James Harrington - CEO of Ugandan Water Project

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.”

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesbharrington/

https://secure.givelively.org/teams/ugandan-water-project-inc/16th-annual-5k-2025/sunshine-daydream

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Transcript

Jason Frazell: 0:11

My guest on the podcast today is the one and only James Harrington. On a personal note, I've gotten to know James in the last couple of years. We've become friends, we've become, say colleagues, we've supported each other through a variety of different things, and you are all in for an amazing treat is James is. I'm just gonna, his content and the way he speaks is gonna, is going to do way more than I could ever do. No pressure. My, my friend, so I'm here at James Harrington is the CEO. Founder of the Ugandan Water Project based in up upstate New York. And we are recording this on, in March in the evening. And it's the two days after a one day after daylight savings. And it's beautiful'cause we're recording this. I, it kind of feels like it's still during the day.

James Harrington: 0:52

It does. It's an amazing thing for those of us that live in the northeast. Hope has come, hope has come. We have survived. And and I think, I think we're gonna make it.

Jason Frazell: 1:02

We're, I think we're gonna make it so James, so good to have you here. Wanna start and have the audience just get, get to know a little bit about you. I said you're the CEO and founder of Uganda Water Project. What else do you want us all to know about you?

James Harrington: 1:14

Yeah, I've, I've got a long and winding road that brought me here and what's amazing is when you really find heart-centered work that just resonates with, resonate intellectually, socially, spiritually, like physically, it's eng. I like how it engages me. So many of my past experiences have showed up here. Everything from, you know, selling shoe shoes at the mall when I was in high school to growing up working in hardware stores, farm and feed stores, and learning general knowledge, doing manual labor all the way through to I was, I was a purchasing agent for a winery for 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 technical director, and believe it or not, all of these things have fingerprints on the work we do in Uganda. And it's, yeah, it's unexpected, but it's true

Jason Frazell: 2:09

that, that's really cool. I always like to start with you specifically thinking about this conversation. The audience tell, we know each other, and I already mentioned that I. Why the heck clean water in Uganda as an American, as a guy from upstate New York, and I'm gonna say this, there's a million problems in this world to solve.

James Harrington: 2:31

Yes.

Jason Frazell: 2:32

And a talented guy like yourself, you can probably choose to solve or work on almost any of them. I would love for the audience to hear your origin story of what had you go, this is a good I, or maybe you didn't think it was a good idea. You're like, this is something I should do. I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but Yeah. So I'd love to hear the origin story of you on Water Project.

James Harrington: 2:48

Yeah, absolutely. So it was 2007, may of 2007 Memorial Day weekend, and I ended up at neighbors Barbecue. And there was a gentleman from Uganda who had come to the US for a conference and he was trained as a teacher. He had started schools and, and taught in schools. And he, and he also was a pastor of church, a church in Uganda. And so he, and he had gone to seminary and things like that. So he had all this education to inspire the spirit and cultivate the mind and dynamic personality. And he's just a great guy. And as weird. And I had no idea any details about Uganda, so I was curious. Right. And talking to him, he was very, he was hilarious and dynamic and I was, but I was asking him, Hey, what are the challenges you face in the work you do? He said, honestly, one of the biggest challenges that is that despite being good at what I do and loving it, I look into the faces of congregations in classrooms who are. Of people who are sick and hungry and thirsty, and my skills and abilities don't overcome that. And so that just struck me that you know, when you don't have safe water or you don't have sufficient food, that is an intellectual problem. Meaning, yeah. If you're trying to teach somebody, you can't teach them until you've overcome that hurdle. And same thing with, yeah, with water so many things, water comes first. One of our, our good friends, his name is Joe Jay. He he always likes to say it this way, when, when you have safe water, you have the privilege of a thousand problems.

