March 12, 2025 • 57 mins
Jason sits down with James Harrington, the CEO and founder of the Ugandan Water Project (UWP), to discuss his mission of providing clean and accessible water to communities in Uganda. James shares his journey from working in retail and tour management to becoming a leader in global humanitarian efforts. Together, Jason and James explore the power of water, the impact of grassroots efforts, and the challenges of running a nonprofit like a high-performance business.
“When you have safe water, you have the privilege of a thousand problems. When you don’t, you only get one.”
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jason Frazell (00:11):
My guest on the podcast today is the one and
only James Harrington.
On a personal note, I've gottento know James in the last couple
of years.
We've become friends, we'vebecome, say colleagues, we've
supported each other through avariety of different things, and
you are all in for an amazingtreat is James is.
I'm just gonna, his content andthe way he speaks is gonna, is
going to do way more than Icould ever do.
(00:33):
No pressure.
My, my friend, so I'm here atJames Harrington is the CEO.
Founder of the Ugandan WaterProject based in up upstate New
York.
And we are recording this on, inMarch in the evening.
And it's the two days after aone day after daylight savings.
And it's beautiful'cause we'rerecording this.
I, it kind of feels like it'sstill during the day.
James Harrington (00:52):
It does.
It's an amazing thing for thoseof us that live in the
northeast.
Hope has come, hope has come.
We have survived.
And and I think, I think we'regonna make it.
Jason Frazell (01:02):
We're, I think we're gonna make it so James, so
good to have you here.
Wanna start and have theaudience just get, get to know a
little bit about you.
I said you're the CEO andfounder of Uganda Water Project.
What else do you want us all toknow about you?
James Harrington (01:14):
Yeah, I've, I've got a long and winding road
that brought me here and what'samazing is when you really find
heart-centered work that justresonates with, resonate
intellectually, socially,spiritually, like physically,
it's eng.
I like how it engages me.
So many of my past experienceshave showed up here.
Everything from, you know,selling shoe shoes at the mall
(01:37):
when I was in high school togrowing up working in hardware
stores, farm and feed stores,and learning general knowledge,
doing manual labor all the waythrough to I was, I was a
purchasing agent for a wineryfor a while.
I helped run the back end of of,of a Mary Kay business for a
long time.
I, I, I did all sorts of stuff,worked at a church as a
(01:59):
technical director, and believeit or not, all of these things
have fingerprints on the work wedo in Uganda.
And it's, yeah, it's unexpected,but it's true
Jason Frazell (02:09):
that, that's really cool.
I always like to start with youspecifically thinking about this
conversation.
The audience tell, we know eachother, and I already mentioned
that I.
Why the heck clean water inUganda as an American, as a guy
from upstate New York, and I'mgonna say this, there's a
million problems in this worldto solve.
James Harrington (02:31):
Yes.
Jason Frazell (02:32):
And a talented guy like yourself, you can
probably choose to solve or workon almost any of them.
I would love for the audience tohear your origin story of what
had you go, this is a good I, ormaybe you didn't think it was a
good idea.
You're like, this is something Ishould do.
I'm not sure if it's a goodidea, but Yeah.
So I'd love to hear the originstory of you on Water Project.
James Harrington (02:48):
Yeah, absolutely.
So it was 2007, may of 2007Memorial Day weekend, and I
ended up at neighbors Barbecue.
And there was a gentleman fromUganda who had come to the US
for a conference and he wastrained as a teacher.
He had started schools and, andtaught in schools.
And he, and he also was a pastorof church, a church in Uganda.
(03:09):
And so he, and he had gone toseminary and things like that.
So he had all this education toinspire the spirit and cultivate
the mind and dynamicpersonality.
And he's just a great guy.
And as weird.
And I had no idea any detailsabout Uganda, so I was curious.
Right.
And talking to him, he was very,he was hilarious and dynamic and
(03:30):
I was, but I was asking him,Hey, what are the challenges you
face in the work you do?
He said, honestly, one of thebiggest challenges that is that
despite being good at what I doand loving it, I look into the
faces of congregations inclassrooms who are.
Of people who are sick andhungry and thirsty, and my
skills and abilities don'tovercome that.
(03:50):
And so that just struck me thatyou know, when you don't have
safe water or you don't havesufficient food, that is an
intellectual problem.
Meaning, yeah.
If you're trying to teachsomebody, you can't teach them
until you've overcome thathurdle.
And same thing with, yeah, withwater so many things, water
comes first.
One of our, our good friends,his name is Joe Jay.
He he always likes to say itthis way, when, when you have
(04:14):
safe water, you have theprivilege of a thousand
problems.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
When you don't have
James Harrington (04:19):
safe water, you only get one problem.
Because it just dominateseverything.
Yeah.
That one problem dominateseverything.
And and so talking to this man,you know, all those years ago I
was struck with how profoundly.
Expansive and, and you just, itjust swallows everything.
The water crisis.
And I started on a educationaljourney to learn and understand.
(04:42):
I asked him all these questionsand then the next six months
staying in touch with him andlearning more'cause I had a
nagging suspicion that I couldprobably do something to help
him.
At the time I was a rodent tourmanager for a band.
We were doing small events upand down the east coast and in
the northeast United States.
And so logistics andrelationships were where I added
(05:04):
value and I thought, Hey, Ithink this water thing could
probably be something I couldwork on for this guy.
And so it was about a yearlater, after first meeting him,
me and a few friends, we'draised a little money around
this idea of building somerainwater systems to put on
community buildings.
And we showed up in Uganda andhelped to install these
(05:25):
rainwater systems.
And I, that was, that was ourfirst couple of projects in
August of 2008.
It was amazing.
Jason Frazell (05:32):
And here we are to 2025.
That is amazing.
So almost 17 years ago now.
James Harrington (05:38):
Yeah.
It, it really is.
It, it's been amazing to see howmuch time has gone by and how
much we've grown.
Yeah.
But you know, why, why stickwith it?
I mean, you know why water isbecause I, frankly, I'm lazy.
I can appreciate that.
Jason Frazell (05:51):
Yeah.
In the best way possible.
James Harrington (05:53):
Yeah.
And if you want to, if you wantto get something done
efficiently, ask a lazy personto do it, and they'll find the
most heck yes.
Effective way to do it.
Right.
And in this case, if you're, ifyou care about poverty and
suffering in the, in the worldone of the most effective ways
to alleviate poverty globally.
Is to address any gaps in thewater needs of, of, of people.
(06:17):
Yeah.
Because it doesn't matter.
So many of the causes that areimportant to, whether it's
education or economicdevelopment or job skills or
things like the family stabilitygender opportunities, all sorts
of those things are dependent inone way or another on having
access to safe water, foodsupply for sure.
Medical, like clinical andpublic health.
(06:39):
So many of these issues that areholding people back are
dependent on water.
So essentially, yeah, I waslike, oh, if we can address
this, all of these other things,it's like a rising tide that
lifts all ships.
Jason Frazell (06:53):
No, no.
Small amount of irony with therising tide.
James Harrington (06:57):
I do.
I do.
I've been accused of using a lotof water metaphors.
Jason Frazell (07:00):
Water metaphors, which makes a lot of sense.
Jam James, at this point, Iwanna, I wanna share with
everybody that I got a chance.
To get involved with you andwe'll talk a little bit more
about that, you and the rest ofthe UWP team and I got a chance
to see this firsthand inNovember of 2023.
Yes.
James and I and a cohort ofamazing business leaders and
people who are interested inthis work.
(07:21):
Yep.
I got a chance to go to Ugandaand witness, witness this
firsthand, and I wanna sharewith the audience my perspective
on something that I saw and whatI, if I remember right, I
specifically told you this,we're talking about rainwater
collection systems, so that's.
For all intents and purposes,and I explain this to my, my
daughter's school, my daughter'sclass a few weeks ago.
(07:41):
It's just a gutter with anothergutter that runs to a tank, and
then that tank runs to a faucetand you turn it on.
Pretty simple.
In the United States, a lot ofus have gutters on our homes.
This is not a thing.
We installed one of those, andby we, I mean the people on the
trip.
We watched your team on theground and Uganda do a great job
of all the work you gave a hand,I gave, I, I laid a couple of
(08:04):
bricks because otherwise I wouldbreak the thing.
That is, I am, that is not my,my strong suit and I'm just
gonna, without getting into thedetails, what really struck me
was that school, I believe hadabout 170 students, if I'm not
mistaken.
And the support staff, theprincipal, the teachers before.
This, we installed the systemfor them.
They would walk down to the wellduring the middle of the school
(08:26):
day.
So want everybody listeningright now who has children to
think about this?
Yes.
10 o'clock in the morninginstead of studying spelling or
math or whatever the thingthey're doing.
It would be my daughter's nameis Hannah.
Hey Hannah, can you go down andgrit?
Get the next Jerry can of waterso that we can cook lunch.
And she would leave theclassroom, leave her learning
environment, walk down a muddyhill, and that day was muddy to
(08:48):
the local town.
Well.
Yeah.
Which didn't look veryappetizing.
Nope.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
They would fill it up and they'd bring it back and
they'd give it to the teacherand then the teacher had to boil
it.
You hope.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
You hope.
You hope.
Yes.
Jason Frazell (09:03):
You hope they boil it.
'cause if they don't boil it,that's a whole different thing.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yeah,
Jason Frazell (09:07):
and I'm saying all this because the rainwater
collection system, late laborparts, all these things is
about, it's a little under$4,000.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah.
Jason Frazell (09:19):
Yep.
And if you think about what wedo here in the United States for
$4,000, what we pay for thethings, and I said, talk about
an outsize impact.
And that was the moment when Isaid to you like, oh, now I get
it.
Yes, the outsize impact.
So, you know, and like, andthat's part of the reason I
went, I wanted to see what wecan do by family and what we can
do as Americans in a countrylike that where there is a need
(09:43):
and there's also the costs arelow, and so it moves the needle
a lot.
So I wanna encourage everybodylistening to think about this
for yourself.
Think about your kid walking toget water, or your kid drinking
the well water and then gettinga diarrhea or headaches.
Yeah, all the things that landin there, James.
Go.
(10:03):
I wanna go back on your storyhere.
So you raised some money, youwent over to Uganda, you
installed those collectionsystems, and you've done, you
and the team have donethousands.
You've served hundreds ofthousands of hundreds of
thousands of Ugandans now.
Yes.
Do you remember the feeling whenyou got that first installation
and got that first group cleanwater?
James Harrington (10:20):
Oh, absolutely.
Because that was, I mean, it wasinstantaneous that I realized
that I was, I was participatingin something far bigger than I
realized.
Yeah.
That first day was on Oo road,just outside of, in Jinja,
Uganda, ironically near the,near the headwaters of the Nile
River.
Hmm.
So there's water.
In fact, there's one of the mosticonic sources of water on the
(10:43):
planet, finds its source inJinja, and yet it's not safe to
drink.
And so you have a water crisis,even, even in the presence of
Lake Victoria is also there, thelargest lake in Africa.
And we installed this rainwatersystem.
And our rainwater systems alsogo hand in hand with filters to
make that, that safe to drink.
And talking to some of the folksthat we're gonna be using that
(11:06):
first Rainwater system and howthat was gonna impact their
families and realizing some ofthese people were, were dealing
with HIV and chronic illnessand, and, and just realize how
much hope it brings for a familyto know that something with real
infrastructure and stability isthere.
Because they have so muchvulnerability, just cascading
(11:27):
layers of vulnerability.
And and so it really, in, in aninstant, I just was like, I knew
this was good.
I didn't understand how great itwas.
And and it really, it, Iremember after that first day at
that first project, getting backin the van to go back to the
guest house we were staying at.
And I remember thinking tomyself and just saying to
(11:49):
myself, I could do this athousand times.
And and as of today, we've,we've got more than 1800 major
installations.
It's not just rainwater systems.
We left.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Yeah,
James Harrington (11:59):
we, we expanded beyond that years ago.
We, we still do plenty ofrainwater systems, but we also
repair hand pumps and brokenhand pumps.
We drill wells.
We actually have done somegravity flow systems where we
find springs up in the mountainsand.
Several kilometers down intocommunities.
And then we're starting to do alot more with solar pumping
(12:22):
systems, where we're using solarenergy to pump it to an elevated
tank and then gravity feed thatout into communities and, and
even right to people's homes.
So it's amazing to see whatwe've done because we have done
it more than a thousand times.
There's over, there's over650,000 people in Uganda who
have access to safe water for.
Jason Frazell (12:45):
Amazing.
One thing I wanna give you all ashout out for around the last
model there, the pump and thesolar.
Yeah.
You also have a business modelwhere people get to have a sense
of ownership because they payfor it.
And when you told me what theypay for a jerry can of water.
Yeah, I laughed.
But it's, but as a percentage,it's significant.
But just say this to all of youlistening is you walk up, you
(13:07):
have a, like a key fob and youscan it.
And you get your Jerry can oryour bucket of water, whatever
it is you're getting, and theyhave a sense of ownership
because they are paying forthat.
It's small, it's negligible, butit becomes a self-funding
system, which then allows you togo out and do more work in that
community or the next community,which is a real mindset shift
(13:30):
when you are used to living inthese, living in these
communities with poverty whereyou're like, either the
government gives it to us.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Frazell (13:38):
Or the charity comes in and they give it to us,
or we get nothing and wesurvive.
And so you're in reinventingthat context, which is, which is
a, which is a another reasonthat I really love the work you
all are doing.
And I wanna ask the lastquestion here, I know is on a
lot of people's minds before wemove in the how you, how you
view running a nonprofit.
(13:59):
Why doesn't the government domore?
James Harrington (14:03):
Yeah, I mean it's, it's a, it's a great
question.
And for a long time, I, I haveto confess, I didn't think the
government was doing much.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Mm-hmm.
