Good Life Project - He’s Spent 20 Years Trying to Change The World | Scott Harrison

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

Jonathan sits down with Scott Harrison, charity: water founder, for a wide-ranging reflection on his 20-year mission to bring clean water to everyone on earth. Scott revisits the original spark, the scale of the problem, the storytelling strategy that helped build the movement, and the personal tension of leading a global nonprofit while raising a family. We discuss the long game of solving a problem that is both massive and solvable, why generosity is often unlocked through story rather than statistics, and how Scott thinks about balance, legacy, and “the work with no end.”Key topics:Scott looks back on the early days of charity: water and the energy of the original nightclub fundraiser that launched the organizationThe scale of the mission has grown to more than $1 billion mobilized, 216,000 projects across 29 countries, and about 700 million people still without clean waterStorytelling, not statistics, is the core tool charity: eater uses to overcome apathy and make distant suffering feel personalThe Rachel Beckwith story shows how one child’s birthday campaign became a global movement that ultimately helped more than 100,000 peopleThe conversation digs into the tension between mission and family, especially for leaders whose work could easily consume all their timeScott shares how his kids reflect back the values he hopes to modelThe closing theme is generosity as an endless practice - giving, serving, and sharing rather than accumulatingYou can find Scott at: Website | Charity Water Instagram | Scott's Instagram | Episode TranscriptNext week, we're bringing you a best-of episode with Mark Nepo, to talk about why falling down might be the most useful thing that happens to you all year. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss that or any upcoming episodes!Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

20 years ago, Scott Harrison set out to bring clean water to every person and village in the world who needed it, and along the way, saved millions of lives. It was one of those rare problems that was actually 100% solvable. The technology existed. Even if it took a lifetime, it became the defining mission of his life, leading him to launch charity water, the billion-dollar movement that began with a birthday party in New York Nightclub and grew into one of the most trusted models in philanthropy in the world. What's happened over those two decades and how it's impacted Scott, his family, and millions of others is where we're headed in today's deeply inspiring story-driven conversation. We talk about the pivotal moments and insights in his quest to build something that changes millions of lives. As Scott also shares how he thinks about the tension between mission and family,

what it means to build a life around service instead of accumulation, and why work that has no end may be the right work to choose. This episode is essential listening. If you care about doing work that genuinely matters, the power of a clear mission, a story well told, and how all of it changes not just you, but everyone that you touch, including your family, your friends, and those around you along the way. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. And we'll jump right in after this short break. Scott Harrison, so great to have you back in the house.

It's been eight years, my friend, way too long. I can't wait to be back with you. This is such an honor. I know. You and I, a long-time New Yorkers who have found ourselves outside of New York and sort of since late pandemic days. I'll take you back in time. When you turned 31, which as we're having this conversation 20 years ago, you throw yourself a birthday party. Back in one of the clubs in New York City, you raise about 15 grand to provide water for some villages and have gone. if that guy walks into charity water today, the foundation that that very party birthed some 20 years ago, the foundation that you have built over the last two decades, what would he say? Well, I hope I would try to hire that guy. 20 years on, we need that energy.

I'm reading a book at the moment called From Barbarians to Bureaucrats, trying to make sure, you know, as we turn 20, you know, that same sense of possibility and inspiration and, you know, craziness in a way remains a value of the organization. If he walked in today, I don't think he would recognize it. I don't think that guy ever knew what an organization looked like, behaved like. was structured like, I mean, that guy was a kid who threw a party to nightclub because he wanted to build a well and, you know, wasn't sure what any of it or how to do any of those things. So I'd hope he'd be pretty impressed and think it was pretty cool that that, you know, that one

well in Uganda has turned into, you know, over a billion dollars and 216,000 projects in 29 countries and you know certainly more of a going concern now than then then a nightclub party um where people threw 20 dollars in but uh i i i think the whole organization now you know would uh would hopefully be infected by that enthusiasm and idealism maybe yeah idealism an interesting word right um 20 years over billion dollars. Some 21 million people with clean water, probably a lot more than that, actually, as we have this conversation, over a million people have contributed in various different ways. When I first sat down with you years back, one of the things that really caught me and stayed with me is this notion. You basically said, when I first realized that this was a problem, one of the things

