Ben Greene
I think it's it's critical, you know, even studying so many of the, the approaches to company culture, organizational culture, and you think about the critical components that lead to a healthy culture. And in when you kind of strip all the things away, and yes, there are measurables, and understanding what the expectations are of my job on a day to day basis, and me knowing what those are and understanding that, but really get down to the core of it is, am I seen as a human being? And am I valued as a human being?

Jeff Ma
Hello, and welcome to Love as a Business Strategy, podcast that brings humanity back. We're here to talk about business where we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from, we always believe that humanity and love should be at the center of any successful business. My name is Jeff Ma. And I'm excited to have conversations and hear stories with real people and real businesses and learn how they operate. So my guest today is Ben Greene, who has spent over 20 years working in the nonprofit sector. And he's the current Chief Development Officer at Charity Water. And I'm super excited to have him here today to share his perspective with me. So welcome to the show. Ben, how are you?

Ben Greene
Thanks so much. I am doing well. Thanks for having me on, Jeff.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, I'm super excited. We talk about anything and everything here. And it's been a while if, since I've had the opportunity to talk. I'm really interested in all nonprofit sector stuff, and especially Charity Water. It's very exciting to me. And when we talk about love as business strategy, this is often there's so many different ways to translate that for people like, you know, just at first glance. And so I want to dive into all that with you today. And so thank you for your time today already.

Ben Greene
Love it. Yeah, thanks. Thanks so much for having me.

Jeff Ma
Before we talk about all the great things, charity, water, all those good things, I wanna hear about you first. So Ben, you know, where we're at, what's your kind of path that brought you to where you are today?

Ben Greene
Sure. from a career perspective, I graduated college. And 2002 moved to Nashville immediately after I got married, write it right away after I graduated. And in my junior and senior year of college, I started getting interested in humanitarian relief and development. And didn't you didn't know much at all about it, but it was just very interested and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, from Florida, and immediately found out that an organization called Worldvision, had an office here in Nashville, and I basically just begged them for a job. So that, you know, I'll do anything, just let me come work for you. And had no idea that that of course, as most of us in the in the fundraising space, didn't kind of set out and say, Oh, I'm a fundraiser for my career. But it really started just with the honestly wanting to help people in whatever way possible. And this seemed like a great conduit in order to do that. And so beggar was in for a job, they probably very reluctantly hired me straight out of school and and I began kind of my journey in this fundraising space. My degree was in psychology and so just kind of really understanding the the the connection and the human behavior behind giving and generosity and, and what people respond to and how they get from emotion. And those things were very interesting to me. So it's been a pretty incredible path from starting in 2002 to today, being a Charity Water, but it pretty much stayed for the majority of that those 20 years in the humanitarian relief and development sector, always in the nonprofit sector, but for the most part, and humanitarian relief sector as well. So that's that's my path. I'm married. Wife of almost 20 years and June will be 20 years. I have a son that's 15 in Hutch and a daughter named Haven that's 12 There'll be 16 and 13 this summer so this summer is a big summer for the family 20 years of marriage 16 year old 13 year old all pretty milestone year so So yeah, that's that's the fam and we're in Nashville, Tennessee. And, and just loving life.

Jeff Ma
I love it. Thanks for sharing all that. I love congratulations on on that 20 years of marriage and having two young kids on my own that sounds quite the accomplishment to get that far with those kids as well because I'm losing my mind here with my six and four year old so Oh, I'm sure it does. They keep telling me that no, it's great. I guess to switch gears, I want to I want to tell me a little bit or tell the audience a little bit of you. They don't know about charity water. I mean, what is the what is the mission? What's the purpose there?

Ben Greene
Yeah. So you know, right now as we sit here and talk and in a world with with cryptocurrency, and in launching people into space, there are still 771 million people on the planet that do not have access to clean water to safe, reliable drinking water. That's one in 10 people on the planet that literally right now, do not have a safe place to go to get to get water, drinking water. So we want to change that. So 15 years ago, Charity Water was launched, our founders named Scott Harrison, Scott set out to in the water crisis in the global water crisis in our lifetime. And so that is our mission. And we are moving as fast and furious as possible to, to solve the global water crisis and to provide people with this basic necessity, and an arguable good, and, and so we 15 years in, you know, we have now raised enough money to serve 15 million people with clean water. And we just, we just want to keep going as fast as we possibly can. And the only thing really, you know, prohibiting that, that speed and velocity is is capital, to be honest, we know how to solve the problem. It's a completely solvable problem. And you know, there are many different solutions to get there and solve that problem. But but we know what they are. And we've learned a lot even in the first 15 years and we know how to get it done so. So that's our goal is to is to bring is to bring clean water to people who bring life and hope through this basic necessity of life.

