Roughly 697 million people worldwide lack basic access to safe water - Dave LeVan, CEO of Water for Good

Speaker A: Hello, everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Charity Charge Show.

Speaker B: I'm your host, Stephen Garten. Today, I'm pleased to have on Dave Levan, who is the CEO of Water for Good. Dave, thank you so much for joining us on this episode.

Speaker C: It's great to be here, Steven. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker B: Our pleasure.

Speaker A: So fill us in. Tell us a little bit about Water for Good, the mission, and ultimately how you are working to change the world.

Speaker C: Great, thanks. Uh, so Water for Good, we are a faith based nonprofit and our goal is to transform life, transform lives through access to safe water, improve sanitation and hygiene. And we do that in really difficult places in parts of Sub Saharan Africa, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Cambodia. And our goal is that if we're successful, every child will have safe water, healthy community, and know God's love for them.

Speaker A: Well, I appreciate you sharing that. Can you talk to us? You know, whenever, you know, a nonprofit organization has started or even a business, it's always about really solving some sort of huge problem.

Speaker B: So kind of macro.

Speaker A: You just filled it in. But what are the challenges, especially globally,

Speaker B: that listeners that maybe just rely on or just take for granted clean drinking water in North America that others are faced with?

Speaker C: Yeah, no, uh, that's a great question. So there's lots of water issues around the globe. Where we specifically focus are people who don't have basic access to water. So basic access doesn't mean I have a sink down the hall. Basic access, uh, defined by World Health Organization is somebody can walk, get safe water and be home within 30 minutes. And so there's 697 million people in the world who lack basic access to water. And in addition to that, women, mostly women and children spend 100 million hours a day walking for water. So it's not just that the water.

Speaker A: Did I hear that right, in aggregate, 100 million hours a day?

Speaker C: Yes, yes. And so imagine the wasted time. And you know, a woman who may want to dream about how God has gifted her and how she can use those gifts, but she can't because she's walking two hours for water. She's going to go maybe to a pond and get water that isn't safe, but she has to have water and then bring that back, uh, to her home and then probably spend a good part of her time with some sick kids because of the water that they're drinking. So it's really a twofold problem. One is the time it takes, and the other is the source is usually unsafe.

Speaker A: So then bring us up to speed.

Speaker B: How are you solving this problem? You know, can you talk about some of the traction that you all have had? How long has the organization been around for?

Speaker C: Yeah, so the organization in uh, aggregate and were they two organizations put together Life Water and Water for Good? We merged in 1994. So combined the organization's been around for almost 50 years. Next year we'll celebrate 50 years. And so the methodology.

Speaker A: Congrats. We ah, just celebrated our 10 year anniversary. So we got uh, we gotta, we're looking up to you.

Speaker C: Well, yeah, it's. Well it puts a lot on you as a leader. Right. Cause you're here for this period of time. How are you setting up the organization for those who will come after you? Yes, and so for us, you know, the methodologies, things have changed over that period of time. But we really locked in on uh, what we call our vision of a healthy village program. And it really is a combination of water, sanitation and hygiene. So that problem we talked about with water, you can bring safe water in, but kids are still going to get sick if there's open defecation, if there's not proper sanitation facilities, and behaviors and hygiene. And so our model actually is a three year model. We'll go into a program area, we have 10 areas right now in the world. We'll go in, identify about 25,000 people, maybe 300 communities, maybe 4,000 homes. And our team is about 15 people. They'll go in, they'll mobilize several hundred volunteers and we'll train those volunteers. Those are people already embedded in the community, leaders in the community. And we'll train them and then deploy them. Each, each will be assigned say 30 houses and they'll walk along side those houses for the first 18 months. Each house will build a pit latrine instead of open defecation. They'll understand why is this more important to do this, A uh, bathing shelter, safe water handling, there's seven or eight things that each house has to do. So we start at that level because we not only want to provide access to water, we want to improve health. Kids die from childhood diarrhea. Kids are really vulnerable, uh, especially through the age of five. And so we want to reduce that. And so in the last 10 years we've actually studied our work and looked at all of our analysis and not only has water been flowing at a rate of about 92% of all of our water points, but we've been able to reduce childhood diarrhea by 90%.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: What was the thing? Maybe I misheard the term did you say something about a pilfer tree?