that you realized at the same time was this is one of those rare problems where it is deep, it is vast, it's global and it is a hundred percent solvable. Solvable, yeah. And I was struck by that and it stayed with me. So you've been at this for 20 years now, for two decades of your life. It has been your central devotion. Where are we with that? I mean, I probably feature that line and an idea more now than ever before in a world

of seemingly unsolvable problems. I feel like the world has gotten more complicated in many ways. a global pandemic wars, you know, some of these major diseases, which now as we get older, our parents succumb to. My mom was a big part of my story, you know, lived her whole life, kind of battling a compromised immune system from a carbon dioxide leak and then eventually died of pancreatic cancer in a couple months from diagnosis to death. And doctors had no idea how solve that problem. You know, I have a family member with Parkinson's. They have no idea how to solve that problem. My best friend's dad just passed away from ALS, Lugaris disease. No idea how to

solve that problem. So it seems like we are faced with many intractable problems, but yet, as you said, we know how to give every human being on planet Earth clean water. There's not a single human alive where we're scratching our head saying they're beyond time. hope. It's so simple. It's so basic. And a lot of different things work and a lot of different environments. So there's no one size fits all solution. But you can always get clean water to people 100% of the time for 100% of the planet. And I think, you know, what is, I don't think anger is the right word, but maybe, you know, what has perplexed me at this moment in time 20 years later is that we've really done so little to solve this problem. You know, a billion dollars is a fraction of

what I imagined we would have mobilized by now for an issue as basic to humans as water. You know, the fact that, you know, we can record this podcast and while we're comfortably sitting here with our lights and our microphones, there are 700 million humans. right now that are drinking dirty water is kind of mind-blowing. It's like we have the cure, and we've had it for many, many years, but we have not decided to implement the cure. But yet, we'll spend tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars looking for other cures, which we may or may not find, and specifically cures for health. But we can't deliver the most basic need for human health to 10% of the planet. So that keeps me going because I believe it's

possible and it's really as simple as mobilizing the resources and mobilizing the will. And the challenge is nobody's experienced this problem. I bet nobody listening has ever had to poison themselves with dirty water, you know, drink from a brown viscous river or a, you know, a contaminated pond walk eight hours to a far away water source and then haul 40 pounds of dirty water, you know, back home. It's just, it's a, it's a problem that we just don't interact with. So it's, it's tough to get people to want to solve a problem they have no experience with. So when somebody says, okay, I get that, I acknowledge that. It's hard. And I would love to see if they're somewhere in your heart left,

for you to find a little bit more for somebody on the other side of the world who you will never meet. How do you do that? I mean, you do it through storytelling. You do it by telling stories that connects people, not by statistics,

not by percentages, not by 90-page white papers on the state of the global water crisis. You do it by telling stories of real people. And, you know, I think that's what has helped us build, you know, the movement of charity water now to include a couple million donors around the world who have actually resisted that apathy that is so easy to embrace with any of these paralyzing global issues, right, that don't affect us and has moved people to say, yeah, I can do something. I can help one person or one family or one community or a hundred communities. and it's really the stories of the people just like us and who are born in a very different circumstance that don't have that most basic need met. But yet, I mean, many of these communities are living

about a hundred feet on top of the resource that could change their lives. But they don't have that $10,000. They don't have the drilling rigs, the equipment, the hydrogeologists. They don't have the knowledge to actually access that aquifer of clean water that's trapped in the rock. And, you know, one of the stories that hit me the most, I've, you know, I've gotten to travel now to 72 countries and I've been to Africa 55 times. So I've gotten to see a lot of, a lot of things around the world. And I was in Ethiopia and this is a place where we've worked for very much. many years. It's a huge need and there's also just a huge amount of progress that's being made. And our partners were drilling a well. And when you drill a well in a community, it's a party.

Hundreds of people come out. They circle this million-dollar machine that is spinning and grinding and, you know, turning this drill bit into the earth. There's about nine local. that will run one of these rig packages. They're all Ethiopians. So it's kind of cool to see this community celebrating people that look like them, you know, heroes. And, you know, about 90 some percent of the time they're successful. And on this village, they were successful.