Jeff Ma
I love it. And you know, when it comes to love as a business strategy, this this topic, the show this topic, the book, any of those things, the question we always get asked, or people who just from from the title itself, like, What do you mean by love as a business strategy? And, you know, the two main kind of angles that get brought up typically or assumed would be the first being Oh, like, do you mean like doing loving things as a business? Or do you mean, love, like within the way you run the business, and if you listen to the show, follow the show or read the book, you'll see that you know, a lot of our work is in the latter of what I just said, which is, how to be a compassionate leader and empathetic boss, if you will, somebody who builds teams that operate with love. But the reality is, is that all those things, what we mean by Love as a business strategy. And when it comes to that, to be honest, you know, nonprofit and humanitarian work, all that stuff, a lot of people join those causes with a with a very noble mission, very noble heart. But the fact is that when you run business, you still end up having to do business, you know, like no matter if it's nonprofit or not, and the way humans do business, sometimes lacks that love too. So I love marrying that conversation altogether. Because no doubt. You know, Ben, you, you love your what you do. I'd love to talk about where else, I guess love shows up for you like what does love mean, in your, in your day to day and in how you work with others as well?

Ben Greene
Yeah, you know, it's interesting, by the way, I love love but nope, no pun intended. I love that idea of love of business strategy. Because I think it's it's critical, you know, even studying so, many of the the approaches to company culture, organizational culture, and you think about the critical components that lead to a healthy culture in in when you kind of strip all the things away and yes, there are measurables and understanding what the expectations are of my job on a day to day basis and me knowing what those are and understanding that but really, when you get down to the core of it is am I seen as a human being and am I valued as a human being? And and you know, Can I Can Can my manager can my boss whatever the you know, the term you use my leader, understand that, that what I'm doing is contributing to the mission and that they value me as a human being in that and and honestly, you know, I try every single day to lead with with empathy and to try to figure out you know, how is it that I can best connect to the team and and value them see them, not just as as kind of cogs in the wheel and not just as people that are contributing to the The work that needs to get done, but but as human beings who also have lives that that exist outside of, you know, nine to five, or eight to six, or whatever it might be on some days. But, you know, really valuing them as as humans and seeing them as humans, and getting to know them. I think that's such a critical piece. You know, it's interesting, I've had a few staff over the years, that are a bit alarmed when I start a one on one at no meeting and I say, how are you really doing? You know, what's going on? What's going on? What are you into right now? What do you what do you mean? Oh, I'm working on this that No, no, at home? Like, what? How are you doing? What's going on? And what are your interests right now? Do you ever watch the movie lately, things like that. And it almost feels like, you know, it's sometimes it can feel like a waste of time. But to me, it's, it's just critical, that we get to know our people that we're around every day and the US in my world, it's the people that are making this important work happen. And, and so, I know that's, that's kind of how I see it. That's, that's how I approach it. And hopefully, I do a halfway decent job of caring for those around me.

Jeff Ma
No, I love it. I, you know, I selfishly asked this angle, because I was wondering, I'll put you on the spot a little bit. But I'm wondering if you can think like, can think of, essentially, example examples in your workplace where that that love that, that is either worked on or exists within the walls of charity, water, lead to benefits, or outcomes that are part of the mission. So like, it was because you weren't, because that's the theory, that's the, that's the idea is that like, you know, I've spoken to people with nonprofit or charitable kind of organizations, but within the walls, it's like just all business and everyone's there. to, to, for this passionate, want to help others. But they're not seeing that part of that help, needs to like start at home, and he's the start, they're not seeing the value of taking what you just said, and like applying it, because, you know, they're so, so busy, their heart is so full of wanting to help others that they don't help themselves. And so I was hoping to talk to those people directly, not just those but everybody. So sorry, Ben, do you have anything? Kind of that exemplifies how that translates? Yeah,

