Scott Harrison spent 10 years as a New York City nightclub promoter, partying until sunrise every morning and ingesting almost every substance imaginable.
But when he was 28, he realized his life lacked meaning.
“My tombstone might say, ‘here’s the guy who got thousands of people drunk,'” Harrison said.
Feeling lost, he decided to volunteer for a medical charity in Liberia.
Harrison spent the next year-and-a-half in West Africa, where he encountered people with diseases he’d never seen before — such as cholera, typhoid, dysentery, and fatal cases of diarrhea and dehydration.
He smelled the yellow-brown parasitic dirty water that millions of people were drinking. He discovered that unsafe, unclean drinking water is the world’s leading cause of death.
When he returned to New York City, he couldn’t bring himself to sell expensive bottled water at nightclubs anymore.
Instead, Harrison moved into a tiny closet and launched a nonprofit, Charity: Water.
Today, Charity: Water has funded more than 24,000 water projects that have brought safe, clean drinking water to more than 7.3 million people.
That’s the good news.
The bad news? There are still 663 million people without access to clean water. That’s around double the population of the U.S.
And water-borne diseases kill about 16,000 people each week, almost half of whom are children under age 5.
There’s still a long way to go.
Today, Scott joins me on the podcast to talk about how he started and grew a major charitable organization.
- How does a nightclub promoter with zero business experience launch a massive nonprofit organization?
- What mistakes did he make?
- How did he differentiate his organization from the thousands of other charities out there?
- Who did he first hire?
- What advice would he offer to anyone who’s goal is to create a nonprofit?
Learn the answers to these questions and more in this excellent episode with Scott Harrison, the founder of Charity: Water.
Resources Mentioned:
- Charity Water — Short Film
- Charity Water — Projects
- World Health Organization – Drinking water fact sheet


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Kevin D Bailey
Hi Paula, I’m getting a 404 error when I go to affordanything.com/water.
Is this page up yet, or not until 2018?
Keep up the amazing work!
Kevin
Erin
Hi Kevin – sorry about that! The page is working now. =)
Emily
I’ve listened to every single podcast, but first time commenting because OH. MY. GOSH! I was so excited who your guest was. I was introduce to Charity: Water when my Amazon account said they would donate a portion of my purchases to a charity…who did I want? I saw clean drinking water and 100% of donations went to that project. I was hooked. This has been the only charity (outside giving to church) that I was enticed to give to. I greatly enjoyed getting to know more about Scott and his vision behind the charity. Such an amazing origin story, but the statistics at the end of how many lives are being changed on a weekly basis from his simple idea – clean water – gave me chills.
All About Water Filters
Wow Amazing! Scott Harrison! He is truly one person worth an applause. I hope we could meet more people like Scott Harrison, so we could help save the world from water scarcity.
Rick Potter
Inspiring. I will fund a well when I am able. Within the next 5 years.