They find the clean water. And then they begin flushing it. So this giant stream of clean water from beneath the earth starts shooting up into the sky. And people are clapping and they're cheering. and the women are dancing and fathers are picking up their daughters and swinging them around. And, you know, it's a, it's a moment, right, where everybody realizes nothing will ever be the same again. You know, clean water has been struck. And in one of these villages, there was an older woman off to the side and she was not a part of this party.

She was weeping as she watched all this going on. And one of our drilling partners came off to her and said, like, I don't think you got to the memo like this is a happy day you know why are you off here like all you know for clempt and and sad and she said because i just realized that my entire life it was right beneath my feet and all the children that died in this village all the walking to these faraway sources right all the uh the attacks by animals and hyenas and you know all of the sadness and suffering didn't need to happen because it was about 100 feet underneath the village. And that's really, I think, kept me going,

knowing that whatever the solution is, whether it's rainwater harvesting or a solar-powered pipe system or a biosan filter or drilling a well, you have people waiting right now and unnecessarily suffering. And we have the problem. And it's just up to us to solve it, to bring that solution.

And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. I mean, the curious to me, you really, so you're simultaneously drilling two wells, right? One, you're using physical equipment to access water and bring it to people in need, and the other are using the mechanism of story to open people's hearts and their generosity to help make this all possible.

Sometimes both heavy lists. but the elation on the other side, you know, when you strike water or when you strike generosity. Yeah. I might have told this story the last time I was on back in 2018, but, you know, one of the kind of organization's most famous stories, I think, that would illustrate that, is this little nine-year-old girl named Rachel Beckwith, and she lived in Seattle. She'd heard me speak. At the time, we were asking people to donate their birthdays, and instead of accepting

gifts or throwing themselves a party to celebrate their birthday, they would donate their birthdays for clean water. And kind of the sticky marketing message was you'd ask for your age in dollars. So if you were turning nine, you'd say, could I please have a $9 donation? And if you were turning 89, you would ask for $89. Well, this little girl, Rachel was, she was eight, she was turning nine, heard me speak, you know, couldn't believe that children were drinking dirty, water a world away. And she canceled her birthday party and she refuses to accept any gifts. And she said a $300 goal. And she didn't quite get there. Jonathan, she raised $220. And she told her mom, you know, I feel like a failure. I'm going to try harder next year. I didn't reach my goal.

And then sadly, right after her birthday, she was killed in a terrible car crash. It was a 21 car pile up on the interstate. Her mom was driving. She was in the back seat. And she was the only fatality as this tractor trailer just took out her car and her life. And the family reached out to us and said, we'd love to reopen this campaign that was $80 short. And story of the story of this little girl who had considered people drinking dirty water more important than what we'd expect every nine-year-old girl would want the stuffies or the party or the celebration. It just traveled around the world. And I think it was 59,000 strangers gave $9 or more in her honor.

And she wound up going from $220 of impact to over $1.2 million. And what I wouldn't have known the last time I was on if I told that story was that she inspired so many other people. to follow her lead and donate their birthday, that they raised millions more. So this little girl, you know, who wanted to help a couple people wound up helping well over 100,000 humans, you know, five Madison Square Gardens

where we're from, full of clean water, because she got it, and she opened up her heart, and she tapped into that. You know, there's something about the innocence of a child, I think, that sometimes makes us,

consider our way of life and our values. And, you know, just, she never got to live to see that impact. But I remember on the one year anniversary of her death, I got to take her mom and her grandparents village to village in Ethiopia. And they got to meet the children who had clean water because of their child and their grandchild. They got to meet other mothers and other grandmothers who watched their whole communities transformed. And it was just, it was one of the most powerful things, getting to see two things happen at once.

The legacy of a child inspire 60,000 strangers towards generosity and then to actually see the 100,000 people who got clean water as a result. You know, I hear that story, and I hear so many of the other stories that I've heard you share over the years and they see the impact that you're doing, and my jaw drops, it's astonishing. And in the right moment, in the right way, people can be incredibly generous.

There's something that awakens in them. Never, of course, wanting to invite any kind of tragedy as a motivation. But that's led to an incredible amount of impact. At the same time, and tell me if I'm getting these numbers right or wrong, I believe I've heard you say that, like, of the 100% that we talked about it years ago, and that you sort of like said is this is 100% solvable. I would like to 100% solve this. Yeah.