Speaker 3: 4:19

When you don't have

James Harrington: 4:19

safe water, you only get one problem. Because it just dominates everything. Yeah. That one problem dominates everything. And and so talking to this man, you know, all those years ago I was struck with how profoundly. Expansive and, and you just, it just swallows everything. The water crisis. And I started on a educational journey to learn and understand. I asked him all these questions and then the next six months staying in touch with him and learning more'cause I had a nagging suspicion that I could probably do something to help him. At the time I was a rodent tour manager for a band. We were doing small events up and down the east coast and in the northeast United States. And so logistics and relationships were where I added value and I thought, Hey, I think this water thing could probably be something I could work on for this guy. And so it was about a year later, after first meeting him, me and a few friends, we'd raised a little money around this idea of building some rainwater systems to put on community buildings. And we showed up in Uganda and helped to install these rainwater systems. And I, that was, that was our first couple of projects in August of 2008. It was amazing.

Jason Frazell: 5:32

And here we are to 2025. That is amazing. So almost 17 years ago now.

James Harrington: 5:38

Yeah. It, it really is. It, it's been amazing to see how much time has gone by and how much we've grown. Yeah. But you know, why, why stick with it? I mean, you know why water is because I, frankly, I'm lazy. I can appreciate that.

Jason Frazell: 5:51

Yeah. In the best way possible.

James Harrington: 5:53

Yeah. And if you want to, if you want to get something done efficiently, ask a lazy person to do it, and they'll find the most heck yes. Effective way to do it. Right. And in this case, if you're, if you care about poverty and suffering in the, in the world one of the most effective ways to alleviate poverty globally. Is to address any gaps in the water needs of, of, of people. Yeah. Because it doesn't matter. So many of the causes that are important to, whether it's education or economic development or job skills or things like the family stability gender opportunities, all sorts of those things are dependent in one way or another on having access to safe water, food supply for sure. Medical, like clinical and public health. So many of these issues that are holding people back are dependent on water. So essentially, yeah, I was like, oh, if we can address this, all of these other things, it's like a rising tide that lifts all ships.

Jason Frazell: 6:53

No, no. Small amount of irony with the rising tide.

James Harrington: 6:57

I do. I do. I've been accused of using a lot of water metaphors.

Jason Frazell: 7:00

Water metaphors, which makes a lot of sense. Jam James, at this point, I wanna, I wanna share with everybody that I got a chance. To get involved with you and we'll talk a little bit more about that, you and the rest of the UWP team and I got a chance to see this firsthand in November of 2023. Yes. James and I and a cohort of amazing business leaders and people who are interested in this work. Yep. I got a chance to go to Uganda and witness, witness this firsthand, and I wanna share with the audience my perspective on something that I saw and what I, 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's class a few weeks ago. It's just a gutter with another gutter that runs to a tank, and then that tank runs to a faucet and you turn it on. Pretty simple. In the United States, a lot of us have gutters on our homes. This is not a thing. We installed one of those, and by we, I mean the people on the trip. We watched your team on the ground and Uganda do a great job of all the work you gave a hand, I gave, I, I laid a couple of bricks because otherwise I would break the thing. That is, I am, that is not my, my strong suit and I'm just gonna, without getting into the details, what really struck me was that school, I believe had about 170 students, if I'm not mistaken. And the support staff, the principal, the teachers before. This, we installed the system for them. They would walk down to the well during the middle of the school day. So want everybody listening right now who has children to think about this? Yes. 10 o'clock in the morning instead of studying spelling or math or whatever the thing they're doing. It would be my daughter's name is Hannah. Hey Hannah, can you go down and grit? Get the next Jerry can of water so that we can cook lunch. And she would leave the classroom, leave her learning environment, walk down a muddy hill, and that day was muddy to the local town. Well. Yeah. Which didn't look very appetizing. Nope.

Speaker 4: 8:53

They would fill it up and they'd bring it back and they'd give it to the teacher and then the teacher had to boil it. You hope.

Speaker 3: 9:02

You hope. You hope. Yes.

Jason Frazell: 9:03

You hope they boil it.'cause if they don't boil it, that's a whole different thing.

Speaker 3: 9:07

Yeah,

Jason Frazell: 9:07

and I'm saying all this because the rainwater collection system, late labor parts, all these things is about, it's a little under$4,000.

Speaker 3: 9:18

Yeah.