Speaker C: No.

Speaker A: Or something about for sanitation or.

Speaker C: Oh, for sanitation. A pit latrine.

Speaker A: Okay, uh, gotcha. Okay. Basically a toilet.

Speaker C: Because a lot of the places we're working practice open defecation. So we have to change the behavior to be uh, instead of going out to the woods or by the river, dig a pivot train. And it's a big deal Stephen, because these are places where people may live on $2 or less a day. And the cost for them to invest in their home is about 80 to 100 USD on average. Mhm. But we're asking them to do that because we want them invested in the project. So while they're working on that, our engineers are designing what's the right system. And that system is much more than just dropping a well in Tanzania. It's connecting to a pipeline from Lake Victoria, piping water to big tanks. It looks more like a municipal uh, project you'd see in the U.S. ethiopia. We use a lot of cap springs in the mountains, bringing it down with gravity fed systems. But our engineers are all local, they're all from the countries and they're designing what is the most appropriate sustainable system. And so basically it's all coming together over that three year period. And then finally we'll work with all of the players in the community, the schools, especially churches, government schools. And each plays a role in the sustainability of health and flowing of water.

Speaker B: A couple questions that I have.

Speaker A: One is you mentioned 10 areas, right? What would maybe if, if you can't

Speaker B: name all 10, what would be some of those areas? Uh, yes, to give a sense of geographically. Yeah.

Speaker C: Yes. So in Ethiopia we've got four areas. Addis Ababa is the middle of the country. We are out closer to Awassa, which is a little bit south and west. And the four areas are within a couple hours of there. That's four of them. We've got one in Cambodia, we've got one big one in Tanzania. And then in Central African Republic we've uh, got three areas and that pretty much encompasses about half of the country. We're up to Bebarate, but Bangui, the capital, so those countries. And then in Cambodia we've got one uh, project as well.

Speaker A: Got it. And when you were talking about, you

Speaker B: know, how you're actually executing this in those given areas and engineers and things of that sort, is there uh, like

Speaker A: a vertical integration of your team kind of boots on the ground?

Speaker B: Are you doing this through partnerships with other, maybe local NGOs in the area.

Speaker A: How does it, how do you actually

Speaker B: make this, this whole thing actually works from a human capital standpoint?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great question. Uh, we are very much wanting to hire people in country for every role that we have because we want to empower each country to solve that problem. Right. And so we've got wonderful people in the U.S. uh but we have no, none of our U.S. staff are uh, the engineers, the behavior change folks, all of that we've put in the countries, we've equipped our country teams. Each team will have engineers, they'll have behavior change specialists, accountants, hr, all of those types of things. And then about five years ago we created our headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. So that some of those corporate headquarters jobs like our chief engineer, our chief, uh, chief drilling person, our chief behavior change, you uh, know, the monitoring, evaluation, all those corporate type roles are in Addis Ababa, which allows them to be at pretty much any program area pretty quickly.

Speaker A: And how when you talk about like

Speaker B: the 50, obviously you've been with the organization for a long time, the organization as a whole has been around for 50 years. How has if at all that model changed? And then I'm also curious, you know, we're, we're blessed today with just really incredible technologies that allow us to be able to do work, communicate well, transmit information globally. Right.

Speaker A: Anywhere around the world.

Speaker B: What was it like, uh, you know, 50 years ago? And then how has technology allowed you to, I'm being presumptuous but you know, be more effective?