You're probably somewhere over two decades now, somewhere around 3% to 5% into that. You're very close. Yeah. Of the available problem, we've done about 1.35th. Yeah. So how do you keep working on something that you care so deeply about when the honest scorecard says on any given day, that you've barely started.

And you're turning 51. At this pace, the likelihood of you finishing this in your lifetime is slim to none. So how do you stay in it? Well, I don't know that I agree with that. Let me talk a bit about progress. So when I started 20 years ago,

there were a billion people drinking dirty water and there were six billion people living in the world, which is astonishing. So one in six, I remember these shirts we printed, like one glass of dirty water, five clean. Okay, now we've got almost eight billion people in the world, but we're down to 700 million people drinking dirty water. So we went from one in six to one in ten, one in eleven.

Now, the pace of progress is far too slow. And as we play this out, you know, we think we're about 60 years. from solving the problem. So to your point, John, then I probably will not live to 111. So I will give you that. But hey, who knows these days? But 60 years feels, you know, within reach for a trajectory change or a moment that could change, you know, tipping point moment that could change that could change that trajectory. What animates me 20 years later is knowing that we are working on a solvable problem down to the last human being on Earth.

I can't overstate that. Like, if you knew that whatever you were doing, like 100% of people need your product to live, right? It's like, and you feel unanimously unequivocally good about delivering your product to the entire world, to 8 billion humans, right? So I feel that way. You know, I've gotten to make a lot of speeches over the last years and, you know, do a bunch of podcasts. you know, no one has pulled me aside at the end of a speech or at the end of a podcast and said, hey, Scott, we think you're wasting your time. Let them drink bad water. Like, why, you know, right? So it's kind of this universal, inarguable common good. And we know how to solve it. And we have,

you know, I call it a 60 year-ish timeline of solving it. If all things are equal and we just keep kind of plotting along. And there really is that sense that we, because we have showed up for 20 years and we have never compromised our integrity and we've tried to be unbelievable stewards of the money that we have been trusted that you never know. Someone can walk in the office and make a billion-dollar commitment. Yeah. Over that 20-year window, I mean, nobody does anything at scale for two decades and has it always go well. Were there moments where you showed up one day and you're just like, you considered walking away or shutting it down? I mean, there were a lot of moments. I think our business model is unique and also existentially difficult. For people not familiar with Charity

Water from day one, we opened up a separate bank account to pay for all of the staff salaries, for the overhead, for the flights, for the office rent, anything that wasn't kind of directly going into the construction of a life-saving water project. And, I mean, that posed challenges and continues to pose challenges. I just came out of a three-hour budget meeting. You know, we don't have the funding to do the things that we wish we could do. And in some ways are constrained by that model.

yet it's also led so many people to donate and tell us that it's the first donation they've made because they know 100% is going directly to help people. And because we bifurcated all of the overhead and all of the public donations, we were able to build out unbelievably cool tracking technology that would track every single donation down to the village and show people who was helped. So if somebody gave $6.12 and 12 cents of lemonade stand money, we could show the little girl or the little boy where the $6.12 cents went and make that gift real for them and to restore their faith in giving. So I think that's been kind of, you know, in some ways the blessing and the curse, harder to grow because you have to raise all of that growth capital separately. And the way we do it is there's about 150 families who show up in that bank account. And, And their donations go to pay for the 100 and some staff and the flights. And then millions of people in the other bank account have been able to give in that purest way possible,

whether they give a dollar or a million dollars knowing that 100% goes to help people get water and then is all tracked. So, yeah, I think that has just posed a lot of extra challenges along the way. You know, for those you don't know your fuller story, you spent about a deal. decade in New York City as a nightclub promoter. One of the holiest, most honest, sincere careers that you could ever have. For those don't know, this is the world. Just put an un and in an end between all those adjectives and you've got it. There was a moment in New York City, like in the 90s especially where like you can make a metric ton of money and basically get thrown everything you ever wanted, like the most hedonistic way that you could possibly live. And it was it was good

