Scott Harrison
Founder & CEO, charity: water. On 2 shows, 4 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveauthor@scottharrison ↗LinkedIn ↗charitywater.org ↗Wikipedia ↗Instagram ↗
After spending a decade as a New York City nightclub promoter and volunteering with Mercy Ships, Scott Harrison founded charity: water in 2006. He also authored the bestselling memoir Thirst: A Story of Redemption, Compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World.
2shows
4appearances
43statements
21resolved
14supported
4contradicted
67%fully supported
38said about them ↓ Everything Scott Harrison said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Harrison warns founders against adopting the 100% public donation model
“I can't even tell you how hard that was, and how I talk other people away from doing that now.”
charity: water holds the world's largest rural water flow dataset
“Now we have the largest data set in the history of the world of real time flow through our sensors for rural water systems.”
Harrison: Short volunteer trips rarely create lasting life changes for participants
“Five days is not enough to change. You change everything about your life for most people. A year of immersive proximity to an issue was.”
Harrison: I advise other nonprofit founders against the 100% donation model
“I can't even tell you how hard that was, and how I talk other people away from doing that now.”
Harrison: Guilt-based charity marketing fails to build advocates
“Charities use shame and guilt to market their wares. They made people feel terrible about what they had, hoping that they would respond. You remember those Sally Struthers commercials from the eighties, and the kids, and slow motion looking sadly at the camera…”
Harrison: 17% of 'The Spring' Video Viewers Became Monthly Subscribers
“And we put this thing out and it crushes it. I think 17% of the people that watch the video convert to subscribers.”
charity: water intentionally built its brand on hope, not shame
“We are on all the platforms now trying to reach people with the mediums that they are consuming every single day and reach them with true stories, but also a brand that is aspirational and hopeful, not a brand based on shame and guilt.”
Ghana deployed charity: water's sensors onto government wells
“We recently had the government of Ghana Take our sensors and put them on government wells. What's exciting about that is Charity Water has never worked in the country of Ghana. We don't have a single well in Ghana”
Harrison: 25% of water projects in Africa are currently broken
“In Africa alone, 25% of the projects are broken right now. 25%.”
Charity: Water deployed 8,000 remote sensors for largest rural water dataset
“We've installed 8000 of these. We currently are monitoring the largest data set in the history of the world when it comes to rural water supply, mainly because no one ever bothered to do this before.”
Harrison: Nightclub promotional and storytelling skills translate directly to humanitarian work
“So I learned that maybe the same gift of promoting, getting people to stand outside a velvet rope to cue, to hope to get into a nightclub, telling the story that if you came in my club and you spent thousands of dollars and you left with a cute boy or a cute g…”
Harrison: 70% of Americans believe charities waste donor money
“USA Today poll, found 42% of Americans just flat out said, distrustful of charities. 70% of Americans in a more recent poll said they believe charities waste their money.”
Bebo founders Michael and Xochitl Birch donated $20M to Charity: Water
“Michael and Xochitl have been very generous. They've given over twenty million dollars. They've come and come to 14 or 15 countries with me now, bringing their kids all over the world to see the impact that they've made.”
Charity: Water locked 100 Bitcoin in cold storage until at least 2025
“A couple of years ago we got into the Bitcoin space and we started a trust
called the Bitcoin Water Trust, where we raised a hundred Bitcoin to start, and we said, we're gonna lock them all up in cold storage until at least twenty-twenty-five. So we're not go…”
Harrison: 129 tech leaders including Jack Dorsey fund Charity: Water's overhead
“We're now a 129
Families fund all the overhead, and it's people that I'm sure you've had on here.
It's been Jack Dorsey, and Sean Parker, and Johnny Ive, and Angela Aarons, and Matt Mullenweg, and Daniel Eck, and it's been a lot of John Doerr, venture capitali…”
Harrison: Showing donation impact creates a virtuous giving loop
“Inspire someone to give, and then show them how their money, even if it's 10 bucks from a child, from a lemonade stand, how that 10 dollars actually traveled across the world and did good. And if you can show them, you create this virtuous cycle, and they cont…”
Harrison: Charity Water Expects 35% Growth and Over $70M Revenue
“Last year we grew 37%. This year we're gonna grow another 35%. We think we're gonna do over seventy million dollars this year. Help almost one and a half million people get clean water.”
703 million people globally lack access to clean drinking water
“So, as of right now, we are down to seven hundred and three million people living on Earth without access to clean water.”
charity: water has provided clean water to over 17.5 million people
“Our impact is now up to over 17 and a half million people with access to clean water across about a 137,000 communities around the world.”
130 donor families fund all charity: water overhead expenses
“A hundred percent of public donations go directly to the field to provide people clean water, and then in this separately audited bank account, about a 130 families pay the overhead.”
charity: water's overhead bank account once dropped to just $111
“So we get to this point about a year and a half in, where we raised a couple million dollars, and the game was up. There was a moment when there was a 111 dollars in the bank account for overhead.”
Bebo founder Michael Birch wired $1 million to save charity: water
“Three days later, I get an email from him saying, hey, it was great meeting you. I wired a million dollars into your overhead account. So we go from insolvent to a year in funding.”
charity: water has raised over $330 million since its near-insolvency
“You know, that was a third of a billion dollars ago.”
Harrison launched charity: water at a nightclub, raising $15,000
“I launched Charity Water in a nightclub on my birthday. It was my 31st birthday, and the only idea I had to officially launch was to get a bunch of people in a club, give them open bar, and ask them for 20 bucks on the way in as a donation. And we raised 15,00…”
The other half of the tape: Scott Harrison's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 31 times in 5 episodes across the shows. 7 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Shaan Puri 31
Statements about Scott Harrison, by other people (7)
Puri: Charity: Water Used Real-Time IoT Flow Meters To Drive Fundraising
“He literally installed like little Google donated these like IOT devices, these flow meters so that you can see that the well you helped build, you can go in the app, and you can literally see how much water is flowing through that well right now, and so he di…”
Hoffman: Charity: Water guarantees 100% of public donations fund projects
“He made radical transparency the fundamental rock of charity water, which guaranteed that a hundred percent of public donations will be used on its well digging projects.”
Hoffman: People respond more passionately to solutions than problems
“What Scott understood instinctively was that people respond more passionately to solutions than to problems.
Problems can inspire outrage and guilt, but they also trigger compassion fatigue.
Solutions inspire hope and motivation.”
Shaan Puri: Donor transparency drove Charity: Water's outsized nonprofit success
“And I just think that that was such a unlock for him and why charity, one of the reasons charity water was able to do so well as a nonprofit compared to the kind of standard operating procedures of nonprofits.”
Hoffman: Charity: Water has funded 30,000 projects serving 8.5M people
“His nonprofit, Charity Water, has funded 30,000 water projects across 26 countries, bringing clean water to Eight and a half million people.”
Michael Birch gave Charity: Water $1 million after their first meeting
“And then Michael wrote him an email right after the meeting, like the next day. And he just said, Hey Scott, loved our chat. Send me your wire instructions. I'll send you a million dollars. Use it however you wish. Keep rocking. And the million dollars kept th…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
My First Million 31
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 10 mentions in 1 episode
2022 3 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Scott's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Founder & CEO, charity: water | 3 | 30 | 73% 11/15 | full record on Masters of Scale → |
| MY FIRST MILLIONLEDGER | Founder & CEO, charity: water | 1 | 13 | 50% 3/6 | full record on My First Million → |