Speaker C: Actually we, we went through a big uh, technology change and an empowerment and a structural change about five years ago. Fortunately in my career, most of my career has been for profit. Uh, my last stop was leading a transformation of an area within Walmart. Uh, and I met part of the

Speaker A: team was a big, I saw that on your background. So I, I really think of Walmart from my opinion as a supply chain and logistics, you know, operation very much so. So yeah, keep going on. But it sounds like you, you saw, obviously you would have learned a lot there at a massive scale.

Speaker C: Absolutely. And it was a, it was a short, I was there three years but I love that, had great experience and I met some wonderful technology people. Like one of the teams I was able to lead was a technology team and it was how do we use technology to change the way we look at things to change behaviors and enhance the results that we're seeing. And so uh, when I came over to then Lifewater Water for good, we really looked at the model and said how, not only how do we use technology, but even stepping back to say, what structural changes do we need to make? And Lifewater, uh, was doing great work at the time, but it was very US centric. So, you know, it's like 1.9 million nonprofits in the US and most of many are very US centric. So all of our engineers were in the US and so we were managing engineering issues, behavior change issues from thousands of miles away. And so the first thing we did was change the structure. We opened our headquarters in Addis Ababa. We increased capacity at each country, and that was either by hiring people, technology training, those sorts of things, and then we increased collaboration across all those program areas. So what we did, Steven, is we said, okay, what if, you know, we're in remote places? We're in places where open defecation is practiced and there's not access to water. Those are remote areas. So we said, what if we change the model? Right? Typically in that type of situation, a, uh, behavior change person or an engineer in the field would never have the opportunity to connect with other engineers doing that in other countries. They would never meet them. They would never connect with them. Um, so we said, what if we had somebody in the most remote place where Internet could be a little sketchy sometimes, but what if they could actually see the results of their work? What if we had live dashboards? What if they could actually see enough financial information to know where the organization is going without having to wait for some leader to tell them? What if they could connect with somebody doing that same work in another remote place, somewhere they may never go or may never meet? What if we could get their opinions, quarterly pulse surveys where we can ask them questions about what do they need, how are they feeling about their engagement or are, uh, they feeling valued, those types of things? What if we could do that in the organization? And then we set about over the next two and a half years to implement the software and then create the process around the software. Because you can implement software and just say, oh, we pull software, sure, but if you don't put the process, here's how we want to use this software to get to that point. And so we did that over a two and a half year period. Uh, and it was really cool to see, not just for the engagement that increased in the organization, but really capacity, because people can solve many of their own questions and problems and they can give feedback to the global leadership team to say, hey, this is all great, but we need to work on this and that feedback can be acted upon more timely now than ever. So that was a big process of change that uh, we did over about a two and a half year period. One of the cool results I'll say is we also wanted that person to be known so that when it came to promotions within the organization, it wasn't just the few folks that were at headquarters that we knew we could see and know. And so we've had the chance to promote some people that are been in our most remote places to more leadership positions as we.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: And how just roughly if you had

Speaker B: to think about all of the different, uh, whether it's employees, contractors, volunteers, how large is the organization? Just ballpark.

Speaker C: So we have about uh, about 280 staff. Mhm. Mm. We have about 10% in the US and we have about 90% at either our headquarters in Addis Ababa or in the countries uh, doing the work. An average size team is 15 to 20 for the for work a project area. Wow.

Speaker A: And so to the extent that you can share, I mean um, with your role. Right. With. And it's kind of interesting because you