until it wasn't. You did that for about a decade and then this one had a moment of a moment of reckoning and started a bit of a redemption tour. But you've used the whole time in Charity Water, I think this was so apparent, especially in the early days when nobody else was doing this, you use your nightclub promoter skills, your ability to tell a story that everybody wants to be invited into to build Charity Water. 20 years down the road, what part of that guy from the clubs is still running this joint. I mean, I think a lot of them. Look, I mean, when you promote nightclubs and I promoted 40 different nightclubs over 10 years

in New York City from 18 to 28, you are trying to convince people that yours is the place to be, right? Get past your velvet rope into your club where you have the best DJs and the best room in the city, spend a whole lot of money. money on overpriced alcohol, right, $25 cocktails, $1,000 bottles of champagne. And if you do all of this, your life has profound meaning. Well, maybe you leave with a pretty boy or pretty girl at the end of the night, right? So that's kind of the story that you just keep telling in different ways and variations on a theme for 10 years at 40 different venues, getting people to come and to

move and to spend their money. And, you know, I think what I realized at 20, 28 was, I'm telling the wrong story. This does not give life profound meaning. Running around getting drunk, doing drugs, you know, smoking cigarettes and going home at 6 in the morning, you know, this is not the life plan that I should probably be promoting. And in many ways for the last 20 years, I have been super promoting just a very different story, a story of generosity. and care and compassion and clean water. And just sort of maybe promoting a simple idea that, you know, I'm creating, or together,

we're co-creating a world where every human has clean water to drink. And everyone is invited to the party, right? Nine-year-old girls are invited to the party and 89-year-olds and billionaires and, you know, people who own a single car wash and a single mom with three jobs. It's like everyone is invited to this party where we're creating the world that we want to live in where humans have the most basic need for life met.

And everybody has access to this thing that, again, so many of us were just born into a world of, so many of us just take for granted. So it's really just using the same skill now for 30 years, but really changing the direction that skill is aimed in and certainly changing the story. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Talking about changing and stories, just on a personal level, you're a very different human being than you were 20 years ago. You're in a very different position in your life than eight years ago

when we had a conversation. If we zoom the lens out, bigger picture, while you've been building charity water, you've gotten married, became a dad to four kids, left New York. At the same time, where you are still deeply involved and running, centering in no small way, 3% to 4% into this 100% mission that consumes a lot of you, your waking hours, your bandwidth. How is it when you're so committed to something that you feel is so deeply important, how has it been trying to do right by your foundation, which could easily consume,

all of your days, do right by the millions of people who you want to stay alive, when you know you could make a difference, which could also consume 200% of your day. And at the same time, do right by your family and your wife and your kids all at once. I mean, Jonathan, that is the tension to manage, the tension of all tensions to manage. And I think I'm very, very fortunate. I read a book when I first started Charity Water about a very famous international charity founder. And he went on to create a multi-billion dollar work. And he was a force of nature flying around the world to disaster zones, to earthquakes, you know, to famines and just with this larger-than-life personality meeting needs and building this organization. And one day

his daughter committed suicide. And in her note, I said something to the effect of, my my dad might have been there for millions of other kids, but he was never there for me. And I just remember thinking, I think that's the wrong choice. I'm pretty sure that's the wrong choice. And I don't want to ever make that choice. So I think there are moments of balance where I feel like I am serving the organization and the mission. And, serving my family and both are getting served really well. And then there are moments of inbalance where I could be over-serving the family and feel like I'm letting down the organization by not getting on the planes the way that I used to. There are also moments where I'm working too hard and I'm not

home. And, you know, I get home after five nights on the road and I'm home for eight hours and then I leave on another plane for something and I'm not serving the family so well. So I think I'm so aware of trying to do both things as well as I can, maybe not at deficit, but it's attention to manage because, you know, every plane I don't get on and spend that time with my family, being a husband and a father, there are lives at the other end of that that could be compromised with clean water. But, you know, if I am on all those planes and I'm chasing, you know, all these donor meetings and making all the speeches, there's a family at home that is being sacrificed for that. So it's, there's no easy answer to that except, I think,

knowing that this is always attention and trying to manage it and then getting feedback, you know, on how you're doing. When you think about, about that family of yours, um, and you are, you are the storyteller. This has been, this has been your cheat code. for like pretty much our entire adult life. What's the story that you want your vocation to tell your kids? Well, it's pretty cool. I was, I actually just came out two days ago from the wilderness of Utah. I do a trip every year with one of my kids off grid, so kind of four days, no phone, camping.