James Harrington (14:12):
I didn't have relationships with district and
national government.
I, I had the assumption that itwas all corrupt.
Yeah.
And I'm, I'm kind of aconservative guy.
I, I like, you know, only, Idon't get me wrong, I like roads
and I like, I like bridges andditches and I.
Schools and things like that.
(14:33):
So I like to pay all the taxes Ihave to, but I, I tend to like,
you know, especially withcorruption, you know, this idea,
oh, African government, it'sgonna be corrupt.
I had always, for several yearsavoided that.
But then what we realized wasthere's a lot of amazing people
working every day in thegovernment.
Selfless people.
(14:53):
Who have left the private sectorto come be public servants and
they're inspiring and, and theyare working their butts off.
Yeah.
But the economy is young.
Mm-hmm.
It's still largely cash and soyeah.
It's hard to harness the, the,the tax revenue from cash
transactions or bartertransactions and so there's just
not a lot of revenue for publicworks and things like that.
(15:15):
Yeah.
So there's just so much thatstill has to be built.
Keep in mind, you know, they,they won their independence, in,
in the sixties.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah.
James Harrington (15:25):
So in 1963.
So it, it really is a youngnation.
Yeah.
And and so they're working hard.
They just, they just still needa lot of help and you know,
things like capital is expensivethere.
They don't have the tax revenue.
Then private sector can make itup except the private sector.
(15:46):
I mean, here we can get loans atreasonable rates there.
Right.
There.
It, it's not uncommon to find 18to 28% interest rates on loans.
And that's not a loan shark.
That is like at a bank.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Yeah.
James Harrington (16:01):
You know, the best you can get for a loan rate
there for like big projects islike nine to 12%.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Yeah.
James Harrington (16:07):
And so it's just very expensive.
That's expensive.
Yeah.
Because of, because it's a highrisk environment.
So, yeah.
So pe the government is tryingto do a lot.
We actually partner a lot withthe government and they
definitely do their part to tryto help.
They're definitely serious.
And I have humbly changed mytune.
We still do have to exercise alittle discretion on you know,
(16:28):
there's still a few people thathave selfish intentions just
like this.
Of course, you know.
Jason Frazell (16:33):
Some places unlike, unlike the U, unlike the
US government.
Yeah.
You don't find that here, whichis just philanthropic.
No, exactly.
That's, that's only a Ugandangovernment thing.
Altruism.
Yep.
James Harrington (16:42):
Yep.
But James, I would Servantheart.
Jason Frazell (16:45):
Yeah, exactly.
So I would assert, and one ofthe other reasons I wanted to
have you on is to talk about asthe CEO of, of UWP, how you
think about running it.
And one of the things I love tohear you say is you say, we're a
charity that doesn't run like acharity.
And you've been doing this nowfor 17 years.
(17:07):
You've grown your staffsignificantly.
You've grown.
Money raised and the impact yearover year growing and growing,
which isn't a normal,necessarily a normal thing at a
thing of your size.
It's not like you're getting aton of money from large global,
large global nonprofits or thesebig, you know, the Gates
Foundation isn't writing you acheck every year and you're go
to do the work.
(17:27):
You're doing grassrootsfundraising.
You're going out there and dothe work.
So I'd love to, I'd love for youto share your brilliance around
the audience of how you thinkabout running an organization.
Yeah, like UWP that allows you,and for people in nonprofit know
this, to utilize more of thefunds raised to do the actual
work and a less of the admincost, which is one of the ways
(17:48):
that nonprofits are measured.
James Harrington (17:49):
Yeah.
So there's a, there's a, anumber of different things that
go into our DNA that makes us,uniquely us.
One of the things that you'llhear us say is we run a charity,
not a charity case.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I love that.
James Harrington (18:02):
And that's important because we fight
poverty.
We try not to subject ourselvesto it.
Right.
And yet that's great.
We've all had that experience ofpeople that are work in
nonprofits where you're like,gosh, it feels like these guys
have their own expression ofpoverty.
They have poverty mentality orpoverty mindset, lack.
It's always lack, it's alwayscrisis.
(18:24):
And and I find that reallyoffput.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Mm-hmm.
James Harrington (18:29):
Even repulsive.
Right?
And so that's, you know, thework is already hard.
You, you, you have to approachit with intention for, for
stewarding your own engagement,right?
So that's, that's one set of, ofvalues is just making sure that
we, we don't subject ourselvesto that poverty mentality.
The other thing is you know, we,we try to run our charity the
(18:51):
way I'm, I'm veryentrepreneurial.
I have a business background.
I only, I only.
That's, and so we run ourcharity the way you and other
entrepreneurs run theirbusiness.
And the only difference is.
You know, I don't, I don't getto keep it right, but we want to
keep an eye on the bottom line.
(19:11):
We want to diversify revenue.
We, we really believe in servingour customers, right?
Our, our customers are clientslike, and that would include
the, the people that that aredonating.
They are, they have an interestthat we wanna make sure we're,
we're thinking about, andabsolutely the people that we're
serving.
We really focus on valuedelivery and the value
(19:32):
proposition.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Mm-hmm.
James Harrington (19:35):
The other thing is a lot of people, I hear
it sometimes expressed this way,how do you go 17 years?
How, how do you raise money andbe a fundraiser?
Like, don't you get sick ofbegging for money all the time?
And my response is, Hey, ourorganization does something that
people really want to see donein this world.
Yeah.
(19:55):
And they want to see it donewell.
And if they can trust that it'sbeing done well, there's a lot
of people that want to be partof it.
And on that foundation, when Isay, Hey, we have an incredible
team of professionals, a fewhere in the United States, and
then about 40 Ugandans on theground in Uganda doing all sorts
(20:17):
of parts of the work,professional people of
excellence and passion anddrive, and I am inviting you.
To hire us to do the work we do.
So when I'm, we're asking for adonation, we're inviting people
to hire us to create impact withtheir resources and, and our
(20:38):
shared intention.
And so it's almost like, youknow, it, it's similar to an
investor model.
Yeah.
You know, the Elle family has astake in this, in this mission.
And, and you wanna see theoutcome.
But the ROI is not a return oninvestment to investors.
It's an ROI to the people thatyou wanna see served and our
(21:00):
world as a global community.
Yeah.
That mentality is not alwayswhat you see with common
charities.
No,
Jason Frazell (21:07):
no.
James, I love that.
I've never heard you phrase itthat way.
You've got me thinking about,I'm, I wanna, I mean, and I
think this, this is reallyblowing my mind around, I wanna
hire you.
That is not generally my mindsetabout, about charitable giving,
including things like churchesgiving money at churches.
It's not generally the, the wayit's, Hey, you're gonna, you're,
you know, we, we'd ask of your,you know, your tithe or whatever
(21:29):
you give, and in return, we'regonna provide these services,
but I've never heard the phrasehire us, which, yeah, which,
which alludes to, or at leastfor me, means a different level
of ownership on your end,responsibility on your end that,
oh, we're actually working foryou.
To make this thing becauseJason, you don't know how to
provide clean water.
You could lay a brick or two.
(21:50):
Yeah.
Or, or sing to the kids, butyou're not, we don't, we don't
want you doing that work, butwe're gonna take that money and
do it.
And I wanna, you mentionedsomething as well, you didn't
use the word, but I wanna talk alittle bit about efficiency in
what you do.
Yes.
Efficiency.
What does as the CEO, what doesthat mean to you when you're
measuring efficiency across thestaff, across the projects?
What does that mean?
James Harrington (22:11):
Yeah.
Well, and I think it gets backto something you referred to,
which is, you know, a lot ofpeople, they measure, the only
measurement they have for anorganization is how much do they
spend on overhead oradministration.
Yeah.
Right.
And don't get me wrong, youshould ask that question.
Yeah.
The follow up question would be,should be how do you measure
that?
Also, what's your overallimpact, right.
(22:34):
So yeah, but it by no meansshould be the only measure
because here's something that Iwould say.
When we spend money onadministration or overhead,
we're, part of what that does isensure that we have professional
people Yeah.
Who wake up every day, theirfeet hit the floor, and they are
(22:54):
starting their best part oftheir day focusing on this
mission and as a, and so you getprofessional results.
And so, so there's a, there's,when you talk about efficiency.
We really wanna focus on highimpact.
We wanna know that we arehelping, you know, the dollars
are actually delivered andhaving impact on lives.
(23:16):
So we wanna know how manypeople's lives are touched and
then how, how much they'rechanged.
So we, we like to measure thingslike when we bring clean water
to a school, does enrollment goup?
Do test scores go up?
Do does the, especially like insecondary schools without safe
water, there's a huge drop off.
We just celebrated internationalWomen's Day.
(23:38):
There's a huge drop off, off insecondary schools of of
adolescent girls enrolled inschools if they don't have safe
water because they can't theycan't ally address their
menstrual needs.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Sure.
And,
James Harrington (23:51):
and so when we bring safe water, do we see, the
enrollment of, of girls go up inthe school.
So we like to measure, you know,if it's at a clinic, we're
looking at we're looking atinfant mortality rates and we're
looking at you know, infectionrates and or just the, the
number of, of inpatient versusoutpatient.
But we wanna see impact andthen.
(24:12):
We also want to make sure thatwe have the people we need to
deliver a high pro, a highquality product and service.
But we also look for ways to dothat, that stretches the dollar.
So, for instance, we have, mostof our staff is in Uganda.
Yeah.
Partly, partly because we canhire really professional people
(24:33):
there.
At a much lower rate than we cando here.
And that means, sure, thedollars go farther.
And so that, things like thatmake a difference.
And we try to, we try, we try tobrutally measure ourselves.
So there's a couple things we doto, to just really track, hey,
how are we doing?
So for instance you know, we,we, every year we take every
(24:57):
dollar we've spent on anything.
We don't separate it out byprogram or administration or
fundraising.
We just see every dollar we'vespent.
How much was that?
And then how much, how manypeople got safe water this year
for the first time?
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Mm.
James Harrington (25:13):
You know, and we, and we, we, we just measure
it.
We just say, Hey, this is, we'renot qualifying anything is just
to exist.
How many people this year, howmany people got safe water?
We compare that to other, otherorganizations that are like ours
and we try to see it.
And, and usually we've been ableto stay in that sort of like 17
to$20 range.
Jason Frazell (25:34):
That's great.
James Harrington (25:34):
17, 20 to$20 for first access per person,
which is really low.
It's harder and harder tomeasure as our, as our program
evolves because now we don'tjust, we don't just focus on
safe water access.
Jason Frazell (25:48):
Right.
James Harrington (25:48):
And, and water projects.
We're, we're trying to ask abigger question and address a
bigger part of the need.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
As we think about your 17 years of
Jason Frazell (26:01):
this sort of work mm-hmm.
CEO, growing the organizationand just to say you've got a 50
some person team, you would beif you were a CEO of a startup,
you'd be a series A or a seriesB startup who have raised.
Multimillion dollars worth ofcapital at this point, most
likely.
And I mean like venture venturecapital, which I know obviously
venture capital is notnecessarily a thing, although I
(26:21):
guess you could call it venturecapital in a way.
Give you some, give a, give youa thousand dollars and go and
reinvest that.
I'm, I'm not looking for a 10 xon it, but we call
James Harrington (26:27):
ours a, a venture capital.
A
Jason Frazell (26:30):
venture capital.
Yes.
Yes.
You get, you get pictures of thefamilies impacted.
What are some of the things thatyou have learned?
People leader organization,time.
That you'd like to impart on anyother business listener, any
other business owner, anybodyelse in business out there?
(26:52):
Because I, I'll tell you, James,to be honest with you, I always
kind of held nonprofit as like,well, it's a little different.
And the urgency's not as much.
You probably heard this amillion times.
Urgency's not as much, and youdon't have venture capital.
Nobody's like asking you to 10 xthe return.
And it seems a little like, andand my experience with it, this
is my own.
My own limited viewpoint is,well, I give the United Way some
(27:13):
money, or I throw some moneyinto the Salvation Army, and
then they do what they're gonnado that I never have any idea.
James Harrington (27:20):
Yes.
So there's certainly, that's,yeah.
Yeah.
There's certainly, well, I saythat,
Speaker 4 (27:24):
yeah.
James Harrington (27:25):
Donors that are, that have that low
expectation.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Yeah.
James Harrington (27:29):
But I would say we have, we have many of
our, most engaged partners areengaged supporters and donors.
Some of them are businessowners, some of them are family
foundations or, you know,institutional partners that,
that really care and are lookingto invest significant re
resources, you know, five andsix figures into this work.
(27:52):
And let me tell you, you thinkyou know venture capital, I've,
I've, I know people in the VCspace.
Sure.
They will let an organ, youknow, a, a startup go two, three
years, you know, longer leading,yeah.
Five years.
Oh, sometimes way longer.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Yeah.
James Harrington (28:07):
Right.
Now, granted, eventually they,they are hoping for a payday but
a ton of'em just leave thedemands on a nonprofit.
Are they that significant donorswant to see a return on their,
an impact on their investment?
And they wanna see a, ajustified impact on an
investment.
They wanna see our overhead beless than 20%, and they wanna
(28:31):
see that impact in 12 months orless the same year that they,
that they give, they wanna see ajustifiable impact on that is
high performance.
Yeah.
We have to turn, we have to turnthat money around on a dime,
implement it, effectively,measure it as we go, and then
account for it, report back anddo it on, on.
(28:54):
On a very light overhead.
And hmm.
And that also means that it canmake it really hard when me as a
leader look at the team and say,Hey, this year I think we need
to go into the woodshed and, andreally do some capacity
building.
Like we, we need to really geton the workbench and start
building some skills.
We need to build out some of ourteam.
You know, if we have to do any rand d on something, if we have
(29:17):
to learn Yeah.
A new technology.
If we, right now we're trying toonboard.