Speaker B: had mentioned a little bit about how large the nonprofit sector is. You know the 1.9 million or so organizations, you know a lot of those are localized here in the US Also this is going to again a rough statistic, but about 97% of all nonprofit organizations are under $2 million in revenue. And when you're at that revenue level, it's often a handful of really passionate people that are wearing a lot of hats, obviously relying on involved board members and volunteers or whatnot. But when I think about the scale of how your organization's operating at can you give? Because you know we work with thousands of nonprofits at Charity Charge. And the spirit of this podcast is also about obvious obviously highlighting organizations and then sharing perspectives is other nonprofit leaders that are thinking of trying to how to grow their organization whatever mission it is to do more. Good. Yeah. What, what, what's the day to day look like for you? Right. Cause I think that probably could be some differences of a CEO leading up uh, almost 300 people versus a CEO of a nonprofit leading you know, two or three people.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, that's a great question. I think there's also seasons for CEO. So we just went through a lot of change. I described a lot of change. So a uh, lot of my time over the past five working on becoming digitally enabled, uh, working on some cultural things and then merging. Right. Because you, you create a chaos when you merger when you put two organizations together and then you're cleaning through that and keeping everyone focused. So a lot of my last five years has been really driving the vision of this is what this looks like. That person in the remote location that on their phone can do these things and how powerful would that be and how effective would that be? And then through the merger it was, yes, we're smashing these things together. This is where we're going. And the whole idea of the merger was we can serve more people and do it more effectively by merging the same thing with the technology and the changes we made. All of it is to do our mission better. Right. To serve more people and do it more effectively. So I find myself in an area of change. You're repeating that message a lot and you're helping to drive change. Now we're entering a period of growth that comes from that. So when we look at the organization, because of that work, we just put our strategic plan together for the next three years. We serve 1.3 million people in 2025. We believe that by the end of 28 we can be serving about 2.6 million people a year.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: So we're looking to double that with only increasing our revenue about 45. And so part of that is growth, part of that is scaling aspects of the business. So now we're in kind of that mode. It's a little bit different. It's talking about the mess. It's still the vision, right?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: This is how we're going to serve 2.6 million people. So it's kind of driving that vision at every level in the organization, with donors, with partners and really looking at

Speaker A: that, I'd like to dive into that

Speaker B: a little bit as well. Because everyone that's running a nonprofit, uh, organization is obviously fundraising and growing their budget is of huge interest. Right. So how are you able to use, um, past wins data, other things like that, to be able to now go out and feel confident that you can get that additional 45% of you m know, kind of new revenue or growth in revenue to be able to accomplish what you're trying to do? I mean, what are those, I guess, kind of. What's your kind of conversations like with uh, with supporters and funders and um, how have you found as a leader it's been most effective to be able to grow dollars into the organization?

Speaker C: Yeah, that's a very, uh, full question. Yes, there's, I think, several things.

Speaker B: Everybody wants the silver bullet, of course. Right.

Speaker C: There's no silver bullet. It's a lot of work and there's no guarantees. Right. Just like any business or any organization that you run, there's no guarantees, but you put the plant, you first of all create the base from which you can grow and make sure that that is solid. So we have a base now where we can triple our revenues and we wouldn't disrupt our people systems or our technological systems. And so that's key. Then the second thing I'll say is that mergers are really rare in the nonprofit space.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: And I think it's important because when we looked at our merger, we had two healthy organizations that had different strengths. And part of our ability to do this is by pulling those strengths together. Instead of this, uh, organization hiring for the things that they were missing, and this organization hiring for the things they were missing, we brought those together. And so that's part of it as well. And then I just think the use of technology, and I've seen this in the for profit and nonprofit is so much time is spent gathering data, uh, cleaning up data, uh, present, putting it into presentations. If you can cut that all out. Because we're doing, we're actually looking at some really interesting ideas with AI to actually take that a step further. But it's about reducing what I'll call the soul sucking work of life. Right. I got to spend all this time collecting and cleaning up and consolidating data. If you could take that away and have data at, at people's fingertips and then equip them on their decision making, you can have people in a really remote part doing their work. But with the right data and the right feeling equipped, they can make decisions on the ground. That creates a whole lot of efficiency. It takes out the hierarchical layer where they're going to someone who's going to someone who's going to someone who's going across to this other leader and then down the chart to that person, which is what you see a lot of times in organizations. You take out the hierarchy, you create a collaborative environment, you create a curious environment and an environment where people are allowed to fail. It's not about failing or not failing. It's about how quickly do you learn and grow and pivot when you fail. That's the skill set that we want, uh, in people. So it's a bunch of things coming together that creates that efficiency.