Ben Greene
I mean, you know, I think, I don't know, I suppose you can be a big contributor and live an unhealthy life and be unhealthy as a person. But But I think you can't be the greatest contributor that you can possibly be unless you are, you are a healthy or you're living a healthy life and a balanced life. And I think, you know, how I've seen it play out in some of the walls, within Charity Water, are through empowerment, through trust, through looking at a staff person in the eyes, who maybe is down on themselves and feeling like they can't do it. And, and you looking them in the eyes and saying, I 100% believe you can, and in them accomplishing things that they maybe never even thought possible. You know, we have staff now who I think one of the things that Charity Water tries to do really well is to lean into mental health and say, you know, if you need time off, take time off. You know, we, we can't, we can't accomplish our mission, unless you can show up as your healthiest version of yourself. Right. And, and so I think one of the things that we do, we do really well, is creating a culture that, you know, we work hard, we work fast, there's no doubt about it. We have a lot of goals, we have aggressive goals, and we do we work very hard. But, but we also really work hard at valuing each other too. And I think we look at just the overall you know, how it's played itself out within Charity Water, the overall success of the organization, you know, we had our first 100 million dollar year this past year, annual revenue. And I don't think that that happens unless, you know, within 15 years an organization is like 15 years old, $100 million in revenue and a nonprofit sector. It's a pretty big deal that don't know that that happens unless you create a culture that that that values humans and and and helps them be the best versions of themselves.

Jeff Ma
Wow, awesome. It's it's exciting to me because there's, it's like the it's like the utopia I guess for my line of work, like being able to do something very mission and purposeful driven, like something that you really believe in, but also doing it alongside like minded people who who treat each other? Well. I mean, it's hard to ask for anything more in our lifetimes. That, right I mean, we have to work we have to survive. But that's the best way to do it. And I think that's, that's just it's so exciting for for you and anyone who anyone Charity Water, who's getting that experience, for sure. Love it. Yeah.

Ben Greene
And we and we don't do it perfectly, you know, we have like anywhere else, we have room to grow. And I think especially in this remote culture, as we've kind of moved from an office setting. And now we have we have staff in 23 states and three countries, and trying to, you know, kind of figure out what does this new season look like? And how do we how do we maintain that kind of care for each other and in cultural sentiment that is, that has helped fuel the organization for so long? You know, we're learning we're learning with I think, with everyone else, and with the changes that are, you know, occurred in the last couple of years, but, but it's, it's definitely at the forefront of our of leadership's mind.

Jeff Ma
Do you have, like, in? Can you are you able to share anything internally in terms of like, you know, pillars or mantras, or kind of mission statements that that ring? True for? Kind of what we just talked about? Like, what are your guiding principles? I guess

Ben Greene
that yeah, that Yeah, I mean, we, we have core values in generosity and excellence. And I think for us, you know, kind of, obviously, integrity, that generosity piece. It's such a, we apply a broad definition to it. And this is generosity and generous with time generous with, obviously, our finances and other things, but, but we want to be people that live lives of generosity, you know, for each other. And, and, and I think I see that played out, over and over within Charity Water of of teammates that are willing to step into a project that might not necessarily be on their particular individual roadmap, but but, you know, willing to kind of jump in and say, I'll help get this across the finish line. But, you know, I think for us, we have these, these core values, that, that we're all committed to live by and live to. And, and, and you do you see it played out over and over again, as we kind of keep those in the, in the forefront of, of the organization and in our direction.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I am curious, when it comes to, like you mentioned, you know, hard work, for sure, as well, and I'm sure you had $100 million a year, but you're still probably pushing and moving the bar higher and higher. Right? What what does that look like, I guess, you know, what, what are the levers you guys are pulling to balance, you know, pushing even harder and going, you know, reaching new heights, but also, you know, maintaining, you know, balance around, around workload, culture and just empathy for each other, like, how do you bring people along, I guess, with that with you on that journey?