To Asana for project management.
Right?
Yeah.
And that's a pretty heavy lift.
Yeah.
But we still have to satisfy theexpectations of our supporters
while we do that.
And so yeah.
In some ways for a highperformance nonprofit, there's
(29:38):
some things that are even moredemanding than a VC
relationship.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Absolutely.
I'm thinking about.
My career
Jason Frazell (29:47):
in mostly working in private business is a lot of
the investments, like, Hey,we're purchasing Asana, we're
doing training that getsjustified by, and by the way, we
think it's gonna make us thismuch additional revenue or save
us this much in cost.
Right?
You don't have the concept ofrevenue.
And what you do.
I mean, you have the, I mean, Imean you have the concept of now
(30:07):
with some, with some of thethings we talked about, like the
the clean water system.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Yeah.
Jason Frazell (30:12):
But you don't have the revenue interns like,
Hey, if we invest in our programdirector getting this new
certification in this thing,that's gonna then create the
ability to have us raise thismuch more money.
It's more gonna impact morepeople being a more effective
leader.
So it's a different frame ofmind.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Frazell (30:27):
And it makes, justifying that to me, that
would make it a lot harder.
Yes, when you're also trying tokeep that admin cost down, but
what are, so what are some, I Idefinitely, before we wrap, and
I'm gonna throw this out there,you've got some banger stories
from your time in Uganda.
I've heard a few of them notgonna ask one for quite yet, but
I do want you to be thinkingabout Yeah, a podcast, an
(30:51):
explicit podcast, appropriatestory.
From Uganda can be, and likeI've heard all sorts of
interesting things that isn'tgonna scare everybody away, but
it's gonna go, Hey, that's aninteresting thing.
And some of them are, yeah, someof them are quite interesting.
Looking again at C-E-O-A-C-E-Omindset with a nonprofit, one of
(31:11):
the things that you say thatreally strikes me as well is how
people can work with anonprofit.
And you say that people can giveup three things, and I've heard
you say this a lot in differentspeaking engagements and I think
you said it to me, let's talkabout each of those things.
'cause this is another thingYes.
That I wasn't really thinkingabout.
So yeah, how can people getinvolved in their favorite
(31:34):
nonprofit or whatever the thingis.
James Harrington (31:36):
Absolutely.
So I always, you know, andagain, this is just my style
partly I always say you can giveyour cash, your kung fu or your
connections.
And cash is obvious.
Trademarked.
Trademarked.
Yeah, that's right.
Tm.
Cash is obvious, you know, somany of these things.
The most efficient way to addvalue is the portability and
immediacy of finances.
(31:59):
And I say cash, but really asophisticated organization is
ready to take, take finances inany form.
And, you know, from working us,we're, we've worked really hard
to understand.
Not just how to do the normal,you know, what I call retail
donations, you know, cash checkand card and you know, a CH of
course.
But we, you know, we firststarted working with
(32:21):
cryptocurrencies in 2017.
Wow.
And, and so when it was time tostart, you know, talking to
other people about, you know,crypto donations and we don't
get a lot of'em'cause themarkets have been up and down,
but but even, you know, donoradvised funds and mm-hmm.
All kinds of asset donations.
So we understand that and thatallows us to really partner
(32:44):
effectively with sophisticatedsituations.
And don't get us wrong, we're asmall organization, but we're,
we're trying to make the dooreasy to walk through.
So cash.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yeah.
James Harrington (32:54):
You know, that's great.
Kung fu though.
Kung fu is where I talk about,you know, what are your special
skills, right?
What are your skills, yourabilities, you know, and your
superpowers.
Because a lot of people, they,they don't think of what they do
as a superpower.
I was talking, I met with a, asales director for a beverage
company today and.
(33:15):
Hey, we're talking, you know,our AquaTru enterprise.
We're trying to talk tocommunities and say, Hey, will
you sign an agreement to let usmaintain your your well?
And you'll pay these small fees,but we will guarantee 99% of the
time your well is worth.
And that's a sales relationship.
And so, yes, it is.
Believe it or not, this guydoesn't think of himself as
(33:36):
being ready to help us withpoverty alleviation, but I
guarantee he is.
You're a great example.
I mean, those of you that listento your podcast know that you do
a lot of a lot of coaching and.
Your special skills have beeninvaluable to our team.
Like that's one of the mostvaluable things that your
family's been able to contributeto our mission is helping our
(33:57):
team grow.
You've coached some of ourleaders.
You have facilitated sessions tohelp us be more effective.
So kung fu is, is everythingfrom being a diesel mechanic to
a sales guy, to a coach or onthis side of things, helping,
you know, with various differentspecial skills that we need.
And then Connections is allabout that network, right?
The relationship community thatyou serve.
(34:19):
We are still a smallorganization that is mostly
unknown in this world.
Yes.
And so you are a broadcasttower, whoever you are, the you,
that's you and the you.
That's me and the you that'slistening.
And you are broadcasting aboutthe things that you think are
interesting and exciting andworth it.
And whether you're talkingaround your dinner table a
(34:41):
boardroom table.
Or on the street with yourfriends.
You know, people are part ofcircles of faith communities or
civic organizations and and allof those are are places where
opening your mouth and talkingabout the causes you care about
are a huge way of inviting morepeople to get curious and stuff.
Jason Frazell (35:03):
So, James, you had mentioned you're a small
organization and I would assertthat you all have some outsize
impact and you had the chance.
To do some pretty cool stuffearlier this year.
Maybe it was late last year, andUWP you got to represent Uganda
Water Project at the ClintonFoundation.
At the, at the Global GlobalInitiative.
The Global, yeah, the GlobalClinton Global Initiative.
(35:25):
Yep.
Let's talk a little bit aboutthat and what that is and who
you were in the room with,because you know, you're being a
humble guy.
You're like, yeah, we may besmall in terms of like our, our,
our scope and the number ofemployees.
But you all are.
Yeah.
Another example, and this iswhere, and I'm, I'm calling this
out for all the businessleaders, is how do you show up
(35:45):
to play with the big boys evenif you don't necessarily relate
to yourself as the big boys andthe big girls, and this is what
startup founders do all the timetoo, is they're in the room,
Hey, we're competing againstSalesforce, we're competing this
other, yes.
Not that you're competing, butthis is like the vibe that UWP
gets off, and I know you'veheard this from people, is you
all appear.
To be a, a, a, a prettysubstantial organization based
(36:06):
on how you show up, how yourteam shows up and the, the
efficiency which to do thingsthat.
So let's talk a lot about theglobal initiative for a few
minutes.
James Harrington (36:13):
Yeah.
Well, I will say excellence overindexes.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
So
James Harrington (36:18):
does, so.
You know, the truth is justgetting good at what you do.
Definitely, definitely helps youplay above, you know, fight
above your weight class.
And and, and that is somethingwe've believed in you know, just
getting out there and, you know,doing the hard work, you know,
hard sometimes.
(36:38):
The biggest difference, I mean,I remember early, early in our
organization, we, we werestarting to grow fast.
This went from an idea tosomething of real substance
pretty quick.
And I remember I had a friend,she was also trying to get
something started and.
She was kind of, she at abarbecue.
She asked me, she's like, Hey,so what's the secret?
(36:59):
What's the secret?
I'm seeing all this stuffhappen.
What's the secret?
And I told her, I'm like, it'snot a secret.
This happened to be the dayafter I, I said, Hey, yesterday
I left my driveway at 4:00 AMand I drove to Pittsburgh for a
cup of coffee and a check for$15,000.
And then I drove home.
(37:20):
And then I had other work to dowhen I got home.
Like it's just a lot of longwork this morning, you know,
today that we are recordingthis, my first call was at 5:00
AM because it's, you know, itwas partners in Europe, right?
And so doing the hard workrefines your process and gets
(37:40):
you better in excellence overindexes.
So part of it is I believe inthe quality of what we do
because it's been tested in thearena where.
I'm
Jason Frazell (37:48):
not
James Harrington (37:48):
afraid to put it up against and be compared
and measured against others thatare the best.
And so that allows us to walkwith head, our head up into big
environments with significantpeople.
Now you also have to balancethat with humility in our heart.
Yeah, right.
I confidence in my gaze,humility in my heart.
(38:12):
And because I don't pretend thatwe're not a small organization,
we do have limits, you know?
Sure.
The truth is I can't take, Ican't reasonably steward a
billion dollar donation rate.
Jason Frazell (38:24):
Sure.
James Harrington (38:25):
You'd be, you'd
Jason Frazell (38:25):
be open to the conversation.
James Harrington (38:27):
I'd work with that problem.
That's right.
You'd work, you'd work
Jason Frazell (38:29):
with that problem.
That's a great problem to have.
James Harrington (38:31):
But, but, but even I will say, oh yeah,
there's a, there's a limit toour capacity because of our
side.
But to walk into some of theseenvironments, you know, whether
it's World Water, we canStockholm or Clinton Global
Initiative you know, and ClintonGlobal Initiative is one of the
most influential rooms when itcomes to poverty alleviation and
suffering in the world.
They take on.
They, they enter into theconversations about some of the
big, you know, Jane Goodall wasthere.
(38:52):
Yeah.
Obviously president.
It's Davos.
Jason Frazell (38:54):
It's Davos for Es, Davos, the economic summit,
but for nonprofit, and it takesplace in New York every year.
James Harrington (39:00):
Yeah, so like Jose Andres the chef behind
World Central Kitchen was there.
I I sat in a session, you know,25 feet from Matt Damon.
Yeah.
You know, it's all of thosekinds of people.
And then of course, you know,it's President and Secretary
Clinton and their daughter, Dr.
Chelsea Clinton, Dr.
Chelsea Clinton.
And at the time, president Bidenand, and his wife showed up one
(39:22):
evening.
So like mm-hmm.
It is global leaders.
Yeah.
You know, Hamad, Eunice who iscurrently leading Bangladesh.
Mm-hmm.
And revolutionized our, ourconcept of micro micro loans
when he wrote his work withGrameen Bank.
These people are in the room andI mean in a room in the small
rooms and you're, you're thereworking on stuff together.
(39:42):
So high caliber and I think thething to remember is.
They bring certain things to thetable.
I don't, then we bring thingsthat, that they don't we have a
visibility on, on our part ofthe need and the situation that
that needs is vital to theoverall conversation.
Jason Frazell (40:00):
Yeah.
One last thing about peopleleader and let's, let's grab a
couple stories.
Stories from the field.
Sure.
Stories from the story fromputting clean water into Uganda,
or giving access to clean water,because I'm sure everybody
listening goes, that feels alittle fraught with risk.
In a variety of, in a variety ofways.
Not like, well, lethally, butalso just some, you know, just
like your, your, yourcleanliness and all those
(40:22):
things.
And I got to witness a couple ofthese things.
Sure, sure.
I wanna ask you the excellence,the excellence comment is
powerful.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
Hmm.
Jason Frazell (40:31):
And that is a force multiplier for any
business way over and abovestaffing and all those.
How do you ensure that yourteam.
Keeps that in mind that you'rekeeping your staff excellent all
the time.
And as the leader, how do youthink about it when you notice
somebody who has the capacity,has the willingness to learn and
maybe they either they run into,they run into their own version
(40:54):
like we all do of their ownbreakdowns in their life, or
they just need a little extrasomething.
How do you think about that tokeep people going and you and
excellence?
I would assert that excellence.
For the Ugandan staff might meansomething a little bit different
than excellence for Americas,depending on the education
level.
And I also know for a fact thatsome of your Ugandans have
master's degrees and you know,like medical, like there, there,
(41:15):
there's some people that arevery highly educated.
Edwin, one circles running
James Harrington (41:18):
there.
Several.
Several of our Ugandan staffhave a better formal education
than I do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
Many, many of them went to amore pedigree university than I
did.
Yeah.
Many of them have had formalinstruction beyond mine for
sure.
But so first of all you know, Ilook and say, Hey, when, when
people, when humans are havinghuman experiences that impact
their performance, and thatcould be anything from, you
(41:40):
know, especially, I mean, anddon't get me wrong, I don't
wanna go too deep in thisdirection too fast.
Sure.
Keep in mind the people thatyou.
Are still living in the contextof, of abject poverty as a
nation in so many ways.
Absolutely.
It comes with a lot of things.
I never realized how many of ourteam I would have to walk
(42:00):
through tragedy with.
Yeah.
And, and so it is a regularoccurrence.
People, you know, people die,people get sick, people lose
children.
We have, I always say, you know,we, we have really had to walk
through some hard things.
When they're doing that, that'snot the time to measure their
performance.
Primarily, it, it's theopportunity to build trust.
(42:25):
To build trust and care and thatloyalty.
Right.
You know, even from a practicalbusiness standpoint, first of
all, I think that's good.
Being good humans and goodcommunity, right.
That, that's a, that's asomething I wanna be part of.
But even in terms of theefficiency of the organization
you know, community on a missionand engagement and with low
turnover becomes efficient andeffective.
(42:47):
And so when people have theirlife, you know.
On the rocks, then that's thetime to focus on how do you
build care and trust and, andthat really develops that tight
bond of loyalty among you.
When they're struggling now whenthey're trying to learn or
they're, or, it's not a majorcrisis, it's just a struggle.
Coming alongside people, makingsure we've defined success,
(43:10):
created opportunity.
And then one of the first thingsI look at is, Hey, how hard are
we driving?
If you are a redlining team,there's no chance to, to step
back and actually improve yourability to do the work.
You can't build capacity.
Yeah.
If a hundred percent it takessome capacity to build capacity.
(43:30):
Yeah.
And so if you're completelyredlined, you cannot get any
better.
And so you actually have tosupport people so that they can,
you know, have a little bit ofvibrancy in their work, whether
it's creativity or crosspollination with other
professionals, or taking, eventaking the time to read a book
or to step away from the work.