Jason Frazell: 9:19

Yep. And if you think about what we do here in the United States for$4,000, what we pay for the things, and I said, talk about an outsize impact. And that was the moment when I said to you like, oh, now I get it. Yes, the outsize impact. So, you know, and like, and that's part of the reason I went, I wanted to see what we can do by family and what we can do as Americans in a country like that where there is a need and there's also the costs are low, and so it moves the needle a lot. So I wanna encourage everybody listening to think about this for yourself. Think about your kid walking to get water, or your kid drinking the well water and then getting a diarrhea or headaches. Yeah, all the things that land in there, James. Go. I wanna go back on your story here. So you raised some money, you went over to Uganda, you installed those collection systems, and you've done, you and the team have done thousands. You've served hundreds of thousands of hundreds of thousands of Ugandans now. Yes. Do you remember the feeling when you got that first installation and got that first group clean water?

James Harrington: 10:20

Oh, absolutely. Because that was, I mean, it was instantaneous that I realized that I was, I was participating in 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 most iconic sources of water on the planet, finds its source in Jinja, 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, the largest lake in Africa. And we installed this rainwater system. And our rainwater systems also go hand in hand with filters to make that, that safe to drink. And talking to some of the folks that we're gonna be using that first Rainwater system and how that was gonna impact their families and realizing some of these people were, were dealing with HIV and chronic illness and, and, and just realize how much hope it brings for a family to know that something with real infrastructure and stability is there. Because they have so much vulnerability, just cascading layers of vulnerability. And and so it really, in, in an instant, I just was like, I knew this was good. I didn't understand how great it was. And and it really, it, I remember after that first day at that first project, getting back in the van to go back to the guest house we were staying at. And I remember thinking to myself and just saying to myself, I could do this a thousand 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 of rainwater systems, but we also repair hand pumps and broken hand pumps. We drill wells. We actually have done some gravity flow systems where we find springs up in the mountains and. Several kilometers down into communities. And then we're starting to do a lot more with solar pumping systems, where we're using solar energy to pump it to an elevated tank and then gravity feed that out into communities and, and even right to people's homes. So it's amazing to see what we've done because we have done it more than a thousand times. There's over, there's over 650,000 people in Uganda who have access to safe water for.

Jason Frazell: 12:45

Amazing. One thing I wanna give you all a shout out for around the last model there, the pump and the solar. Yeah. You also have a business model where people get to have a sense of ownership because they pay for it. And when you told me what they pay 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 you listening is you walk up, you have a, like a key fob and you scan it. And you get your Jerry can or your bucket of water, whatever it is you're getting, and they have a sense of ownership because they are paying for that. It's small, it's negligible, but it becomes a self-funding system, which then allows you to go out and do more work in that community or the next community, which is a real mindset shift when you are used to living in these, living in these communities with poverty where you'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 we survive. And so you're in reinventing that context, which is, which is a, which is a another reason that I really love the work you all are doing. And I wanna ask the last question here, I know is on a lot of people's minds before we move in the how you, how you view running a nonprofit. Why doesn't the government do more?

James Harrington: 14:03

Yeah, I mean it's, it's a, it's a great question. And for a long time, I, I have to 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 it was all corrupt. Yeah. And I'm, I'm kind of a conservative guy. I, I like, you know, only, I don't get me wrong, I like roads and I like, I like bridges and ditches and I. Schools and things like that. So I like to pay all the taxes I have to, but I, I tend to like, you know, especially with corruption, you know, this idea, oh, African government, it's gonna be corrupt. I had always, for several years avoided that. But then what we realized was there's a lot of amazing people working every day in the government. Selfless people. Who have left the private sector to come be public servants and they're inspiring and, and they are working their butts off. Yeah. But the economy is young. Mm-hmm. It's still largely cash and so yeah. It's hard to harness the, the, the tax revenue from cash transactions or barter transactions and so there's just not a lot of revenue for public works and things like that. Yeah. So there's just so much that still 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 young nation. Yeah. And and so they're working hard. They just, they just still need a lot of help and you know, things like capital is expensive there. They don't have the tax revenue. Then private sector can make it up except the private sector. I mean, here we can get loans at reasonable rates there. Right. There. It, it's not uncommon to find 18 to 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 is like 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 high risk environment. So, yeah. So pe the government is trying to do a lot. We actually partner a lot with the government and they definitely do their part to try to help. They're definitely serious. And I have humbly changed my tune. We still do have to exercise a little discretion on you know, there's still a few people that have 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, which is just philanthropic. No, exactly. That's, that's only a Ugandan government thing. Altruism. Yep.