Ben Greene
it, it's so difficult, I mean, honestly, to keep that balance. Ultimately, we, we kind of keep a North Star in front of us. And in our you know, our mission is to solve the global water crisis, our you know, our vision is to reinvent charity. So not only are we are we kind of in this constant state of of looking to the North Star, which is, which is our mission of the organization, but we're also kind of compelled to constantly figure out how do we do this differently. And, and so, you know, I think, for me, it's, it's, we are we're constantly assessing the roles that we've asked people to play, the, the amount of work that's on their plates, and in how we're asking them to kind of, you know, play a part in this massive vision, if you're not careful in our world, because it truly is about life or death. You know, we're, you're bringing clean water to people that don't have, you know, accessible water. That that's, that can be a massive responsibility to bear. If you can kind of understand how your day to day work, even in the minutia, contributes to that overall, Mich, mission, that overarching mission. It is a massive responsibility to think that something I do today can lead to clean water for somebody, you know, very soon. And, and so, how do we balance that responsibility? You know, with with it tackling this from a healthy mindset, a healthy standpoint. And that is a, you know, early on in my career, honestly, Jeff, if I, you know, kind of think back, there were times where I was so overwhelmed by the need, by the sheer amount of me when I thought about it with a global lens that I, you know, I can work myself to death is just one of those things where you just constantly pushing and constantly running because you feel like you're making you're barely making a dent when we think about an organization that raised $100 million last year, has, you know, is providing clean water to 15 million people, and there's still 771 million people that don't have access to clean water. You know, it's it's successful, but in perspective, it seems so small, like such a such a small dent in the overall picture. And so, I think for us, it's just constantly balancing. You know, what is next? Where are we going next? What is our What is our goal for this next month? What is our goal for this next year? And, and moving toward that, but with with passion? And yes, we would we love to see that multiplicative growth, but but also kind of with with reality of, of keeping in mind, everyone's everyone's workloads and, and lives. Yeah, that responsibility, you know, as leadership, we we need to constantly be keeping that in mind, of the overall health of the organization, we have a great people and culture team at Charity Water as well, that is consistently watching that as well. And monitoring it.

Jeff Ma
Yeah. All that hard work is just a drop in the bucket. Pun intended. Yeah. Sorry, terrible joke. You probably get too many of those

A few.

Can you can you share a few of the ways that you're trying to do charity different? I think you mentioned that you're trying to change the charity game, what is? What are some of those things that you guys are looking at doing?

Ben Greene
Sure, I think, you know, one is from the very beginning, just how we approach charity to begin with, and that was, you know, Scott, as he started to launch the organization, one of the things he realized firsthand was that there was a there was a deep lack of trust in the nonprofit sector across the board. And so, it was either we kind of tried to climb up hill and fight that battle in that perception of, of distrust, or we just try to figure out ways that we can solve it from the beginning. So one of the things was he kind of took some arguments off the table, one of the things was, how much of my money is actually getting to the to the products, how much my money is actually getting to the field, and fulfilling the mission of providing clean water to people. And so he created the 100% model, which Charity Water operates on. So the way it works is we have two bank accounts, we have one bank account, that is public facing, and if you go to charity water.org right now and you give a donation. And in in, you know that credit card company charges us a 3% fee, every bit of your donation. So the full amount goes to provide clean water to people in need. We don't take any overhead out of the of the money that people donate to the organization at all. We go to a small group of about 130 families that privately fund the well. So two separate bank accounts, one bank account that funds all the overhead for the organization, the other bank account that funds all of the water projects around the world. And we don't ever take from one to put in the other. They live completely separate lives. And and so we go to these 130 families, we raise all of the overhead funds. So no donor is ever worried about am I am I paying for some executives flights to get from one place to another am I paying for, you know, electricity bills in the office or anything like that there's none of that. We completely separate those two, so 100% of public donations, go to the projects in the field. So that was really, you know, pretty out of the box concept when I started 15 years ago.

Jeff Ma
So how does how does the organization stay running? Like where does the money I guess come for the actual operations.

Ben Greene
So it's from it's from that group of 130 families, we call them the well. And so these 130 families literally know that all of the money that they're giving, that they contribute, goes to pay for the overhead of the organization. So they cover all of staff salaries, all of the travel all of the anything that would be kind of put in that overhead bucket, they cover all those expenses. So that way we can go to the To the rest of the public and say anything that you give is going to go straight to the field. Interesting.

Jeff Ma
Wow. Yeah. That's awesome. Is that was that was that 100 million dollar last year revenue? Was that in the public? Or combined? Or is that where that was?

