like at the garden. So it's a lot of people. You know, it's more than you know, all the people that live in New York and all the boroughs it states full of people. It's small countries full of people. Um, but it's a fraction of what is needed and the urgency of the seven million people who did not choose to be born in the tem per cent of the world anymore that I chose to be born in Philly in a middle class family where I always have water. You know, there is a we have now built the capability over fifteen years. We have a responsibility to go faster, to grow the movement, to raise more money, to invite more people to join us, and you know, fight for a world where everybody has clean water to drink. It's like such a basic it's literally a basic neatu. Everyone thinks this is a good idea, Like whether you're a Republican or a Democratic or independent, if you're a person of faith, if you're not, you know, regardless of where you stand on you know, contentious social issues, like everybody can stand for water. Yeah, I agree, it's the most Like it's an inarguable common good. So that's allowed us to build, you know, a base of now a million supporters from a hundred fifty countries. But it's a fraction of what's needed. So the thing I'm probably most excited about is I was with um Uh, the founder of of a huge subscription business in Ethiopia, you know, a few years ago, and you know, he basically said, you know, why do you start over every January one? You know, we were only getting one time donations. He said, why don't you build a community of people who give every single month? Right, We've got Spotify, we've got Netflix, we've got Dropbox, we've got Disney Plus, we've got Khulu. So a few years ago Charity Water launched a monthly giving community called the Spring, and it helped triple the impact of the organization. People just giving thirty or forty bucks a months, Yeah, they don't even remember. Why isn't the gut Why aren't these individual governments that governments has no money? Why aren't governments giving you something? They are the governments have a fraction of the money at their disposal. I mean, Charity Water can put in a single year what the entire water government budget of a small country in Africa is you know, it's uh. I mean there's you know, in many of these countries where we work, the people are shareholder farmers. They're not being intact right, so the government is taking a limited budget and trying to develop roads and health care systems and schools and electricity and and water. Right, so you know, we're we're seeing you know, maybe we're always advocating for an over investment in water. You know, we think sometimes other stuff gets done instead of what I'm listening to you. I'd rather have clean water than than know anything. If I had to choose to be to go to school or to have clean water, I'd rather have clean water. Yeah, so we we are, I mean outside of the despotic governments or regimes, and there are a few of those around the world, you know, we see governments really want everybody to have clean water. I mean, it's it's embarrassing to you know, to go to the U n and and have half your country drinking. So so we don't find that our our work is met with resistance. It's it's really met with partnership. Let's help get more drilling rinks in the country. Let's use the government funding to match cherry water money. You know, we have a long long standing partnership with Rwanda where every dollar we put into water in Rwanda, the district and federal government come up with cents each, so we get basically a ninety cents on the dollar match. So we're able to do almost double the work. As the government says, we don't have a huge budget, but we wanted to go farther and we wanted to intract outside humanitarian investment in a sustainable way. How much money would it take to get the seven seven seven, seven hundred and seventy one million people clean water. We think it's about a hundred thirty five billion, so you know, percent of of one of the trillion dollar stimulus is right. Yeah, And you've talked to all these big billionaires that have all their own charities and they've donated. They haven't you know, Bethany, I'm always open for ideas. So we we have started. You know, look, I mean, we've got very very generous people who have given, you know, seven eight figure gifts. But what I'm really most excited about is I was saying, is is the spring? Is this community of people that are showing up thirty forty fifty dollars a month, ten dollars a month now across a d countries. That is adding up to more than the billionaire's investments, right, a whole ground swell of people. So that's what I'm focused on a lot um and you can keep increasing that because people will see more return on their resus. You know, the average person listening probably has somewhere between ten and fifteen subscriptions. And you know, we wanted to create a dynamic uh community where instead of getting music or movies or magazines, you know, or content of what people give every month goes directly to provide water and the most basic need for humans. And then we are reporting back with stories of impact and and trying to make people feel really connected to you know, almost win every dollar every month. You know, we have a sense of stewardship. So if the old charity water model, the old