And this trip was the first one I led. So I brought eight other fathers with eight of their sons. So there were nine dads, nine sons, kind of from 10 to 17. And we had some really intentional time around the campfires where we tried to speak life into our kids and what we saw in them. And then they got to talk about us as well. And my son went last. So I remember thinking, like, what if he doesn't even want to go?

You know, the other eight kids went. And he kind of said two things. He said, you know, what I love most about my dad is he sees problems in the world. And he tries to fix them. and that he always has time for me. So, I mean, in that moment, three days ago in the Utah wilderness, like, you know, it seems like maybe that's enough balance or at least for this 11-year-old boy,

dad's trying to do two things that are really often at odds, fixing a massive problem in the world and always having time for him. And at least recognizing that. So that felt pretty good. Yeah. I mean, as a parent, we're always trying to, you know, to model to our kids how we hope they might think about living in the world, right? And we all know that it doesn't matter what you say. They're just looking at how you behave.

Yeah. And the family story, maybe to more directly answer your question, I think is, hey, we've been blessed. And, you know, we have, I mean, we've been blessed in so many ways. I mean, I was born in a middle class family in Philadelphia and I had clean water my whole life. My kids are born into a world. we're all four of them are going to have clean water their whole life, and a roof over the head if they want it, and food. And, you know, how, so I think, so then therefore, you know,

what should we do with that, with that blessing? And I think it's just how do we use what we've been given? How do we use our time? How do we use the talents we've been given and then later develop? How do we use our money in the service of others? And that's going to look different at different points in life. They don't need to get into a humanitarian profession to make me proud, but they do need to be givers. They need to be generous to make me proud.

So I think generosity is such a core value of our family. I mean, I've now personally been able to give a million dollars of our own family money over 20 years to charity water through writing a book in the advance and through just donating our own cash every single year. There's just a sense of, you know, I can't ask anyone to do something I'm not willing to do. And I can't ask anyone else to make sacrifices unless I'm willing to make those same sacrifices. So I know that they see that as well. And, you know, I want our family kind of motto to just be like, the hairs are just so generous. You know, we're always trying to pick up the check. We're always trying to help a friend in need, you know, and we don't need the credit either.

You know, we like doing it silently. we like paying that bill because somebody, you know, was really hard up and them not knowing it was us that paid that bill. Yeah. It's an interesting point also. I remember years ago being exposed to what was described as Rombom's Ladder, my mom, my mom that he's sort of like the levels of giving. And the highest level from what I recall was when the recipient has no idea that you gave. And that always stuck with me, you know, but oftentimes if there isn't some promise of recognition on the other side of giving, people don't want to give.

And I'm just pragmatic about that. So, you know, I mean, there's people who put their names on buildings and make big gifts, and there's people who don't. And we'll give in that way. It's funny, Jonathan, during our gala's very early, we used to do gala's in New York City at the Met. and other places. And very early, I realized I needed to design the giving moments for those two kinds of people. So I would have an iPad connected to a giant screen. And you could give and see your name. Or you could give and it would be anonymous.

And absolutely no judgment. And I would say a lot of people who give to show their name could inspire others to follow their lead. And then there's other people who are like, man, if I ever had to put my name on a screen, you would get zero dollars. So I wanted them also to get that, the pleasure, the benefit of giving in that kind of secret way.

So I'm not out really, you know, preaching a philosophy except that the giving is the most important thing. You know, people find their own way with that, right? Kind of people find their own experience. And, yeah, I was actually one of the dads on this trip, very successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. and they're Christians.