Speaker A: You talked about with your base that you felt you could, if I heard you correctly, that you could triple your fundraising capacity. Can you break that down a little

Speaker B: bit or kind of correct me or explain a little bit more what you meant by that comment?

Speaker C: Uh, yeah, it's not so much on fundraising capacity. If we were able to fundraise three times as much, we could incorporate that into meaningful work.

Speaker A: Because of the scale and what you have scale in the systems.

Speaker C: Yes. Still keeping our 80 to 82% going to the field, like keeping everything where it is without burning people out. Because that's the other piece. When you are operating at a smaller scale, trying to wear all those mini hats that you described, there's a huge case of burnout. Burnout's rampant, especially in the nonprofit, uh, world.

Speaker A: And we're really, we're really where I'm seeing that more and more in different, I mean one.

Speaker B: Conversations like this, obviously one on one that I'm having with different nonprofit leaders

Speaker A: and then also just holistically of different kind of studies and things that are coming out sector wide. Is the uh, burnout on the CEO level. And especially, you know, it used to be that it was a really envious job to be a leader of a nonprofit.

Speaker B: And now there's, there's almost a.

Speaker A: What would be the term?

Speaker B: Um, um, I want to use my vocab here and I'm just blanking right now, but kind of a lack of

Speaker A: this next pipeline of people that are, you know, kind of ascending and wanting to enter to be the CEO of

Speaker B: a nonprofit because there's a lot of challenges. So I think a lot of things that you're saying are helping mitigate that Right. Within your organization. So that's good. Any comment you want to make on that. And I have a. Because I have another question.

Speaker C: Yeah, Well, I would just say you're right. I go to sometimes nonprofit, uh, CEO leadership type meetings and that. And that's still one of the number one things I think there was just a book written about how, you know, so many Christian nonprofit leaders just fall off. They just give up.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: And there's a lot of pressure and I think part of it is changing the way things are done. When I came the CEO, you wouldn't believe all the things that the CEO approved. Like every, every engineering scheme was approved by the CEO. So we put that out and say there's a difference between the CEO having to approve everything and having transparency in the organization. So I've got a great COO in our office in Addis Ababa. I'm aware of all the projects. But we have empowered our engineers and there's guidelines and there's transparency so the CEO doesn't have to physically approve every single thing. And that's ah, super important. Empowering a team. I Would say for profit, nonprofit, doesn't matter. We're running a church. It's empowering people to do that. And then I think the other piece of burnout is, you know, your external crowd. You've got all kinds of different, uh, donors and foundations and this sense that you want to please them all. And I think part of it is knowing that you possibly aren't going to please every single one with every single decision. In fact, every decision you make as a CEO, there's a chance that there's a portion of your donor base, maybe even a portion of your staff, that is, it's not going to be, um, happy for them. So I think the important thing is like, tying that back to the mission. Right again. This is why we're doing it. I mean, the merger. We have a lot in a merger. All your donors kind of pause. They're like, wait a minute, uh, are you going to be the same organization? And they wait. Some wait months, some wait. I talked to donors for like, yeah, we weren't mad at you or anything. We just didn't give for two years. We wanted to see how the dust settled. Um, and I think your role as the CEO is to point people towards that vision. This is why we're doing this. And for us, it's always been we want to impact people. That's why we're here. We want to impact lives through water, sanitation and hygiene. We can do more of that, and we do it more effectively by merging or by launching this software or by moving our headquarters to add a Sababa. It's tying it to that vision of why you set out on this journey to begin with.

Speaker A: I really appreciate you sharing that. And I think, you know, if I was going to expand it a little bit with a little bit more specificity, I think it's about having the vision, but making sure that it's clear and really communicating that. Uh, I've, I've realized over the years, you know, the need for me as the CEO to get better at that

Speaker B: and really make sure that what's in

Speaker A: my head is put to, to paper.