charity model was like set it and forget it, right, getting donors signed up into your monthly community and then just hope they get about it, we're actually doing the opposite. We're trying to engage them. We're trying to prove where the money is going and and and create a dynamic community Yeah, what if you could get one of these subscription uh streamers to add a dollar to somebody's monthly um for this cause or I mean, you know, or airlines at a dollar around every airfare just is added for clean water in the countries that they fly to or things like that. If anyone's listening and uh and and is in the airline business or a streamer, we we we we'd love to work with people. We have a great brand partnership's team and um, you know there's there's a great video Bethany that's gotten like seven year eighty million views now it's actually called the Spring and people could just go to the Spring dot com. That's even a way to help is just watch the video, learn a little more about the issue, and then share it. Okay, so last question is uh, your rows of your career and your thorn. I think the rose of the career is just reaching the fifteen million person milestone in our fifteenth year. Uh. Um that you know, it felt like a moment in time, you know where Okay, we've done something, we built an organization. You know, I can imagine getting to a hundred million people with water now with fifteen million behind us, I think the thorn I started too late. You know, I started this at thirty. I wasted a decade and and you know, I also believe nothing is wasted. UM. And I was able to, you know, take some of the things that I learned. I guess running around promoting night a skill set. But you know it also, yes, UM, it also feels like I just wasted ten years selfishly and I had nothing to show for that decade. And I wish I had gotten started earlier and there'd be more people with water well. And also I guess there's a message for people listening that. Um. I think people think they can't get involved because it really seems intangible. It's not that just like business, it's not that easy to get into philanthropy and a mean full way. You could donate money, you could put a link I say to people, the communication and and and literally without people on social media, my followers, I wouldn't have done the Probably now it's going to be over four hundred million dollars of relief that we've done in the last several years. Uh, And it's because of them. But I do think that it's helpful for people to listen to your story because people do want an entry point, they want to do something. It's so funny because you know a lot of my friends say to me, we have we're boxing up clothes and can we drop them off? And I'm thinking we're sending you know, hundreds of thousands of pounds from major companies like levies that call Angoya and Bumblebee. So they can't enter because I can't take a box of clothes. It's not evenna be helpful to me, It'll be it would just be more work for my team and someone else. Can my kids come over and help you box up? And I'm I'm like, we have a warehouse in Miami if you want to fly them down to Miami and they can put things in boxes. But for people to have a real impact and do something meaningful, it's not as easy. That's why you had to call all these different places to just get a job for free, being a volunteer. So if you have any advice for people listening to have some sort of an impact and to find their way in um, I wonder what that would be. Yeah, I mean, I think it starts with just the break from apathy and getting involved in stuff and and you know, figuring out what you're passionate about. Uh, maybe it's you know, women and girls around the world. Maybe it's a justice issue. Maybe it's hunger, maybe it is water, um, maybe it is you know, reaching people who have been affected by disasters in a really timely way. I think, then try to go a little deeper maybe to understand that issue, you know, move beyond a donor to you know, get some domain expertise in that so you can become you can become an ambassador, you can become an advocate, you can actually know what you're talking about, and then bring others into that cause you know, I mean there's so much needless suffering in the world, Bethany. I mean, we look around and there's so much capital, there's so much inert capital, and and you know, I think it's our job as social entrepreneurs or those leading movements or causes to really make compelling cases for people to be generous, to use their time, to use their talent, to use their money in the service of others. And you know, there's there's only two two games in town, love and service. Selfishness does not end well. You know, someone will always have more money, they will always have a better car, Someone's gonna have a better house, you know, a more famous partner. And you know, I think that it's really that the shift, the paradigm shift in perspective to say, you know, how can I be useful? How can I give what I've been blessed with to others? And the more you do that, you know, the more you give, the more you give. Right, It's like the more you get engaged in things, the more you want to be engaged things. It's like the more you consume, the more you consume, and that just leads to a very different place. You know, we we've all been with people that have thirty cars, Like you know