And so you, you know, you doneed that.
(43:52):
We also recognize that it'simportant that this is serious
work.
We try to cultivate a culturethat doesn't take ourselves too
seriously.
We try to have fun and process.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
Yeah.
James Harrington (44:02):
And play is a big part of it.
And so yeah.
There's a, there's a, you'vebeen around, it's a lot of
laughter.
Yeah.
A lot of laughter.
There's a lot of laughter in allof our offices.
Yeah.
And and I think that reallyhelps that helps people perform
better as well, because, youknow you can, you can have a
serious conversation aboutsomeone's struggle or failure or
something.
They blew it on.
(44:22):
Or you can come alongside'emand, you know, and say, Hey so
how do you, how do you thinkthat went?
You know, and it, and it'sclear, you know, and, and you
go, yeah, that's a, you know, orI'll, I'll grab something off
camera and show you.
Like,
Speaker 4 (44:37):
yeah.
James Harrington (44:38):
Or I'll just, you know, so something didn't go
well and I'll just hand them,we've got this, this little
plush dumpster fire.
I'm like, so I'm just gonna sitthis on your desk for today.
I think you need this.
Jason Frazell (44:47):
You, you, you let me know how this lands for you.
I'm not gonna give you any otherinformation, but it is a
dumpster fire.
You read into that what youwill.
James Harrington (44:55):
But we, what we do is really hard.
It's one of the most persistentproblems on the planet.
Of course, we're gonna encountersome dumpster fires of course,
but that's not the measure ofthem as a person.
Right.
It's, it's, yeah.
It's just a measure of how oneoutcome went.
And you know, the reality is,you know, we take it in the
teeth all the time.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Yeah.
James Harrington (45:13):
But, but if you have that strong foundation,
that strong community, you getup and you keep going.
Jason Frazell (45:19):
Nice.
Let's talk about.
Ways people can get connected.
And we have a, a specific thing,you have a specific event that's
going on right now, and thenwe'll wrap, we'll leave the
cliffhanger for a tail from yourjourney.
And I, and I don't even know ifI'm gonna know the story, so
let's start with people wannalearn more.
Obviously you can just Google.
You got a water project.
There's only one.
(45:39):
You got Water project in theworld, far as I know.
Yep.
James Harrington.
Yep.
Water
James Harrington (45:43):
project do com.
Yep.
Jason Frazell (45:45):
Yeah.
Whatcha y'all working on rightnow, specifically?
James Harrington (45:47):
So the, the big event coming up.
Jason Frazell (45:50):
Whatever you wanna tell us about.
James Harrington (45:51):
Yeah, so in April 12th we have our 5K and
this is one of our annualevents.
That's a great opportunity for.
No matter where you are our, ouroffice is based in Rochester,
New York, so we certainly do ain-person version of it.
You can meet us you know, onApril 12th in the morning, we
get together at Powder MillsPark here, and we, we run and
(46:11):
walk this 5K, but virtually wehave people participate wherever
you are.
We'll, we'll send you out at-shirt and a race bib and some
fun stuff.
So fun.
But between now and then, youcan register as an individual or
as a team at Ugandan waterproject.com/ 5K.
And it's a lot of fun becausepeople compete.
(46:33):
I don't care how fast you are inthe race.
We like to celebrate peopledoing, doing, setting
fundraising goals and raisingmoney, and they compete against
each other.
And Jason, you and your familyhave gotten into it in some
hilarious ways.
In fact, I think you cracked arib last year.
Jason Frazell (46:50):
I, I didn't quite crack rib, but I, I definitely,
I was too old and I did acartwheel on camera and it did
not go well.
So that's not happening thisyear.
James Harrington (46:56):
Right.
Motivational antics, right.
Watch antics.
Yeah.
If you watch our social media, Ijust put out the first
leaderboard.
It's really fun news deskupdate.
But we, we pit teams againsteach other.
I.
And, and it just is so fun forabout three or four weeks of
just intense you know, effort tokind of draw some attention.
And then we get together and wetry to raise up.
(47:18):
This year the goal is$125,000.
So whether you wanna run, walk,or just support one of these
teams you know, hey, go on theleaderboard and, and you know,
move somebody up.
You know?
It's a great way to, to helpfuel the work that happens all
year long.
And yeah, you know, everybodycan participate.
Jason Frazell (47:38):
Well, I, I got a chance to go last year with my
kids.
Yeah, that's fun.
And it was really cool to seethe community show up for you
all.
I was really impressed with howmany people you had and just to,
and not to put a damper on theweather was awful.
It, I don't think it could havegotten, it was like 40 degrees
(47:58):
and raining and there was kidsout there, but man, the, the,
the level of love.
For that I witnessed for, yeah,UWP is the one of the local
charities and the level of lovepeople have for you and your
team.
Just a, and I mean, that room ispacked.
Yeah.
I don't know how many peoplewere there, but I said The
number of people that are gonnashr up for this thing when it
was that miserable out.
(48:20):
Was was really amazing.
I'm gonna do a quick pitch.
It's a, it's a
James Harrington (48:23):
warm, yeah, it's a warm community.
And if you've never been part ofsomething like that again, like,
you know, sometimes you wonderwhat does it feel like to
actually belong to a communitythat has a cause?
Because, you know, again, I'vedone the donations where it
feels like I'm just.
Throwing my, my, yeah, ofcourse.
A few bucks into the ocean ofgood intentions and this is
(48:43):
different.
This is community on a missionand we, we show up for one
another.
We show up for the cause and weshow up in whatever weather and
it is a lot of fun.
Jason Frazell (48:52):
It was a, it was a lot of fun.
I'm gonna do a quick pitch.
Yes.
If you are interested inlearning more, there will be a
link in the podcast show notes.
We're a specific team that'sraising funds for the second
time in a row.
Yes, it's called SunshineDaydream.
We finished in second place lastyear.
So close,
James Harrington (49:10):
Jason.
So close
Jason Frazell (49:11):
and only, but if you look at what we raise, just
to do a not so humble brag.
It was really my family andanother family who raised all
that money.
We finished in second place.
The people who finished infirst, I, were they a car
dealership or they were Maybe,were they like not going door to
door?
I don't know if they were likethey, they, they had like scaled
impact that had them barely beatus and we kind of crushed it.
James Harrington (49:33):
You did.
You, you did a really good jobcoming in as the number one
loser.
As the number one
Jason Frazell (49:39):
loser.
As the number one loser.
Now
James Harrington (49:41):
you're starting to see the, the
affectionate, you know, goadingthat I do.
So basically this is what I dofor the next three weeks three
or four weeks as we're leadingup to this is I just kind, it's
just
Jason Frazell (49:50):
a roast.
James Harrington (49:51):
It's, yeah, basically it's sort of like
encouragement and a little bitof pricking and prodding here.
But it's all in good fun.
Yeah, it's all
Jason Frazell (49:57):
great fun.
James Harrington (49:59):
You steal trophies.
Jason Frazell (50:00):
You steal trophies from car dealerships.
The videos of it, it's amazing.
James Harrington (50:04):
We've got, we got the, we do have trophies and
there's great prizes too.
Honestly, there is great
Jason Frazell (50:07):
prizes.
James Harrington (50:08):
It's part of the fun, as we say.
You know, and, and that goesback to when I was a kid.
I went to this private schooland we did a fundraiser, and if
we sold enough of whatever itwas, we could pick something
from the prize sheet.
And I, that was when Walkmanradios were new and there was a
picture of Walkman.
And that's what my sister and Iworked hard for.
And when we got it, it was apiece of junk.
(50:31):
Like it broke, like it broke thefirst day and it was only an AM
radio like, and so I was so disdisillusioned.
I said, if I'm ever in aposition to make sure that we
can do something with prizes,it's gonna be stuff that people
really feel like, oh, that wasgreat.
What an awesome thing to be partof, and what a great reward.
Yeah.
So
Jason Frazell (50:50):
definitely you all, you, you and your team
definitely generate.
Really good raffle prizes andlike things for sponsors.
Like genuinely stuff donors areamazing.
Yeah, like I remember, Iremember I, I won a, a case of
wine and the wine was great.
James Harrington (51:05):
Yes.
Yeah.
That was the case of wine golf
Jason Frazell (51:07):
tournament.
James Harrington (51:07):
We, this is the Finger Lakes area and thing
lake.
Lots of great wineries and solot definitely.
So if you like that kind ofthing, you'll, you wanna get
out, get active.
It's a lot of fun no matterwhere you are.
We, the virtual version is stilla lot of fun too.
Please do that.
Jason Frazell (51:20):
So wrapping up, I promised you all a story from
the field, James.
Yes.
You have about three to fiveminutes to give us whatever you
wanna share about a ti one ofthe times that in Uganda,
something that interesting thathappened to you and the team.
James Harrington (51:35):
Yeah.
Let's see.
I can remember, gosh, there'sbeen, there's been so many
situations, but you know, Iremember one time when we were,
we were trying to go out, we'retrying to head down to this one
area about, it was supposed tobe about three and a half hours
away.
And I mean this just tounderstand some of the context
of where we have to get to andas we're driving to get to this
(51:59):
site we encountered the factthat one of the bridges had
washed out.
And it's not like there's a lotof easy detour.
And so No, no.
Nor are, nor
Jason Frazell (52:10):
nor are there lots of extra public works
people that are easily puttingup a secondary bridge to help
you get across.
No.
James Harrington (52:17):
Yeah.
No.
And so this, we're like, oh,it's gonna be another like two
to three hours to get around.
Right.
And so we're having to sidetrackand we get we get way down this
road and.
Really late.
And so it's, there's no one elseon the road, dirt road.
And and we're in a, a, a van.
It's a four wheel drive van, butit's just a van.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
Mm-hmm.
James Harrington (52:40):
You know, and, and we come over this little
rise and I, the headlights, we,I see water, it's been raining
and the, and the road is floodedout and I can see, you know,
it's about 50 yards.
And I'm thinking, I wonder howdeep that is.
(53:00):
And I get out and I'm, I'mlooking at it in the night and
I'm like, I kneel down to feelwhat kind of mud it is.
'cause if it's sandy mud,that's, that's a good sign.
But if it's, it was the reallysticky, slick mud.
Mm.
And I'm like, e lots of claythat grabs your tires.
And I hear some people in thebushes off to the side, you
know, there's no street lights.
So I'm like, and they're kind ofjust murmuring and talking.
(53:20):
And I was like, hello friends.
Does anyone speak English?
You know?
And they come over and I said,they we're, we're chatting.
I said, this, this water werepeople going through today?
And they're like, Hmm, not somuch.
And I said, this car, what doyou think?
Can I make it?
And they said, if you, if youtry it, sir, you'll be sleeping
on a veranda tonight.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
And I was like,
James Harrington (53:42):
oh.
And I said, is there anotherway?
And they said, there's anotherway, but you will not find it.
And, and I said, is theresomeone I can show me the way?
And so this mother and herteenage son get in the car'cause
she knows the way and he speaksEnglish and they, they pile in
and we go back and we, we get toa part of the road and they
(54:03):
said, turn up.
And I look and it's just a rockhillside.
And I'm like, oh crap.
And so I'm like, all right,everybody hold on.
And I just gun it.
And we just fly and bounce upthis thing and it's like.
Pretty precarious.
Get up and sure enough, at thetop of this ridge, there's a,
but it was touch and go.
(54:24):
Yeah.
And we found our way down andaround and we ended up getting
on it.
But like that's just everydaystuff that's just trying to
drive to work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and and, and so we've,we've got all kinds of stories
of the, the treacherous journey,but at the end of it, you know,
there's all kinds of storiesalso of.
You know, trying to fix wellsthat have been broken for years
(54:46):
and fish and pipes out of'emand, and restoring water.
And there's all kinds of storiesof, of really restoring hope at
the other end that makes,whether it's, you know, I've had
food poisoning, you know, moretimes than I can count.
I've had chronic diarrhea, youknow, on so many trips or
sunburn burned or all kinds ofstuff.
We've had stuff stolen, we'vehad car accidents, all kinds of
things.
It's a rough place, but at theend of the day, when, when it
(55:09):
works.
People get safe water and theirlives transform.
Yeah.
And I, and I think of ChristineJungo, who just last week got
water, a water connection at herhome.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
Mm.
And,
James Harrington (55:22):
and I think about how that personal
transformation doesn't matter.
All the risk, all the challenge,all the long flights or the long
drives, it's worth it.
Jason Frazell (55:32):
That's beautiful.
James, thank you so much forbeing on.
You know, I have so muchappreciation for the work that
you do and the rest of your teamdoes, both here and in Uganda
and abroad.
We wish you the very bestsuccess in 2025 with all you're
doing.
Again, if you're interested inand want to engage in any way,
we'll put all these show notesin the link.
(55:53):
The main one though, is theSunshine Daydream fundraising
link.
That is the one'cause myself andmy teammate Tanner, we are very
competitive individuals.
And we don't like to lose and wedon't like being the first
losers.
So please
James Harrington (56:05):
show up some love.
They can, they can take thefirst place position this year.
I'm confident
Jason Frazell (56:08):
we can take the first place.
We're gonna beat a cardealership with the two of us,
but James, yeah.
Seriously, it's such a, such apleasure to get to know you and
the team and just, you all aredoing such amazing work.
Thank you so much for being on.
James Harrington (56:19):
Great to be with you.
We'll we'll see out there on therace course.
Jason Frazell (56:22):
On the race course, definitely not driving
up a rock hill in the middle ofUganda.
If you happen to visit Uganda,James will not subject you to
that.
That's for, that's for CEOs whowork for the company only.
Thanks so much
Speaker (56:34):
Thanks for listening to another episode of Talking to
Cool People with Jason Frizzell.
If you enjoyed today's episode,please tell your friends, follow
us on Instagram and Facebook andgive us a shout out or take a
moment to leave a review oniTunes.
