He’s Spent 20 Years Trying to Change The World | Scott Harrison

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 organization
• The 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 water
• Storytelling, not statistics, is the core tool charity: eater uses to overcome apathy and make distant suffering feel personal
• The Rachel Beckwith story shows how one child’s birthday campaign became a global movement that ultimately helped more than 100,000 people
• The conversation digs into the tension between mission and family, especially for leaders whose work could easily consume all their time
• Scott shares how his kids reflect back the values he hopes to model
• The closing theme is generosity as an endless practice - giving, serving, and sharing rather than accumulating

You can find Scott at: Website | Charity Water Instagram | Scott's Instagram | Episode Transcript

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