Speaker B: And then I'm also routinely going over that with my team and obviously one, asking for feedback, right? What, where. How do they see the vision? Can they poke holes in it? Like, how can we make the organization better as a whole? And then once we've settled on it, reminding, I mean, I really still almost on a, uh, certainly a weekly and sometimes on a daily basis, you know, just remind the team why we're doing what we're Doing and really kind of the 80, 20 rule around, like, focus, right? Really making sure that we're focusing on the right thing. So I appreciate that you put that out there. Uh, uh, a theme that I think is really emerging, which is unique out of this episode and with, uh, your experience and the story of the organization is the uh, collaboration. Because I think that oftentimes there's too much ego involved in the nonprofit sector about specifically their organization. And there's not often enough getting even higher level about, like, what is the actual problem we're trying to solve, who are, you know, the people or, or things that are being effective. And if you think about it that way, you can get outside of just that. Your organization is the only one that can solve this. Right. And so this collaborative idea or this concept of merging, right. Of what you all did with these two organizations is, Is pretty novel. But what, where I think that, uh, you're pointing to, which is a really great success, and I would just tell other organizations to think through as well, is the scale that can come from that.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And that ties right into the mission, right? How you were able to leverage resources and assets that both organizations had as opposed to them separately trying to fill in those gaps. And this coming together of one plus one equals three, you know, really can be true. And I think that the world would be a much better place if we

Speaker A: put aside focused, uh, more on what

Speaker B: the, um, the overarching mission is within each organization. And you know, under that, it's that individual ein and what they're trying to accomplish. But the collaborative approach really is what I think the world needs. So one, I want to tell you, great job. It's awesome. I'm moved and inspired by you. And uh, again, I know you've focused on it a bit this episode, but, yeah, if you have any other perspective for leaders of a nonprofit that maybe are, uh, doing great or maybe struggling a little bit, you know, how can

Speaker A: they look to partner what they should

Speaker B: look for in other organizations as opposed to just thinking, I have to solve it all myself.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, you bring up a great point. I think that's the. That leads to the burnout. I think when the CEO looks at this and says, wow, I have to solve all of this and report it to the board versus I have to make sure we, we solve this right. So I'm gonna equip the CEO, this country, director, this engineer. I'm going to make sure they have the best tools, the best collaborative approach. Because the bottom line is I have three years of Engineering in college and dropped out. I should not be the final view on an engineering project. Right. I should understand it for sure, and I do. But I want to create a collaborative. I want us to have a collaborative environment where we're sharing those ideas. And our engineers in Ethiopia are, uh, challenging our engineers in Tanzania or are challenging our engineers in Cambodia. And they're looking for the best. And they're also asking what if? Because sometimes the solution, like you said, we box it in to like, this organization doing this thing in this way is going to solve this problem. Our goal is to put ourselves out of business. That means 697 million people have access to water, sanitation and hygiene.

Speaker B: I love that.

Speaker C: Uh, we'll figure some other cool stuff out to do to help people.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker C: But our goal is not to sustain water for good. Like if we could come up with a way to solve the problem, we're doing that. Like, we're going to continue to do that. And I think keeping that focus on, uh, hold on loosely. Right, but don't let go, huh? As 38 Special said in the 80s. No, but it's holding on loosely.

Speaker B: I love that reference, by the way.

Speaker A: I get it.

Speaker C: You know, I'm a big 80s rock and roll reference guy, so you're going

Speaker B: to get one every now and then. So. Yeah, I grew up with it, you know, and it's, you know, blasting the car too, from my parents and all. That piece which you just said there, I think is a critical mindset shift and it is so powerful. When we were, um, you know, obviously we have the podcast and we, we do a, a variety of other, you know, initiatives within Charity Charge, but our bread and butter. Are you familiar with the sock company Bombus?

Speaker C: I, uh, they're. I don't think so.