If something from today'sepisode pique your interest and
you'd like to connect, email usat podcast@jasonzell.com.
(56:57):
We love hearing from ourlisteners because you're cool
people too.
My guest on the podcast today is the one and
only James Harrington.
On a personal note, I've gottento know James in the last couple
of years.
We've become friends, we'vebecome, say colleagues, we've
supported each other through avariety of different things, and
you are all in for an amazingtreat is James is.
I'm just gonna, his content andthe way he speaks is gonna, is
going to do way more than Icould ever do.
(00:33):
No pressure.
My, my friend, so I'm here atJames Harrington is the CEO.
Founder of the Ugandan WaterProject based in up upstate New
York.
And we are recording this on, inMarch in the evening.
And it's the two days after aone day after daylight savings.
And it's beautiful'cause we'rerecording this.
I, it kind of feels like it'sstill during the day.
James Harrington (00:52):
It does.
It's an amazing thing for thoseof us that live in the
northeast.
Hope has come, hope has come.
We have survived.
And and I think, I think we'regonna make it.
Jason Frazell (01:02):
We're, I think we're gonna make it so James, so
good to have you here.
Wanna start and have theaudience just get, get to know a
little bit about you.
I said you're the CEO andfounder of Uganda Water Project.
What else do you want us all toknow about you?
James Harrington (01:14):
Yeah, I've, I've got a long and winding road
that brought me here and what'samazing is when you really find
heart-centered work that justresonates with, resonate
intellectually, socially,spiritually, like physically,
it's eng.
I like how it engages me.
So many of my past experienceshave showed up here.
Everything from, you know,selling shoe shoes at the mall
(01:37):
when I was in high school togrowing up working in hardware
stores, farm and feed stores,and learning general knowledge,
doing manual labor all the waythrough to I was, I was a
purchasing agent for a wineryfor a while.
I helped run the back end of of,of a Mary Kay business for a
long time.
I, I, I did all sorts of stuff,worked at a church as a
(01:59):
technical director, and believeit or not, all of these things
have fingerprints on the work wedo in Uganda.
And it's, yeah, it's unexpected,but it's true
Jason Frazell (02:09):
that, that's really cool.
I always like to start with youspecifically thinking about this
conversation.
The audience tell, we know eachother, and I already mentioned
that I.
Why the heck clean water inUganda as an American, as a guy
from upstate New York, and I'mgonna say this, there's a
million problems in this worldto solve.
James Harrington (02:31):
Yes.
Jason Frazell (02:32):
And a talented guy like yourself, you can
probably choose to solve or workon almost any of them.
I would love for the audience tohear your origin story of what
had you go, this is a good I, ormaybe you didn't think it was a
good idea.
You're like, this is something Ishould do.
I'm not sure if it's a goodidea, but Yeah.
So I'd love to hear the originstory of you on Water Project.
James Harrington (02:48):
Yeah, absolutely.
So it was 2007, may of 2007Memorial Day weekend, and I
ended up at neighbors Barbecue.
And there was a gentleman fromUganda who had come to the US
for a conference and he wastrained as a teacher.
He had started schools and, andtaught in schools.
And he, and he also was a pastorof church, a church in Uganda.
(03:09):
And so he, and he had gone toseminary and things like that.
So he had all this education toinspire the spirit and cultivate
the mind and dynamicpersonality.
And he's just a great guy.
And as weird.
And I had no idea any detailsabout Uganda, so I was curious.
Right.
And talking to him, he was very,he was hilarious and dynamic and
(03:30):
I was, but I was asking him,Hey, what are the challenges you
face in the work you do?
He said, honestly, one of thebiggest challenges that is that
despite being good at what I doand loving it, I look into the
faces of congregations inclassrooms who are.
Of people who are sick andhungry and thirsty, and my
skills and abilities don'tovercome that.
(03:50):
And so that just struck me thatyou know, when you don't have
safe water or you don't havesufficient food, that is an
intellectual problem.
Meaning, yeah.
If you're trying to teachsomebody, you can't teach them
until you've overcome thathurdle.
And same thing with, yeah, withwater so many things, water
comes first.
One of our, our good friends,his name is Joe Jay.
He he always likes to say itthis way, when, when you have
(04:14):
safe water, you have theprivilege of a thousand
problems.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
When you don't have
James Harrington (04:19):
safe water, you only get one problem.
Because it just dominateseverything.
Yeah.
That one problem dominateseverything.
And and so talking to this man,you know, all those years ago I
was struck with how profoundly.
Expansive and, and you just, itjust swallows everything.
The water crisis.
And I started on a educationaljourney to learn and understand.
(04:42):
I asked him all these questionsand then the next six months
staying in touch with him andlearning more'cause I had a
nagging suspicion that I couldprobably do something to help
him.
At the time I was a rodent tourmanager for a band.
We were doing small events upand down the east coast and in
the northeast United States.
And so logistics andrelationships were where I added
(05:04):
value and I thought, Hey, Ithink this water thing could
probably be something I couldwork on for this guy.
And so it was about a yearlater, after first meeting him,
me and a few friends, we'draised a little money around
this idea of building somerainwater systems to put on
community buildings.
And we showed up in Uganda andhelped to install these
(05:25):
rainwater systems.
And I, that was, that was ourfirst couple of projects in
August of 2008.
It was amazing.
Jason Frazell (05:32):
And here we are to 2025.
That is amazing.
So almost 17 years ago now.
James Harrington (05:38):
Yeah.
It, it really is.
It, it's been amazing to see howmuch time has gone by and how
much we've grown.
Yeah.
But you know, why, why stickwith it?
I mean, you know why water isbecause I, frankly, I'm lazy.
I can appreciate that.
Jason Frazell (05:51):
Yeah.
In the best way possible.
James Harrington (05:53):
Yeah.
And if you want to, if you wantto get something done
efficiently, ask a lazy personto do it, and they'll find the
most heck yes.
Effective way to do it.
Right.
And in this case, if you're, ifyou care about poverty and
suffering in the, in the worldone of the most effective ways
to alleviate poverty globally.
Is to address any gaps in thewater needs of, of, of people.
(06:17):
Yeah.
Because it doesn't matter.
So many of the causes that areimportant to, whether it's
education or economicdevelopment or job skills or
things like the family stabilitygender opportunities, all sorts
of those things are dependent inone way or another on having
access to safe water, foodsupply for sure.
Medical, like clinical andpublic health.
(06:39):
So many of these issues that areholding people back are
dependent on water.
So essentially, yeah, I waslike, oh, if we can address
this, all of these other things,it's like a rising tide that
lifts all ships.
Jason Frazell (06:53):
No, no.
Small amount of irony with therising tide.
James Harrington (06:57):
I do.
I do.
I've been accused of using a lotof water metaphors.
Jason Frazell (07:00):
Water metaphors, which makes a lot of sense.
Jam James, at this point, Iwanna, I wanna share with
everybody that I got a chance.
To get involved with you andwe'll talk a little bit more
about that, you and the rest ofthe UWP team and I got a chance
to see this firsthand inNovember of 2023.
Yes.
James and I and a cohort ofamazing business leaders and
people who are interested inthis work.
(07:21):
Yep.
I got a chance to go to Ugandaand witness, witness this
firsthand, and I wanna sharewith the audience my perspective
on something that I saw and whatI, if I remember right, I
specifically told you this,we're talking about rainwater
collection systems, so that's.
For all intents and purposes,and I explain this to my, my
daughter's school, my daughter'sclass a few weeks ago.
(07:41):
It's just a gutter with anothergutter that runs to a tank, and
then that tank runs to a faucetand you turn it on.
Pretty simple.
In the United States, a lot ofus have gutters on our homes.
This is not a thing.
We installed one of those, andby we, I mean the people on the
trip.
We watched your team on theground and Uganda do a great job
of all the work you gave a hand,I gave, I, I laid a couple of
(08:04):
bricks because otherwise I wouldbreak the thing.
That is, I am, that is not my,my strong suit and I'm just
gonna, without getting into thedetails, what really struck me
was that school, I believe hadabout 170 students, if I'm not
mistaken.
And the support staff, theprincipal, the teachers before.
This, we installed the systemfor them.
They would walk down to the wellduring the middle of the school
(08:26):
day.
So want everybody listeningright now who has children to
think about this?
Yes.
10 o'clock in the morninginstead of studying spelling or
math or whatever the thingthey're doing.
It would be my daughter's nameis Hannah.
Hey Hannah, can you go down andgrit?
Get the next Jerry can of waterso that we can cook lunch.
And she would leave theclassroom, leave her learning
environment, walk down a muddyhill, and that day was muddy to
(08:48):
the local town.
Well.
Yeah.
Which didn't look veryappetizing.
Nope.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
They would fill it up and they'd bring it back and
they'd give it to the teacherand then the teacher had to boil
it.
You hope.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
You hope.
You hope.
Yes.
Jason Frazell (09:03):
You hope they boil it.
'cause if they don't boil it,that's a whole different thing.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yeah,
Jason Frazell (09:07):
and I'm saying all this because the rainwater
collection system, late laborparts, all these things is
about, it's a little under$4,000.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah.
Jason Frazell (09:19):
Yep.
And if you think about what wedo here in the United States for
$4,000, what we pay for thethings, and I said, talk about
an outsize impact.
And that was the moment when Isaid to you like, oh, now I get
it.
Yes, the outsize impact.
So, you know, and like, andthat's part of the reason I
went, I wanted to see what wecan do by family and what we can
do as Americans in a countrylike that where there is a need
(09:43):
and there's also the costs arelow, and so it moves the needle
a lot.
So I wanna encourage everybodylistening to think about this
for yourself.
Think about your kid walking toget water, or your kid drinking
the well water and then gettinga diarrhea or headaches.
Yeah, all the things that landin there, James.
Go.
(10:03):
I wanna go back on your storyhere.
So you raised some money, youwent over to Uganda, you
installed those collectionsystems, and you've done, you
and the team have donethousands.
You've served hundreds ofthousands of hundreds of
thousands of Ugandans now.
Yes.
Do you remember the feeling whenyou got that first installation
and got that first group cleanwater?
James Harrington (10:20):
Oh, absolutely.
Because that was, I mean, it wasinstantaneous that I realized
that I was, I was participatingin something far bigger than I
realized.
Yeah.
That first day was on Oo road,just outside of, in Jinja,
Uganda, ironically near the,near the headwaters of the Nile
River.
Hmm.
So there's water.
In fact, there's one of the mosticonic sources of water on the
(10:43):
planet, finds its source inJinja, and yet it's not safe to
drink.
And so you have a water crisis,even, even in the presence of
Lake Victoria is also there, thelargest lake in Africa.
And we installed this rainwatersystem.
And our rainwater systems alsogo hand in hand with filters to
make that, that safe to drink.
And talking to some of the folksthat we're gonna be using that
(11:06):
first Rainwater system and howthat was gonna impact their
families and realizing some ofthese people were, were dealing
with HIV and chronic illnessand, and, and just realize how
much hope it brings for a familyto know that something with real
infrastructure and stability isthere.
Because they have so muchvulnerability, just cascading
(11:27):
layers of vulnerability.
And and so it really, in, in aninstant, I just was like, I knew
this was good.
I didn't understand how great itwas.
And and it really, it, Iremember after that first day at
that first project, getting backin the van to go back to the
guest house we were staying at.
And I remember thinking tomyself and just saying to
(11:49):
myself, I could do this athousand times.
And and as of today, we've,we've got more than 1800 major
installations.
It's not just rainwater systems.
We left.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Yeah,
James Harrington (11:59):
we, we expanded beyond that years ago.
We, we still do plenty ofrainwater systems, but we also
repair hand pumps and brokenhand pumps.
We drill wells.
We actually have done somegravity flow systems where we
find springs up in the mountainsand.
Several kilometers down intocommunities.
And then we're starting to do alot more with solar pumping
(12:22):
systems, where we're using solarenergy to pump it to an elevated
tank and then gravity feed thatout into communities and, and
even right to people's homes.
So it's amazing to see whatwe've done because we have done
it more than a thousand times.
There's over, there's over650,000 people in Uganda who
have access to safe water for.
Jason Frazell (12:45):
Amazing.
One thing I wanna give you all ashout out for around the last
model there, the pump and thesolar.
Yeah.
You also have a business modelwhere people get to have a sense
of ownership because they payfor it.
And when you told me what theypay for a jerry can of water.
Yeah, I laughed.
But it's, but as a percentage,it's significant.
But just say this to all of youlistening is you walk up, you
(13:07):
have a, like a key fob and youscan it.
And you get your Jerry can oryour bucket of water, whatever
it is you're getting, and theyhave a sense of ownership
because they are paying forthat.
It's small, it's negligible, butit becomes a self-funding
system, which then allows you togo out and do more work in that
community or the next community,which is a real mindset shift
(13:30):
when you are used to living inthese, living in these
communities with poverty whereyou're like, either the
government gives it to us.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Frazell (13:38):
Or the charity comes in and they give it to us,
or we get nothing and wesurvive.
And so you're in reinventingthat context, which is, which is
a, which is a another reasonthat I really love the work you
all are doing.
And I wanna ask the lastquestion here, I know is on a
lot of people's minds before wemove in the how you, how you
view running a nonprofit.
(13:59):
Why doesn't the government domore?
James Harrington (14:03):
Yeah, I mean it's, it's a, it's a great
question.
And for a long time, I, I haveto confess, I didn't think the
government was doing much.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Mm-hmm.
James Harrington (14:12):
I didn't have relationships with district and
national government.
I, I had the assumption that itwas all corrupt.
Yeah.
And I'm, I'm kind of aconservative guy.
I, I like, you know, only, Idon't get me wrong, I like roads
and I like, I like bridges andditches and I.
Schools and things like that.