Ben Greene
That was combined? That was combined? Yeah, we spent about a little over $80 million to the to the field. But the the 100 million dollar number was was both the fundraising for the operations and the fundraising for for the water projects. Yeah,

Jeff Ma
that's great. Awesome. Last little topic, I'm just curious is, again, work looking back at working like someone like from the point of view of working in, in charity water? What are what are the ways that I guess you address kind of career growth? And kind of like, personal development within this space? I'm curious, because I, I feel like the nonprofit sector is so easily mission driven. And I'll say that in a bad way. But it's like, you're all here to change the world. But I'm also curious, like, I know that people's personal kind of development is always you know, we're all looking out for number one, we're all looking for kind of what's in it for me further, like you guys, like how do you guys address that from a cultural perspective? Or from a, you know, organizational perspective?

Ben Greene
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the things about charity water that's so interesting is, you know, we, we often talk about, we lower, we've, anytime we release a new position on our website, we have so many people apply. And we actually have a lower acceptance rate than then like a Harvard or Yale, I don't know the numbers on top of my head, but it's an interesting, interesting figure formula. But for us, we have a lot of highly talented, highly driven and highly motivated motivated people. So you better be finding play, you know, at times areas and paths for them to advance in their careers. Just a lot of them, they want to be in the nonprofit sector. And so what does that career advancement look like for them? You know, it looks a little different than it would maybe in the for profit sector, but it is still, you know, associates kind of moving into, you know, that the next step rolls and, and what is ahead of what is the director of what does that look like? And so we are constantly trying to create paths for growth. Because, one, we want to, we want to hold on to our people as best we possibly can, we want to retain our talented team and 2. they deserve it. You know, they've, they've kind of committed to this, this life of in the nonprofit space. And, and sometimes we can't compete from a, from a salary standpoint, but as you talked about earlier, when we think about laying our head on the pillow at night thinking about the contribution from that day, you know, that's that's part of our, our compensation, as well as feeling like, you know, we were really able to make a difference in the lives of others that day. But absolutely is it is, would be very similar to kind of what you see on the in the for profit side of career development, career paths, helping them understand kind of what is this next step? What is it going to take me to get there? And then understanding how they can can grow professionally and personally, professionally, within charity watering within the nonprofit sector as a whole.

Jeff Ma
Thank you for that. I, I know I've been bouncing around with all these curious questions, but I really enjoy you giving me the peek under the hood of charity, water and things like that. It's been very, very insightful. For the audience. Can you share ways that they can get involved? If they want to contribute, donate? Help out Charity Water? What's the best way for them to do that?

Ben Greene
Yeah, we love to, you know, to we have the spring, which is about 70,000 committed monthly donors who come on to Charity Water org and give to the spring and you can pick any amount. And you will be a part of this incredible community of people that are bringing, it's bringing clean water to people all around the world, you can kind of follow and track your lifetime impact. So you can invite others to get involved and watch your own personal impact grow. And that's an incredible way to get involved. But if you you know, if you go to charity water.org And you kind of click on the ways to get involved, there's a drop down menu there that you can look at all the different ways but one of the great kind of entry ways to get involved and we have an incredible community of 70,000 people that that want to be a part of this and actually in over 100 countries. That's the interesting piece of this. These 70,000 People are from over 100 countries. We have incredible partners for donating to water projects in Africa, and so it's just really a unique group of individuals and people that are making a real difference in the world. And so we'd love to love to ask you to join us and be a part in whatever way you can.

Jeff Ma
That's, it's awesome. It's a great cause we'll put that link in the show notes here. So anyone who can please do check it out. And then really appreciate you taking the time today and really appreciate the conversation. It's been an amazing story and kind of just, like I said, a peek under the hood of, of how this business operates in love.

Ben Greene
So appreciate it. Jeff, thanks so much for having me on. And I look forward to talking again, hopefully someday soon.

Jeff Ma
Absolutely. And thank you, of course, to the listeners. Appreciate you tuning in. We are pumping out these episodes every week on time just for you. So if you'd like it, give us a thumbs up, subscribe, rate, all those things, tell a friend and always, always gonna say please check out the book Love as Business Strategy. It's still there. still great. Then it's been awesome. Thank you so much, and we'll see everybody next.

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