what, you know, it started with one, right, and then I need another one, and then I need a third, and like, you know, you're not driving thirty cars. But we also know people you know, who are are you know, giving and giving and giving and dynamically giving of their time and the town and their money. And and I think I would just encourage people to find the joy and the freedom that comes with service and you know, loving your neighbor as yourself. I mean, charity is actually a beautiful word. It just means love. It just means love. It means to help others in need getting nothing in return. But a lot of business people listen and um, I do think it feels for people to you said, learn something, be educated on something, and know about it. I do think that every time you do something different to help people, it's like business because you have to you don't know what the language you're talking about, you don't know, you don't know what ppe masks are, and then you become totally fluent in that language is. You have to learn, you dig an education in it. So for people who are business minded, I don't think most people make that connection between business and philanthropy, but if you have that sort of entrepreneurial uh spark, it can be used for something so positive. I just do think that there is a total you kind of just like wait, I don't know about that. How do I get my way in? How do I figure out? How do I foot in the door? Just go show up there, figure it out, you know what I mean. Just get on the road. You gotta get on the road. You can't be stuck in the business plan. That's how I feel. And listen everybody's you know, I know you've raised so much, you have such a compassionate, engaged, you know a group of people. So I just wanna you know, uh, thank you and thank your community for all the good that that that they've been supporting around the world. Well, they can support you to what's your how do they donate the Spring dot com or charity water dot work? The Spring dot com or charity water do we'd we'd love for people to learn more about our work. Let me know, all right, guys, let's donate. Let me know when this airs if you saw that anybody donated, I'll be very proud of my audience because I am amazing, engaged and awesome people. Amazing. Thank you so much, have a wonderful day. I was great talking to you. I appreciate thanks for having me on. So that was Scott Harrison. Had not heard of him, although we've crossed paths in New York. I'm sure very interesting to dedicate your life to philanthropy after a life of debauchery. I like that. Um, just it's inspiring for other people who are feeling hopeless, useless, depressed, meaning what's the point? You know the way sometimes we all think like what is the point of all this? And and you know, seven hundred seventy one million people not having clean water is extremely sad and frustrating. And think about such a basic native water like drinking swampy, green, disgusting, sludgy water. That makes me, that literally makes me want to cry. I mean, it just makes me sad because I've faced that with people in Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. But this is just another level that people have never had clean water, and they've maybe they've even had schools and other things. But is there anything more important than clean water? So I think that that's really an interesting cause. I like it, UM. I would love to help UM. But I know what that feels like, feeling UM, like you're not even scratching the surface. Because with what's going on in Ukraine, and if I think about the numbers of people that we can take out that are refugees UM and that we can help and relocate, it's a small percentage of the whole, it's not even that small, but it's probably like maybe ten of the problem. But you know, do your part, but really do your part, like, really get involved, figure it out, learn what you care about, and and take the next step. Everybody wants to check the box so they could say they check the box. What about actually doing something really help somebody else and feeling good about it. So I think that's a really um that's a good message for that one. And you know that. Sometimes I have people on that you've heard of that are famous, and sometimes I have people on who have been pitched to me that just seems like they have an interesting story. And certainly someone whose goal in life is that everybody in the world will have clean water, that seems like a pretty good guest to make UM and that it is. You know, it does seem like it's treating it like business. You've got to get things on. You have to be a person that isn't gonna get defeated, and we'll just tackle the problem. Uh. So many times it will feel like you're not making a difference. But you've got to get on the road and get involved in a real way or just keep spreading the message. But I do think getting actually involved is better. Just B is hosted by me Bethany Frankel Just be as a production of Be Real Productions, I Heart Radio and Blue Duck Media. Are EPs are Morgen Levois, Antonio Enriquez, and Kara Hit To catch more moments from the show. Follow us on Instagram and just be with Bethany

Just B with Bethenny Frankel

If you can’t handle the truth you can’t handle this podcast. Just B with Bethenny Frankel is the bes 
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