(14:33):
So I like to pay all the taxes Ihave to, but I, I tend to like,
you know, especially withcorruption, you know, this idea,
oh, African government, it'sgonna be corrupt.
I had always, for several yearsavoided that.
But then what we realized wasthere's a lot of amazing people
working every day in thegovernment.
Selfless people.
(14:53):
Who have left the private sectorto come be public servants and
they're inspiring and, and theyare working their butts off.
Yeah.
But the economy is young.
Mm-hmm.
It's still largely cash and soyeah.
It's hard to harness the, the,the tax revenue from cash
transactions or bartertransactions and so there's just
not a lot of revenue for publicworks and things like that.
(15:15):
Yeah.
So there's just so much thatstill has to be built.
Keep in mind, you know, they,they won their independence, in,
in the sixties.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah.
James Harrington (15:25):
So in 1963.
So it, it really is a youngnation.
Yeah.
And and so they're working hard.
They just, they just still needa lot of help and you know,
things like capital is expensivethere.
They don't have the tax revenue.
Then private sector can make itup except the private sector.
(15:46):
I mean, here we can get loans atreasonable rates there.
Right.
There.
It, it's not uncommon to find 18to 28% interest rates on loans.
And that's not a loan shark.
That is like at a bank.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Yeah.
James Harrington (16:01):
You know, the best you can get for a loan rate
there for like big projects islike nine to 12%.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Yeah.
James Harrington (16:07):
And so it's just very expensive.
That's expensive.
Yeah.
Because of, because it's a highrisk environment.
So, yeah.
So pe the government is tryingto do a lot.
We actually partner a lot withthe government and they
definitely do their part to tryto help.
They're definitely serious.
And I have humbly changed mytune.
We still do have to exercise alittle discretion on you know,
(16:28):
there's still a few people thathave selfish intentions just
like this.
Of course, you know.
Jason Frazell (16:33):
Some places unlike, unlike the U, unlike the
US government.
Yeah.
You don't find that here, whichis just philanthropic.
No, exactly.
That's, that's only a Ugandangovernment thing.
Altruism.
Yep.
James Harrington (16:42):
Yep.
But James, I would Servantheart.
Jason Frazell (16:45):
Yeah, exactly.
So I would assert, and one ofthe other reasons I wanted to
have you on is to talk about asthe CEO of, of UWP, how you
think about running it.
And one of the things I love tohear you say is you say, we're a
charity that doesn't run like acharity.
And you've been doing this nowfor 17 years.
(17:07):
You've grown your staffsignificantly.
You've grown.
Money raised and the impact yearover year growing and growing,
which isn't a normal,necessarily a normal thing at a
thing of your size.
It's not like you're getting aton of money from large global,
large global nonprofits or thesebig, you know, the Gates
Foundation isn't writing you acheck every year and you're go
to do the work.
(17:27):
You're doing grassrootsfundraising.
You're going out there and dothe work.
So I'd love to, I'd love for youto share your brilliance around
the audience of how you thinkabout running an organization.
Yeah, like UWP that allows you,and for people in nonprofit know
this, to utilize more of thefunds raised to do the actual
work and a less of the admincost, which is one of the ways
(17:48):
that nonprofits are measured.
James Harrington (17:49):
Yeah.
So there's a, there's a, anumber of different things that
go into our DNA that makes us,uniquely us.
One of the things that you'llhear us say is we run a charity,
not a charity case.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I love that.
James Harrington (18:02):
And that's important because we fight
poverty.
We try not to subject ourselvesto it.
Right.
And yet that's great.
We've all had that experience ofpeople that are work in
nonprofits where you're like,gosh, it feels like these guys
have their own expression ofpoverty.
They have poverty mentality orpoverty mindset, lack.
It's always lack, it's alwayscrisis.
(18:24):
And and I find that reallyoffput.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Mm-hmm.
James Harrington (18:29):
Even repulsive.
Right?
And so that's, you know, thework is already hard.
You, you, you have to approachit with intention for, for
stewarding your own engagement,right?
So that's, that's one set of, ofvalues is just making sure that
we, we don't subject ourselvesto that poverty mentality.
The other thing is you know, we,we try to run our charity the
(18:51):
way I'm, I'm veryentrepreneurial.
I have a business background.
I only, I only.
That's, and so we run ourcharity the way you and other
entrepreneurs run theirbusiness.
And the only difference is.
You know, I don't, I don't getto keep it right, but we want to
keep an eye on the bottom line.
(19:11):
We want to diversify revenue.
We, we really believe in servingour customers, right?
Our, our customers are clientslike, and that would include
the, the people that that aredonating.
They are, they have an interestthat we wanna make sure we're,
we're thinking about, andabsolutely the people that we're
serving.
We really focus on valuedelivery and the value
(19:32):
proposition.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Mm-hmm.
James Harrington (19:35):
The other thing is a lot of people, I hear
it sometimes expressed this way,how do you go 17 years?
How, how do you raise money andbe a fundraiser?
Like, don't you get sick ofbegging for money all the time?
And my response is, Hey, ourorganization does something that
people really want to see donein this world.
Yeah.
(19:55):
And they want to see it donewell.
And if they can trust that it'sbeing done well, there's a lot
of people that want to be partof it.
And on that foundation, when Isay, Hey, we have an incredible
team of professionals, a fewhere in the United States, and
then about 40 Ugandans on theground in Uganda doing all sorts
(20:17):
of parts of the work,professional people of
excellence and passion anddrive, and I am inviting you.
To hire us to do the work we do.
So when I'm, we're asking for adonation, we're inviting people
to hire us to create impact withtheir resources and, and our
(20:38):
shared intention.
And so it's almost like, youknow, it, it's similar to an
investor model.
Yeah.
You know, the Elle family has astake in this, in this mission.
And, and you wanna see theoutcome.
But the ROI is not a return oninvestment to investors.
It's an ROI to the people thatyou wanna see served and our
(21:00):
world as a global community.
Yeah.
That mentality is not alwayswhat you see with common
charities.
No,
Jason Frazell (21:07):
no.
James, I love that.
I've never heard you phrase itthat way.
You've got me thinking about,I'm, I wanna, I mean, and I
think this, this is reallyblowing my mind around, I wanna
hire you.
That is not generally my mindsetabout, about charitable giving,
including things like churchesgiving money at churches.
It's not generally the, the wayit's, Hey, you're gonna, you're,
you know, we, we'd ask of your,you know, your tithe or whatever
(21:29):
you give, and in return, we'regonna provide these services,
but I've never heard the phrasehire us, which, yeah, which,
which alludes to, or at leastfor me, means a different level
of ownership on your end,responsibility on your end that,
oh, we're actually working foryou.
To make this thing becauseJason, you don't know how to
provide clean water.
You could lay a brick or two.
(21:50):
Yeah.
Or, or sing to the kids, butyou're not, we don't, we don't
want you doing that work, butwe're gonna take that money and
do it.
And I wanna, you mentionedsomething as well, you didn't
use the word, but I wanna talk alittle bit about efficiency in
what you do.
Yes.
Efficiency.
What does as the CEO, what doesthat mean to you when you're
measuring efficiency across thestaff, across the projects?
What does that mean?
James Harrington (22:11):
Yeah.
Well, and I think it gets backto something you referred to,
which is, you know, a lot ofpeople, they measure, the only
measurement they have for anorganization is how much do they
spend on overhead oradministration.
Yeah.
Right.
And don't get me wrong, youshould ask that question.
Yeah.
The follow up question would be,should be how do you measure
that?
Also, what's your overallimpact, right.
(22:34):
So yeah, but it by no meansshould be the only measure
because here's something that Iwould say.
When we spend money onadministration or overhead,
we're, part of what that does isensure that we have professional
people Yeah.
Who wake up every day, theirfeet hit the floor, and they are
(22:54):
starting their best part oftheir day focusing on this
mission and as a, and so you getprofessional results.
And so, so there's a, there's,when you talk about efficiency.
We really wanna focus on highimpact.
We wanna know that we arehelping, you know, the dollars
are actually delivered andhaving impact on lives.
(23:16):
So we wanna know how manypeople's lives are touched and
then how, how much they'rechanged.
So we, we like to measure thingslike when we bring clean water
to a school, does enrollment goup?
Do test scores go up?
Do does the, especially like insecondary schools without safe
water, there's a huge drop off.
We just celebrated internationalWomen's Day.
(23:38):
There's a huge drop off, off insecondary schools of of
adolescent girls enrolled inschools if they don't have safe
water because they can't theycan't ally address their
menstrual needs.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Sure.
And,
James Harrington (23:51):
and so when we bring safe water, do we see, the
enrollment of, of girls go up inthe school.
So we like to measure, you know,if it's at a clinic, we're
looking at we're looking atinfant mortality rates and we're
looking at you know, infectionrates and or just the, the
number of, of inpatient versusoutpatient.
But we wanna see impact andthen.
(24:12):
We also want to make sure thatwe have the people we need to
deliver a high pro, a highquality product and service.
But we also look for ways to dothat, that stretches the dollar.
So, for instance, we have, mostof our staff is in Uganda.
Yeah.
Partly, partly because we canhire really professional people
(24:33):
there.
At a much lower rate than we cando here.
And that means, sure, thedollars go farther.
And so that, things like thatmake a difference.
And we try to, we try, we try tobrutally measure ourselves.
So there's a couple things we doto, to just really track, hey,
how are we doing?
So for instance you know, we,we, every year we take every
(24:57):
dollar we've spent on anything.
We don't separate it out byprogram or administration or
fundraising.
We just see every dollar we'vespent.
How much was that?
And then how much, how manypeople got safe water this year
for the first time?
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Mm.
James Harrington (25:13):
You know, and we, and we, we, we just measure
it.
We just say, Hey, this is, we'renot qualifying anything is just
to exist.
How many people this year, howmany people got safe water?
We compare that to other, otherorganizations that are like ours
and we try to see it.
And, and usually we've been ableto stay in that sort of like 17
to$20 range.
Jason Frazell (25:34):
That's great.
James Harrington (25:34):
17, 20 to$20 for first access per person,
which is really low.
It's harder and harder tomeasure as our, as our program
evolves because now we don'tjust, we don't just focus on
safe water access.
Jason Frazell (25:48):
Right.
James Harrington (25:48):
And, and water projects.
We're, we're trying to ask abigger question and address a
bigger part of the need.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
As we think about your 17 years of
Jason Frazell (26:01):
this sort of work mm-hmm.
CEO, growing the organizationand just to say you've got a 50
some person team, you would beif you were a CEO of a startup,
you'd be a series A or a seriesB startup who have raised.
Multimillion dollars worth ofcapital at this point, most
likely.
And I mean like venture venturecapital, which I know obviously
venture capital is notnecessarily a thing, although I
(26:21):
guess you could call it venturecapital in a way.
Give you some, give a, give youa thousand dollars and go and
reinvest that.
I'm, I'm not looking for a 10 xon it, but we call
James Harrington (26:27):
ours a, a venture capital.
A
Jason Frazell (26:30):
venture capital.
Yes.
Yes.
You get, you get pictures of thefamilies impacted.
What are some of the things thatyou have learned?
People leader organization,time.
That you'd like to impart on anyother business listener, any
other business owner, anybodyelse in business out there?
(26:52):
Because I, I'll tell you, James,to be honest with you, I always
kind of held nonprofit as like,well, it's a little different.
And the urgency's not as much.
You probably heard this amillion times.
Urgency's not as much, and youdon't have venture capital.
Nobody's like asking you to 10 xthe return.
And it seems a little like, andand my experience with it, this
is my own.
My own limited viewpoint is,well, I give the United Way some
(27:13):
money, or I throw some moneyinto the Salvation Army, and
then they do what they're gonnado that I never have any idea.
James Harrington (27:20):
Yes.
So there's certainly, that's,yeah.
Yeah.
There's certainly, well, I saythat,
Speaker 4 (27:24):
yeah.
James Harrington (27:25):
Donors that are, that have that low
expectation.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Yeah.
James Harrington (27:29):
But I would say we have, we have many of
our, most engaged partners areengaged supporters and donors.
Some of them are businessowners, some of them are family
foundations or, you know,institutional partners that,
that really care and are lookingto invest significant re
resources, you know, five andsix figures into this work.
(27:52):
And let me tell you, you thinkyou know venture capital, I've,
I've, I know people in the VCspace.
Sure.
They will let an organ, youknow, a, a startup go two, three
years, you know, longer leading,yeah.
Five years.
Oh, sometimes way longer.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Yeah.
James Harrington (28:07):
Right.
Now, granted, eventually they,they are hoping for a payday but
a ton of'em just leave thedemands on a nonprofit.
Are they that significant donorswant to see a return on their,
an impact on their investment?
And they wanna see a, ajustified impact on an
investment.
They wanna see our overhead beless than 20%, and they wanna
(28:31):
see that impact in 12 months orless the same year that they,
that they give, they wanna see ajustifiable impact on that is
high performance.
Yeah.
We have to turn, we have to turnthat money around on a dime,
implement it, effectively,measure it as we go, and then
account for it, report back anddo it on, on.
(28:54):
On a very light overhead.
And hmm.
And that also means that it canmake it really hard when me as a
leader look at the team and say,Hey, this year I think we need
to go into the woodshed and, andreally do some capacity
building.
Like we, we need to really geton the workbench and start
building some skills.
We need to build out some of ourteam.
You know, if we have to do any rand d on something, if we have
(29:17):
to learn Yeah.
A new technology.
If we, right now we're trying toonboard.
To Asana for project management.
Right?
Yeah.
And that's a pretty heavy lift.
Yeah.
But we still have to satisfy theexpectations of our supporters
while we do that.
And so yeah.
In some ways for a highperformance nonprofit, there's
(29:38):
some things that are even moredemanding than a VC
relationship.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Absolutely.