Speaker B: They might be the most like, successful sock company. They now make, you know, slippers and other things of that sort. Oh, yes, yes, they, they were funded, I think Damon. They were early on out of the gate. They were on Shark Tank. I mean, this is like 15 years ago. Anyway, our, our initial product and thing that we did at Charity Charge was a partnership with MasterCard where we launched a consumer credit card where instead of the individual earning cash back for themselves or bonus points, they donated the cash back to a nonprofit of their choice. And I was selected, this is back in 2015 by IBM, was putting on a web based reality TV show featuring social entrepreneurs. And uh, as part of that, you know, there were kind of like different challenges that you would do with like kind of competing against these Other social impact startups and whatnot.

Speaker A: And they paired you up with mentors

Speaker B: and all that stuff. And uh, in those early days, uh, I was part of it was like, how do you pitch an investor and how do you pitch like a social impact investor?

Speaker A: And so a lot of the people prior to that, you know, that I would meet with were that were investors

Speaker B: or social impact investors. They were like, well, what's your moat? And like, what if, you know, Chase bank or bank of America or Capital One, like copies this or wants to do it?

Speaker A: So I was getting prepped and you know, my mentor was this gentleman, Dave

Speaker B: Heath, who was the founder of bombas.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: And he said, he said your response is good. They should copy it. Everyone should be doing this. Like our mission, you know, is to help put more dollars back into the nonprofit community. Like, we support that. And the moment then I was like, wow, that freed me. Like it unlocked really me as the leader in trying to grow this to put away a scarcity mindset, have an abundance and also have a little bit of a, um, we don't bleep anything

Speaker B: out, but a little bit of like

Speaker A: an FU to any sort of social impact investor.

Speaker B: You know, when they ask that, it's

Speaker A: like, hey, we're trying to create, you

Speaker B: know, Rising Tide raises all ships. Right. This is like a model that's we want others to join in and do, you know, we want to put ourselves out of business.

Speaker A: And I think that that is really

Speaker B: cool that you said that.

Speaker A: I do not hear that often, certainly

Speaker B: from people in the for profit world and surprisingly not, not very often from the nonprofit world. Uh, so that's really cool to have that perspective.

Speaker C: Well, and I think that speaks to what you said, right. Because we get so caught up in our name, our process, uh, our whatever, and lose sight of the fact that if there's hundreds of people that are doing some part of water sanitation hygiene, it's not about us being successful, it's about us successfully solving this problem.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: And bottom line is when we merged, Life Water is the organization that was much older than Water for good. And so those, you know, in a merger, everybody gives something up.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: For the belief in something better. Right. And in our case, you had Life Water donors and board members and people that had to come to grips with. Okay, love that. I came in because of Life Water. Right. I was a donor, then I was on the board and then I started working for the organization. But we had to give that up because we believe we could serve more people ultimately by doing that if you came from the water for good side, you got handed a bunch of process. This is how we do things. And so you had to give up some of those things. And I think that's the part that I would encourage other nonprofit leaders to look at. Go back to your mission. Because both organizations furthered their mission, but they had to give up some of the other stuff in the process to get there. And I think that's the. I think that's the key for the sector. Uh, but I also think that's why less people merge, because they don't want to give something up. Stay true to your mission, stay true to your values, stay true to who you are. But everything else. Hold on Loosely.

Speaker B: That's awesome.

Speaker A: To quote 38 special, right?

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker A: I, uh, wanted, Dave, in the spirit of this current theme that we're talking about here, when you were mentioning, you know, this concept of, you know, putting

Speaker B: yourselves out of business or kind of

Speaker A: making sure that this issue that you're working to solve, clean water and sanitation, whatnot, goes away, where, where do you think things can be, you know, in the next 50 years? Like, is this, is this a problem? You know, the medical.

Speaker B: And I'm just thinking about from the, from the medical community, you know, if you, if you roll back, uh, you know what, at whatever point in time, you know, there were diseases and things that were, were plaguing society and then we. A cure was invented. You know, I'm, I'm really passionate. My, My father had passed away from pancreatic cancer that's been, you know, basically like almost a death, uh, cure, if you're diagnosed with that. And, uh, within the past, you know, month or two months, there's been unbelievable research that's come out. And now they're saying, wow, we like, think that this is just going to be a curable thing in the future. And it like, totally changes all the perspective and whatnot.