So they tithe on gross. So 10% of whatever comes into the family, they give to church and charity. But when he got married, 26 years ago, he said, in addition to that, we're going to start adding an extra percentage of whatever we make of gross

and every year it's going to grow. So this year it's 26%. So they're giving away 10% plus 26%. Next year it'll be 27%. Next year it'll be 28%. And I kind of love like everybody finds their own way um i heard of a an author once again kind of a a faith-based community and he wound up reverse tithy he said i'll keep 10% and give away 90% we have another family

who's donated uh well over 10 million dollars over the last 15 years to to charity water and they've capped their income i believe at 170 grand and they just won't live on more than 170 grand a year and just believe that all the surplus of kind of meeting those needs should go to end suffering in the world. So I've gotten to interact with so many interesting people who even, you know, get me to think about how generous I am and, you know, how we should be living our life. And I think it's fun watching people find their own ways. And honestly, 26% feels better than 25%. And 25% feels better than 15%. So if you ask them along that journey, every year,

year it's not like oh wow we have less money to keep we have less money to spend and go buy expensive things it's like we have more money to give we have more money to do good i love that take it really it's just you know the end of the day the net impact is the net impact whether you're recognized for it on the giving side or not the end of the day like the generosity is there and it's there to do good work in the world and also like circling back to the earlier part of the question, like, if you can model that for those around you. And also create just an environment where it's like, you know what, maybe you're raising kids and you want them to be generous kids. Whatever it is that makes you feel good.

Like anonymous, recognized, not whatever, that's good, but just set aside a piece of your heart, a piece of your allowance, a piece of your lemonade stand money, whatever it may be, and just earmark it, for something bigger than yourself. I think it's a good and inclusive and forgiving way to sort of like tee it up. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle. I asked you this question eight years ago and I actually went back

because I want to see how you answered and the way I always end these conversations is in this container of good life project if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up. I want to tell you, which I usually don't do what you said eight years ago. when I asked you, you said, you know, somebody sent me a picture that they took of a sign in a

bodega. And that sign said, do not be afraid of work that has no end. Yeah, I mean, I still love that idea, the idea of, because you have to define the work. So if the work is service, if the work is generosity if the work is sharing and giving. There's no finish line. I love that. There's no drop the mic moment where you can say, I've done enough. I have given enough. And yeah, so I just, I continue to love that idea of kind of the endless pursuit, be not afraid of that endless work, but make sure, because we all know people who are working to accumulate. that also has no end because someone always has a better house and a better car and a better boat and a better plane if you get there, right? The work with no end in wealth and accumulation,

I was doing some research on Rockefeller recently and he was interviewed in 1906 and he was asked how much is enough and you know what he said? Just a little more. Right. So I think, you know, we all know people kind of pursuing just a little more in resources. And I think just a little more giving, just a little more sharing, just a little more, service is the work I'd hope my whole family, you know, would continue to embrace. And so many people in the Charity Water community have embraced. So I don't know that I have a different answer for you, Jonathan. I still like that answer.

It sounds like it's pretty solid. It's sustained for eight years, and maybe it'll keep sustaining beyond that. So let's talk about some of the big ahas and actionable takeaways from this conversation. One thing I keep turning to is really, it's how Scott talks about progress, 20 years, over a billion dollars raised, and by his own estimate, they've solved something like 1.35th of the actual problem, somewhere around 3% of it. And he's not discouraged by that. Slow is not the same as stuck. He's making a difference and sees a future where that will accelerate. Then there's the way that he talks about generosity itself. Kind of like something in all of us that gets

easier to access the more we use it, the same reservoir that led a nine-year-old girl's birthday raise over a million dollars in clean water when it inspired so many others to kick in. And there's the family that he mentioned who cut their own income at $170,000 a year, giving away everything above that on purpose every year for 15 years. So if there's a place and you're weak to notice this. It's the next time that you feel that maybe you're moving too slowly on something that matters to you, or that you're doing something that's really hard work and it's so big, and you're only making a small dent.

Even small dens make a difference, and it's the beginning potentially of something much bigger. So ask yourself, are you really just stuck or are you just early in the game? And just keep going. And hey, before you leave next week, we're bringing you a best of episode with Mark Mepo to talk about why falling down might be the most useful thing that happens to you all year. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss that or any upcoming episodes. And do me a quick favor, share this conversation with just one person you know who you feel like really needs a little bit of inspiration these days. They need to hear what we talked about and leave us a review wherever you get your podcast.

It helps us get discovered and brings more people into the conversation. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by exactly. producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Troy Young and Alejandro Ramirez, Chris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already, please go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcast, so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for a Good Life Project.