I'm thinking about.
My career
Jason Frazell (29:47):
in mostly working in private business is a lot of
the investments, like, Hey,we're purchasing Asana, we're
doing training that getsjustified by, and by the way, we
think it's gonna make us thismuch additional revenue or save
us this much in cost.
Right?
You don't have the concept ofrevenue.
And what you do.
I mean, you have the, I mean, Imean you have the concept of now
(30:07):
with some, with some of thethings we talked about, like the
the clean water system.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Yeah.
Jason Frazell (30:12):
But you don't have the revenue interns like,
Hey, if we invest in our programdirector getting this new
certification in this thing,that's gonna then create the
ability to have us raise thismuch more money.
It's more gonna impact morepeople being a more effective
leader.
So it's a different frame ofmind.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Mm-hmm.
Jason Frazell (30:27):
And it makes, justifying that to me, that
would make it a lot harder.
Yes, when you're also trying tokeep that admin cost down, but
what are, so what are some, I Idefinitely, before we wrap, and
I'm gonna throw this out there,you've got some banger stories
from your time in Uganda.
I've heard a few of them notgonna ask one for quite yet, but
I do want you to be thinkingabout Yeah, a podcast, an
(30:51):
explicit podcast, appropriatestory.
From Uganda can be, and likeI've heard all sorts of
interesting things that isn'tgonna scare everybody away, but
it's gonna go, Hey, that's aninteresting thing.
And some of them are, yeah, someof them are quite interesting.
Looking again at C-E-O-A-C-E-Omindset with a nonprofit, one of
(31:11):
the things that you say thatreally strikes me as well is how
people can work with anonprofit.
And you say that people can giveup three things, and I've heard
you say this a lot in differentspeaking engagements and I think
you said it to me, let's talkabout each of those things.
'cause this is another thingYes.
That I wasn't really thinkingabout.
So yeah, how can people getinvolved in their favorite
(31:34):
nonprofit or whatever the thingis.
James Harrington (31:36):
Absolutely.
So I always, you know, andagain, this is just my style
partly I always say you can giveyour cash, your kung fu or your
connections.
And cash is obvious.
Trademarked.
Trademarked.
Yeah, that's right.
Tm.
Cash is obvious, you know, somany of these things.
The most efficient way to addvalue is the portability and
immediacy of finances.
(31:59):
And I say cash, but really asophisticated organization is
ready to take, take finances inany form.
And, you know, from working us,we're, we've worked really hard
to understand.
Not just how to do the normal,you know, what I call retail
donations, you know, cash checkand card and you know, a CH of
course.
But we, you know, we firststarted working with
(32:21):
cryptocurrencies in 2017.
Wow.
And, and so when it was time tostart, you know, talking to
other people about, you know,crypto donations and we don't
get a lot of'em'cause themarkets have been up and down,
but but even, you know, donoradvised funds and mm-hmm.
All kinds of asset donations.
So we understand that and thatallows us to really partner
(32:44):
effectively with sophisticatedsituations.
And don't get us wrong, we're asmall organization, but we're,
we're trying to make the dooreasy to walk through.
So cash.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yeah.
James Harrington (32:54):
You know, that's great.
Kung fu though.
Kung fu is where I talk about,you know, what are your special
skills, right?
What are your skills, yourabilities, you know, and your
superpowers.
Because a lot of people, they,they don't think of what they do
as a superpower.
I was talking, I met with a, asales director for a beverage
company today and.
(33:15):
Hey, we're talking, you know,our AquaTru enterprise.
We're trying to talk tocommunities and say, Hey, will
you sign an agreement to let usmaintain your your well?
And you'll pay these small fees,but we will guarantee 99% of the
time your well is worth.
And that's a sales relationship.
And so, yes, it is.
Believe it or not, this guydoesn't think of himself as
(33:36):
being ready to help us withpoverty alleviation, but I
guarantee he is.
You're a great example.
I mean, those of you that listento your podcast know that you do
a lot of a lot of coaching and.
Your special skills have beeninvaluable to our team.
Like that's one of the mostvaluable things that your
family's been able to contributeto our mission is helping our
(33:57):
team grow.
You've coached some of ourleaders.
You have facilitated sessions tohelp us be more effective.
So kung fu is, is everythingfrom being a diesel mechanic to
a sales guy, to a coach or onthis side of things, helping,
you know, with various differentspecial skills that we need.
And then Connections is allabout that network, right?
The relationship community thatyou serve.
(34:19):
We are still a smallorganization that is mostly
unknown in this world.
Yes.
And so you are a broadcasttower, whoever you are, the you,
that's you and the you.
That's me and the you that'slistening.
And you are broadcasting aboutthe things that you think are
interesting and exciting andworth it.
And whether you're talkingaround your dinner table a
(34:41):
boardroom table.
Or on the street with yourfriends.
You know, people are part ofcircles of faith communities or
civic organizations and and allof those are are places where
opening your mouth and talkingabout the causes you care about
are a huge way of inviting morepeople to get curious and stuff.
Jason Frazell (35:03):
So, James, you had mentioned you're a small
organization and I would assertthat you all have some outsize
impact and you had the chance.
To do some pretty cool stuffearlier this year.
Maybe it was late last year, andUWP you got to represent Uganda
Water Project at the ClintonFoundation.
At the, at the Global GlobalInitiative.
The Global, yeah, the GlobalClinton Global Initiative.
(35:25):
Yep.
Let's talk a little bit aboutthat and what that is and who
you were in the room with,because you know, you're being a
humble guy.
You're like, yeah, we may besmall in terms of like our, our,
our scope and the number ofemployees.
But you all are.
Yeah.
Another example, and this iswhere, and I'm, I'm calling this
out for all the businessleaders, is how do you show up
(35:45):
to play with the big boys evenif you don't necessarily relate
to yourself as the big boys andthe big girls, and this is what
startup founders do all the timetoo, is they're in the room,
Hey, we're competing againstSalesforce, we're competing this
other, yes.
Not that you're competing, butthis is like the vibe that UWP
gets off, and I know you'veheard this from people, is you
all appear.
To be a, a, a, a prettysubstantial organization based
(36:06):
on how you show up, how yourteam shows up and the, the
efficiency which to do thingsthat.
So let's talk a lot about theglobal initiative for a few
minutes.
James Harrington (36:13):
Yeah.
Well, I will say excellence overindexes.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
So
James Harrington (36:18):
does, so.
You know, the truth is justgetting good at what you do.
Definitely, definitely helps youplay above, you know, fight
above your weight class.
And and, and that is somethingwe've believed in you know, just
getting out there and, you know,doing the hard work, you know,
hard sometimes.
(36:38):
The biggest difference, I mean,I remember early, early in our
organization, we, we werestarting to grow fast.
This went from an idea tosomething of real substance
pretty quick.
And I remember I had a friend,she was also trying to get
something started and.
She was kind of, she at abarbecue.
She asked me, she's like, Hey,so what's the secret?
(36:59):
What's the secret?
I'm seeing all this stuffhappen.
What's the secret?
And I told her, I'm like, it'snot a secret.
This happened to be the dayafter I, I said, Hey, yesterday
I left my driveway at 4:00 AMand I drove to Pittsburgh for a
cup of coffee and a check for$15,000.
And then I drove home.
(37:20):
And then I had other work to dowhen I got home.
Like it's just a lot of longwork this morning, you know,
today that we are recordingthis, my first call was at 5:00
AM because it's, you know, itwas partners in Europe, right?
And so doing the hard workrefines your process and gets
(37:40):
you better in excellence overindexes.
So part of it is I believe inthe quality of what we do
because it's been tested in thearena where.
I'm
Jason Frazell (37:48):
not
James Harrington (37:48):
afraid to put it up against and be compared
and measured against others thatare the best.
And so that allows us to walkwith head, our head up into big
environments with significantpeople.
Now you also have to balancethat with humility in our heart.
Yeah, right.
I confidence in my gaze,humility in my heart.
(38:12):
And because I don't pretend thatwe're not a small organization,
we do have limits, you know?
Sure.
The truth is I can't take, Ican't reasonably steward a
billion dollar donation rate.
Jason Frazell (38:24):
Sure.
James Harrington (38:25):
You'd be, you'd
Jason Frazell (38:25):
be open to the conversation.
James Harrington (38:27):
I'd work with that problem.
That's right.
You'd work, you'd work
Jason Frazell (38:29):
with that problem.
That's a great problem to have.
James Harrington (38:31):
But, but, but even I will say, oh yeah,
there's a, there's a limit toour capacity because of our
side.
But to walk into some of theseenvironments, you know, whether
it's World Water, we canStockholm or Clinton Global
Initiative you know, and ClintonGlobal Initiative is one of the
most influential rooms when itcomes to poverty alleviation and
suffering in the world.
They take on.
They, they enter into theconversations about some of the
big, you know, Jane Goodall wasthere.
(38:52):
Yeah.
Obviously president.
It's Davos.
Jason Frazell (38:54):
It's Davos for Es, Davos, the economic summit,
but for nonprofit, and it takesplace in New York every year.
James Harrington (39:00):
Yeah, so like Jose Andres the chef behind
World Central Kitchen was there.
I I sat in a session, you know,25 feet from Matt Damon.
Yeah.
You know, it's all of thosekinds of people.
And then of course, you know,it's President and Secretary
Clinton and their daughter, Dr.
Chelsea Clinton, Dr.
Chelsea Clinton.
And at the time, president Bidenand, and his wife showed up one
(39:22):
evening.
So like mm-hmm.
It is global leaders.
Yeah.
You know, Hamad, Eunice who iscurrently leading Bangladesh.
Mm-hmm.
And revolutionized our, ourconcept of micro micro loans
when he wrote his work withGrameen Bank.
These people are in the room andI mean in a room in the small
rooms and you're, you're thereworking on stuff together.
(39:42):
So high caliber and I think thething to remember is.
They bring certain things to thetable.
I don't, then we bring thingsthat, that they don't we have a
visibility on, on our part ofthe need and the situation that
that needs is vital to theoverall conversation.
Jason Frazell (40:00):
Yeah.
One last thing about peopleleader and let's, let's grab a
couple stories.
Stories from the field.
Sure.
Stories from the story fromputting clean water into Uganda,
or giving access to clean water,because I'm sure everybody
listening goes, that feels alittle fraught with risk.
In a variety of, in a variety ofways.
Not like, well, lethally, butalso just some, you know, just
like your, your, yourcleanliness and all those
(40:22):
things.
And I got to witness a couple ofthese things.
Sure, sure.
I wanna ask you the excellence,the excellence comment is
powerful.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
Hmm.
Jason Frazell (40:31):
And that is a force multiplier for any
business way over and abovestaffing and all those.
How do you ensure that yourteam.
Keeps that in mind that you'rekeeping your staff excellent all
the time.
And as the leader, how do youthink about it when you notice
somebody who has the capacity,has the willingness to learn and
maybe they either they run into,they run into their own version
(40:54):
like we all do of their ownbreakdowns in their life, or
they just need a little extrasomething.
How do you think about that tokeep people going and you and
excellence?
I would assert that excellence.
For the Ugandan staff might meansomething a little bit different
than excellence for Americas,depending on the education
level.
And I also know for a fact thatsome of your Ugandans have
master's degrees and you know,like medical, like there, there,
(41:15):
there's some people that arevery highly educated.
Edwin, one circles running
James Harrington (41:18):
there.
Several.
Several of our Ugandan staffhave a better formal education
than I do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
Many, many of them went to amore pedigree university than I
did.
Yeah.
Many of them have had formalinstruction beyond mine for
sure.
But so first of all you know, Ilook and say, Hey, when, when
people, when humans are havinghuman experiences that impact
their performance, and thatcould be anything from, you
(41:40):
know, especially, I mean, anddon't get me wrong, I don't
wanna go too deep in thisdirection too fast.
Sure.
Keep in mind the people thatyou.
Are still living in the contextof, of abject poverty as a
nation in so many ways.
Absolutely.
It comes with a lot of things.
I never realized how many of ourteam I would have to walk
(42:00):
through tragedy with.
Yeah.
And, and so it is a regularoccurrence.
People, you know, people die,people get sick, people lose
children.
We have, I always say, you know,we, we have really had to walk
through some hard things.
When they're doing that, that'snot the time to measure their
performance.
Primarily, it, it's theopportunity to build trust.
(42:25):
To build trust and care and thatloyalty.
Right.
You know, even from a practicalbusiness standpoint, first of
all, I think that's good.
Being good humans and goodcommunity, right.
That, that's a, that's asomething I wanna be part of.
But even in terms of theefficiency of the organization
you know, community on a missionand engagement and with low
turnover becomes efficient andeffective.
(42:47):
And so when people have theirlife, you know.
On the rocks, then that's thetime to focus on how do you
build care and trust and, andthat really develops that tight
bond of loyalty among you.
When they're struggling now whenthey're trying to learn or
they're, or, it's not a majorcrisis, it's just a struggle.
Coming alongside people, makingsure we've defined success,
(43:10):
created opportunity.
And then one of the first thingsI look at is, Hey, how hard are
we driving?
If you are a redlining team,there's no chance to, to step
back and actually improve yourability to do the work.
You can't build capacity.
Yeah.
If a hundred percent it takessome capacity to build capacity.
(43:30):
Yeah.
And so if you're completelyredlined, you cannot get any
better.
And so you actually have tosupport people so that they can,
you know, have a little bit ofvibrancy in their work, whether
it's creativity or crosspollination with other
professionals, or taking, eventaking the time to read a book
or to step away from the work.
And so you, you know, you doneed that.
(43:52):
We also recognize that it'simportant that this is serious
work.
We try to cultivate a culturethat doesn't take ourselves too
seriously.
We try to have fun and process.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
Yeah.
James Harrington (44:02):
And play is a big part of it.
And so yeah.
