Leadership Lessons from charity:water’s founder and CEO Scott Harrison
Scott Harrison, the founder of clean water nonprofit charity:water, got into humanitarian work after hitting rock bottom as a nightclub promoter.
“I realized I was the worst person I knew, and that I was contributing nothing to society. I didn’t just need a pivot. I needed a complete 180-degree life change,” he told 450 CEOs to close out CEO Coaching International’s 2025 Make BIG Happen Summit.
He applied to dozens of nonprofit programs, but only one, Mercy Ships, accepted his application. Harrison spent two years photographing and documenting patients who walked hundreds of miles to get care in post-war Liberia. And he learned that one of the biggest reasons people got sick was because they couldn’t access clean water.
He returned to New York and started charity:water. Almost two decades later, they’ve funded 184,104 water projects in 29 different countries, with the objective to bring clean water to everyone around the world. As CEO, Harrison intentionally wanted to take a radically different approach to building a nonprofit that resonated in the modern world.
Watch the video below for more of the story behind charity:water and read on for Harrison’s takeaways for CEOs in any industry. His lessons were so impactful that our attendees stood up to pledge $200,000 in generosity to charity:water in less than a minute.
Branding is Everything
When Harrison first launched charity:water, he faced a lot of skepticism about what nonprofits actually did with the money they raised. In fact, 70% of Americans believed charities wasted their donations, according to an NYU Wagner study at the time.
“Charities don’t have the best branding,” said Harrison, “I thought, if we’re going to accomplish a mission of getting everybody clean water, then we need to do something differently.”
That meant taking a page out of successful consumer brands at the time. He ran with an edgy, cool, creative aesthetic that got people’s attention. And it meant choosing strong iconography—in their case, the yellow jerry can—that prompted brand recognition.
He focused his attention on donated media, launching advertising on the backs of New York City buses and taxis, outdoor billboards, and Times Square. “Anywhere people would give up their space and allow us to tell the story, we would try to engage the public,” he said. “I wanted to make our storytelling innovative and find new ways to connect people.”
Look at the Entire Experience as Your Product
Even the slickest storytelling won’t work if the rest of the experience doesn’t match. Harrison approached charity:water’s donation process like its own product, thinking about the entire conversion cycle with a potential donor from start to finish.
“I wanted to reimagine the charitable experience, including how we operated,” he said. “That started with setting up our charity completely differently. I raised overhead money, like staff salaries and office rent, from private donors, so that 100% of the public’s money always goes straight to water projects.”
To fully “walk the walk” on this promise, Harrison’s team paid attention to the details. That meant if someone donated $100 via credit card and they only received $97 because of transaction fees, they would make up the difference to maintain their 100% promise.
This gave much more credibility and integrity to the entire process, and doing so reinforced their brand as one that was truly focused on making a difference.
Close the Feedback Loop
Harrison believed that part of the skepticism surrounding charities stemmed from a lack of transparency. “For our first ever well we built, I sent the photos, videos, and GPS coordinates to all 700 people who had donated and said, ‘You did this. You mattered.’ It was that simple to close the loop.”
As they grew, Harrison partnered with Google to add their charitable projects on Google Earth (and later, Google Maps) to build a feedback loop that got people excited to see where their money was going—and to make it feel more real.
“It’s these kinds of feedback loops and transparency in the organization that makes people feel like they’re having a huge impact,” he said.
Find the Right Partners
To keep their 100% donation promise, Harrison often partners with unlikely brands. One of the first was luxury retailer Saks Fifth Avenue. On the surface, there didn’t seem to be much of a match. But their storytelling resonated with the team at Saks, and soon, donations came pouring in.
“I think they’d never heard such a crazy pitch. We said, ‘You sell $10,000 handbags, we sell $10,000 wells. We should work together,” said Harrison. “The next thing I knew, they gave us windows in 108 of their stores, they let us build [example] wells inside their stores, and they started raising awareness and money on our behalf.”
Just Keep Going
Harrison recounted a story from a woman named Helen in Northern Uganda who walked miles every day to fetch her family water. “She said, ‘I would walk six hours a day for 10 gallons of water, but it wasn’t enough for my family. It was as much as I could carry a long distance. Every day, I would need to make these choices. Do I cook? Do I clean? Do I wash? There was never enough water.’”
Providing clean water for a community changes healthcare outcomes, of course. But it’s connected to solving a wide range of problems, from school attendance to entrepreneurship. Every dollar you invest in clean water brings back $4.30 return for the community. Said Harrison, “We say water changes everything.”
Many of you told us this was the most inspiring and emotional part of the Summit, a reminder of the tangible difference leaders can make in the world when committed to a deeper purpose. One leader reflected, “charity:water was by far the highlight.”
As Harrison finished his talk, Mark Moses, our founding partner and executive chairman, stood up and pledged two water wells in honor of his children, Darien and Mason. Within about a minute, nearly 20 more attendees rose to pledge wells of their own, collectively raising $200,000 to bring clean water to communities in need.
We were blown away by the generosity of our community. It embodies our mantra of making BIG happen. Clean water is just the beginning of the dramatic positive changes this donation will bring.
If this story resonates with you, read more about charity:water’s mission and how you can help>
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