Speaker A: So, yeah, I'm just curious from your

Speaker B: perspective, like, you know, is this a solvable problem? What will it take? And, uh, how close do you think we could be to this?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's. First of all, I think it's a solvable problem. I think when I look at it, and I did some research as to when life water started in the late 70s. And I think the numbers I came up with there were close to like 2 billion people that lacked basic access to water. And that was on a population of, I think over five. Just over five billion. Right. So now we're to eight billion. Eight billion people. And about under 700 million still way, way too many people. But even in the time that I've been full time at Life Water Water for good, uh, we've seen that number come down. So it is very possible, I think there's more energy around solving the issue and I think there's things that we can do to, to solve it quicker, like merging, like coming together more as groups. And I also think from a donor standpoint, sometimes it's just the, the understanding, it's sometimes hard for people to comprehend. What do you mean? They're drinking water from a pond. They walk two hours to a pond and they're drinking water where the, the cow is peeing in the water. Right? They're drinking that water. And it's hard for us to comprehend because we have sinks everywhere. And so I think part of it just uh, for us is engaging more people with that message, building efficiencies, continuing to build efficiencies in the model and then turning our ownership to the communities. Because lasting change only happens if it's owned by the communities themselves. So our job is to not be the hero. Our job is for the community to be the hero. And if you think about this, in the US all of the waterborne diseases were all around in the 1800s, right. Open defecation was still a thing here. So over time behaviors have changed. We've gotten way better at water sanitation and hygiene and we've been able to get rid of most of those waterborne diseases. And so we can look at that model and say that's the same thing. When we're seeing a decrease in the countries, there's still a lot of people though, uh, that we need to work towards.

Speaker A: Uh, as you talk about solving this problem, for people that are listening to the episode one, can you tell us what your website is? And then also how can people that are listening that are interested in this,

Speaker B: how can they support your efforts?

Speaker C: Yeah, I would say the best thing is go to our website. It's waterforgood.org we try to break it down into like this is what, you know, again, whatever amount, $5 helps one kid of water for a month, $60. Our program is $60 a year for the first three years. And the maintenance program is about $1 a year after that. And so getting involved, I think first of all it's encourage people to understand what the issue is to go and do some research. Look at our page. We have the highest ratings from all of the charity ratings. I think that's important. You know, you're investing your capital like you would in your 401k. This is an investment in impact. And so, you know, doing that kind of scrutiny, I think Water for good you will find passes all those tests. But come to the website, check out what we're doing. If you're engaged, if listeners are engaged to jump in and support if they want to reach out, I'm happy to talk to them. Anyone here is happy to talk to them. Explain further because what our program is. Here's how we helped our. Here's how you can help be a catalyst for change and transformation of families all over the world.

Speaker B: That's awesome.

Speaker A: I appreciate you sharing that. I definitely encourage everyone to check out waterforgood.org and you know, learn more and look for ways to get involved and support your work. I gotta say, Dave, I really appreciate uh, your attitude and your perspective, the vision that you've shared and also just your. The whole ethos and spirit about, you know, doing good and focusing on the mission, getting outside yourself and seeing the world as an abundant place is just, is really unique and so that's just incredible. Thank you so much for coming on to share your work and your mission here.

Speaker C: Well, thanks for having me, Steven. It's been a, uh, pleasure speaking with

Speaker A: you today and for everyone that continues

Speaker B: to listen in, I appreciate your support.

Speaker A: The charity Charge show has been a

Speaker B: huge passion project of mine and just continue to appreciate everyone who tunes in. And I always leave you with reminding

Speaker A: everyone to charge it forward in everything

Speaker B: you do in your life.

Speaker A: Take care.