There's a, there's a, you'vebeen around, it's a lot of
laughter.
Yeah.
A lot of laughter.
There's a lot of laughter in allof our offices.
Yeah.
And and I think that reallyhelps that helps people perform
better as well, because, youknow you can, you can have a
serious conversation aboutsomeone's struggle or failure or
something.
They blew it on.
(44:22):
Or you can come alongside'emand, you know, and say, Hey so
how do you, how do you thinkthat went?
You know, and it, and it'sclear, you know, and, and you
go, yeah, that's a, you know, orI'll, I'll grab something off
camera and show you.
Like,
Speaker 4 (44:37):
yeah.
James Harrington (44:38):
Or I'll just, you know, so something didn't go
well and I'll just hand them,we've got this, this little
plush dumpster fire.
I'm like, so I'm just gonna sitthis on your desk for today.
I think you need this.
Jason Frazell (44:47):
You, you, you let me know how this lands for you.
I'm not gonna give you any otherinformation, but it is a
dumpster fire.
You read into that what youwill.
James Harrington (44:55):
But we, what we do is really hard.
It's one of the most persistentproblems on the planet.
Of course, we're gonna encountersome dumpster fires of course,
but that's not the measure ofthem as a person.
Right.
It's, it's, yeah.
It's just a measure of how oneoutcome went.
And you know, the reality is,you know, we take it in the
teeth all the time.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Yeah.
James Harrington (45:13):
But, but if you have that strong foundation,
that strong community, you getup and you keep going.
Jason Frazell (45:19):
Nice.
Let's talk about.
Ways people can get connected.
And we have a, a specific thing,you have a specific event that's
going on right now, and thenwe'll wrap, we'll leave the
cliffhanger for a tail from yourjourney.
And I, and I don't even know ifI'm gonna know the story, so
let's start with people wannalearn more.
Obviously you can just Google.
You got a water project.
There's only one.
(45:39):
You got Water project in theworld, far as I know.
Yep.
James Harrington.
Yep.
Water
James Harrington (45:43):
project do com.
Yep.
Jason Frazell (45:45):
Yeah.
Whatcha y'all working on rightnow, specifically?
James Harrington (45:47):
So the, the big event coming up.
Jason Frazell (45:50):
Whatever you wanna tell us about.
James Harrington (45:51):
Yeah, so in April 12th we have our 5K and
this is one of our annualevents.
That's a great opportunity for.
No matter where you are our, ouroffice is based in Rochester,
New York, so we certainly do ain-person version of it.
You can meet us you know, onApril 12th in the morning, we
get together at Powder MillsPark here, and we, we run and
(46:11):
walk this 5K, but virtually wehave people participate wherever
you are.
We'll, we'll send you out at-shirt and a race bib and some
fun stuff.
So fun.
But between now and then, youcan register as an individual or
as a team at Ugandan waterproject.com/ 5K.
And it's a lot of fun becausepeople compete.
(46:33):
I don't care how fast you are inthe race.
We like to celebrate peopledoing, doing, setting
fundraising goals and raisingmoney, and they compete against
each other.
And Jason, you and your familyhave gotten into it in some
hilarious ways.
In fact, I think you cracked arib last year.
Jason Frazell (46:50):
I, I didn't quite crack rib, but I, I definitely,
I was too old and I did acartwheel on camera and it did
not go well.
So that's not happening thisyear.
James Harrington (46:56):
Right.
Motivational antics, right.
Watch antics.
Yeah.
If you watch our social media, Ijust put out the first
leaderboard.
It's really fun news deskupdate.
But we, we pit teams againsteach other.
I.
And, and it just is so fun forabout three or four weeks of
just intense you know, effort tokind of draw some attention.
And then we get together and wetry to raise up.
(47:18):
This year the goal is$125,000.
So whether you wanna run, walk,or just support one of these
teams you know, hey, go on theleaderboard and, and you know,
move somebody up.
You know?
It's a great way to, to helpfuel the work that happens all
year long.
And yeah, you know, everybodycan participate.
Jason Frazell (47:38):
Well, I, I got a chance to go last year with my
kids.
Yeah, that's fun.
And it was really cool to seethe community show up for you
all.
I was really impressed with howmany people you had and just to,
and not to put a damper on theweather was awful.
It, I don't think it could havegotten, it was like 40 degrees
(47:58):
and raining and there was kidsout there, but man, the, the,
the level of love.
For that I witnessed for, yeah,UWP is the one of the local
charities and the level of lovepeople have for you and your
team.
Just a, and I mean, that room ispacked.
Yeah.
I don't know how many peoplewere there, but I said The
number of people that are gonnashr up for this thing when it
was that miserable out.
(48:20):
Was was really amazing.
I'm gonna do a quick pitch.
It's a, it's a
James Harrington (48:23):
warm, yeah, it's a warm community.
And if you've never been part ofsomething like that again, like,
you know, sometimes you wonderwhat does it feel like to
actually belong to a communitythat has a cause?
Because, you know, again, I'vedone the donations where it
feels like I'm just.
Throwing my, my, yeah, ofcourse.
A few bucks into the ocean ofgood intentions and this is
(48:43):
different.
This is community on a missionand we, we show up for one
another.
We show up for the cause and weshow up in whatever weather and
it is a lot of fun.
Jason Frazell (48:52):
It was a, it was a lot of fun.
I'm gonna do a quick pitch.
Yes.
If you are interested inlearning more, there will be a
link in the podcast show notes.
We're a specific team that'sraising funds for the second
time in a row.
Yes, it's called SunshineDaydream.
We finished in second place lastyear.
So close,
James Harrington (49:10):
Jason.
So close
Jason Frazell (49:11):
and only, but if you look at what we raise, just
to do a not so humble brag.
It was really my family andanother family who raised all
that money.
We finished in second place.
The people who finished infirst, I, were they a car
dealership or they were Maybe,were they like not going door to
door?
I don't know if they were likethey, they, they had like scaled
impact that had them barely beatus and we kind of crushed it.
James Harrington (49:33):
You did.
You, you did a really good jobcoming in as the number one
loser.
As the number one
Jason Frazell (49:39):
loser.
As the number one loser.
Now
James Harrington (49:41):
you're starting to see the, the
affectionate, you know, goadingthat I do.
So basically this is what I dofor the next three weeks three
or four weeks as we're leadingup to this is I just kind, it's
just
Jason Frazell (49:50):
a roast.
James Harrington (49:51):
It's, yeah, basically it's sort of like
encouragement and a little bitof pricking and prodding here.
But it's all in good fun.
Yeah, it's all
Jason Frazell (49:57):
great fun.
James Harrington (49:59):
You steal trophies.
Jason Frazell (50:00):
You steal trophies from car dealerships.
The videos of it, it's amazing.
James Harrington (50:04):
We've got, we got the, we do have trophies and
there's great prizes too.
Honestly, there is great
Jason Frazell (50:07):
prizes.
James Harrington (50:08):
It's part of the fun, as we say.
You know, and, and that goesback to when I was a kid.
I went to this private schooland we did a fundraiser, and if
we sold enough of whatever itwas, we could pick something
from the prize sheet.
And I, that was when Walkmanradios were new and there was a
picture of Walkman.
And that's what my sister and Iworked hard for.
And when we got it, it was apiece of junk.
(50:31):
Like it broke, like it broke thefirst day and it was only an AM
radio like, and so I was so disdisillusioned.
I said, if I'm ever in aposition to make sure that we
can do something with prizes,it's gonna be stuff that people
really feel like, oh, that wasgreat.
What an awesome thing to be partof, and what a great reward.
Yeah.
So
Jason Frazell (50:50):
definitely you all, you, you and your team
definitely generate.
Really good raffle prizes andlike things for sponsors.
Like genuinely stuff donors areamazing.
Yeah, like I remember, Iremember I, I won a, a case of
wine and the wine was great.
James Harrington (51:05):
Yes.
Yeah.
That was the case of wine golf
Jason Frazell (51:07):
tournament.
James Harrington (51:07):
We, this is the Finger Lakes area and thing
lake.
Lots of great wineries and solot definitely.
So if you like that kind ofthing, you'll, you wanna get
out, get active.
It's a lot of fun no matterwhere you are.
We, the virtual version is stilla lot of fun too.
Please do that.
Jason Frazell (51:20):
So wrapping up, I promised you all a story from
the field, James.
Yes.
You have about three to fiveminutes to give us whatever you
wanna share about a ti one ofthe times that in Uganda,
something that interesting thathappened to you and the team.
James Harrington (51:35):
Yeah.
Let's see.
I can remember, gosh, there'sbeen, there's been so many
situations, but you know, Iremember one time when we were,
we were trying to go out, we'retrying to head down to this one
area about, it was supposed tobe about three and a half hours
away.
And I mean this just tounderstand some of the context
of where we have to get to andas we're driving to get to this
(51:59):
site we encountered the factthat one of the bridges had
washed out.
And it's not like there's a lotof easy detour.
And so No, no.
Nor are, nor
Jason Frazell (52:10):
nor are there lots of extra public works
people that are easily puttingup a secondary bridge to help
you get across.
No.
James Harrington (52:17):
Yeah.
No.
And so this, we're like, oh,it's gonna be another like two
to three hours to get around.
Right.
And so we're having to sidetrackand we get we get way down this
road and.
Really late.
And so it's, there's no one elseon the road, dirt road.
And and we're in a, a, a van.
It's a four wheel drive van, butit's just a van.
Speaker 3 (52:39):
Mm-hmm.
James Harrington (52:40):
You know, and, and we come over this little
rise and I, the headlights, we,I see water, it's been raining
and the, and the road is floodedout and I can see, you know,
it's about 50 yards.
And I'm thinking, I wonder howdeep that is.
(53:00):
And I get out and I'm, I'mlooking at it in the night and
I'm like, I kneel down to feelwhat kind of mud it is.
'cause if it's sandy mud,that's, that's a good sign.
But if it's, it was the reallysticky, slick mud.
Mm.
And I'm like, e lots of claythat grabs your tires.
And I hear some people in thebushes off to the side, you
know, there's no street lights.
So I'm like, and they're kind ofjust murmuring and talking.
(53:20):
And I was like, hello friends.
Does anyone speak English?
You know?
And they come over and I said,they we're, we're chatting.
I said, this, this water werepeople going through today?
And they're like, Hmm, not somuch.
And I said, this car, what doyou think?
Can I make it?
And they said, if you, if youtry it, sir, you'll be sleeping
on a veranda tonight.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
And I was like,
James Harrington (53:42):
oh.
And I said, is there anotherway?
And they said, there's anotherway, but you will not find it.
And, and I said, is theresomeone I can show me the way?
And so this mother and herteenage son get in the car'cause
she knows the way and he speaksEnglish and they, they pile in
and we go back and we, we get toa part of the road and they
(54:03):
said, turn up.
And I look and it's just a rockhillside.
And I'm like, oh crap.
And so I'm like, all right,everybody hold on.
And I just gun it.
And we just fly and bounce upthis thing and it's like.
Pretty precarious.
Get up and sure enough, at thetop of this ridge, there's a,
but it was touch and go.
(54:24):
Yeah.
And we found our way down andaround and we ended up getting
on it.
But like that's just everydaystuff that's just trying to
drive to work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and and, and so we've,we've got all kinds of stories
of the, the treacherous journey,but at the end of it, you know,
there's all kinds of storiesalso of.
You know, trying to fix wellsthat have been broken for years
(54:46):
and fish and pipes out of'emand, and restoring water.
And there's all kinds of storiesof, of really restoring hope at
the other end that makes,whether it's, you know, I've had
food poisoning, you know, moretimes than I can count.
I've had chronic diarrhea, youknow, on so many trips or
sunburn burned or all kinds ofstuff.
We've had stuff stolen, we'vehad car accidents, all kinds of
things.
It's a rough place, but at theend of the day, when, when it
(55:09):
works.
People get safe water and theirlives transform.
Yeah.
And I, and I think of ChristineJungo, who just last week got
water, a water connection at herhome.
Speaker 3 (55:22):
Mm.
And,
James Harrington (55:22):
and I think about how that personal
transformation doesn't matter.
All the risk, all the challenge,all the long flights or the long
drives, it's worth it.
Jason Frazell (55:32):
That's beautiful.
James, thank you so much forbeing on.
You know, I have so muchappreciation for the work that
you do and the rest of your teamdoes, both here and in Uganda
and abroad.
We wish you the very bestsuccess in 2025 with all you're
doing.
Again, if you're interested inand want to engage in any way,
we'll put all these show notesin the link.
(55:53):
The main one though, is theSunshine Daydream fundraising
link.
That is the one'cause myself andmy teammate Tanner, we are very
competitive individuals.
And we don't like to lose and wedon't like being the first
losers.
So please
James Harrington (56:05):
show up some love.
They can, they can take thefirst place position this year.
I'm confident
Jason Frazell (56:08):
we can take the first place.
We're gonna beat a cardealership with the two of us,
but James, yeah.
Seriously, it's such a, such apleasure to get to know you and
the team and just, you all aredoing such amazing work.
Thank you so much for being on.
James Harrington (56:19):
Great to be with you.
We'll we'll see out there on therace course.
Jason Frazell (56:22):
On the race course, definitely not driving
up a rock hill in the middle ofUganda.
If you happen to visit Uganda,James will not subject you to
that.
That's for, that's for CEOs whowork for the company only.
Thanks so much
Speaker (56:34):
Thanks for listening to another episode of Talking to
Cool People with Jason Frizzell.
If you enjoyed today's episode,please tell your friends, follow
us on Instagram and Facebook andgive us a shout out or take a
moment to leave a review oniTunes.
If something from today'sepisode pique your interest and
you'd like to connect, email usat podcast@jasonzell.com.
(56:57):
We love hearing from ourlisteners because you're cool
people too.
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