James Harrington: 16:42

Yep. But James, I would Servant heart.

Jason Frazell: 16:45

Yeah, exactly. So I would assert, and one of the other reasons I wanted to have you on is to talk about as the CEO of, of UWP, how you think about running it. And one of the things I love to hear you say is you say, we're a charity that doesn't run like a charity. And you've been doing this now for 17 years. You've grown your staff significantly. You've grown. Money raised and the impact year over 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 a ton of money from large global, large global nonprofits or these big, you know, the Gates Foundation isn't writing you a check every year and you're go to do the work. You're doing grassroots fundraising. You're going out there and do the work. So I'd love to, I'd love for you to share your brilliance around the audience of how you think about running an organization. Yeah, like UWP that allows you, and for people in nonprofit know this, to utilize more of the funds raised to do the actual work and a less of the admin cost, which is one of the ways that nonprofits are measured.

James Harrington: 17:49

Yeah. So there's a, there's a, a number of different things that go into our DNA that makes us, uniquely us. One of the things that you'll hear 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 ourselves to it. Right. And yet that's great. We've all had that experience of people that are work in nonprofits where you're like, gosh, it feels like these guys have their own expression of poverty. They have poverty mentality or poverty mindset, lack. It's always lack, it's always crisis. And and I find that really offput.

Speaker 3: 18:28

Mm-hmm.

James Harrington: 18:29

Even repulsive. Right? And so that's, you know, the work is already hard. You, you, you have to approach it with intention for, for stewarding your own engagement, right? So that's, that's one set of, of values is just making sure that we, we don't subject ourselves to that poverty mentality. The other thing is you know, we, we try to run our charity the way I'm, I'm very entrepreneurial. I have a business background. I only, I only. That's, and so we run our charity the way you and other entrepreneurs run their business. And the only difference is. You know, I don't, I don't get to keep it right, but we want to keep an eye on the bottom line. We want to diversify revenue. We, we really believe in serving our customers, right? Our, our customers are clients like, and that would include the, the people that that are donating. They are, they have an interest that we wanna make sure we're, we're thinking about, and absolutely the people that we're serving. We really focus on value delivery and the value 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 and be a fundraiser? Like, don't you get sick of begging for money all the time? And my response is, Hey, our organization does something that people really want to see done in this world. Yeah. And they want to see it done well. And if they can trust that it's being done well, there's a lot of people that want to be part of it. And on that foundation, when I say, Hey, we have an incredible team of professionals, a few here in the United States, and then about 40 Ugandans on the ground in Uganda doing all sorts of parts of the work, professional people of excellence and passion and drive, and I am inviting you. To hire us to do the work we do. So when I'm, we're asking for a donation, we're inviting people to hire us to create impact with their resources and, and our shared intention. And so it's almost like, you know, it, it's similar to an investor model. Yeah. You know, the Elle family has a stake in this, in this mission. And, and you wanna see the outcome. But the ROI is not a return on investment to investors. It's an ROI to the people that you wanna see served and our world as a global community. Yeah. That mentality is not always what you see with common charities. No,

Jason Frazell: 21:07

no. James, I love that. I've never heard you phrase it that way. You've got me thinking about, I'm, I wanna, I mean, and I think this, this is really blowing my mind around, I wanna hire you. That is not generally my mindset about, about charitable giving, including things like churches giving money at churches. It's not generally the, the way it's, Hey, you're gonna, you're, you know, we, we'd ask of your, you know, your tithe or whatever you give, and in return, we're gonna provide these services, but I've never heard the phrase hire us, which, yeah, which, which alludes to, or at least for me, means a different level of ownership on your end, responsibility on your end that, oh, we're actually working for you. To make this thing because Jason, you don't know how to provide clean water. You could lay a brick or two. Yeah. Or, or sing to the kids, but you're not, we don't, we don't want you doing that work, but we're gonna take that money and do it. And I wanna, you mentioned something as well, you didn't use the word, but I wanna talk a little bit about efficiency in what you do. Yes. Efficiency. What does as the CEO, what does that mean to you when you're measuring efficiency across the staff, across the projects? What does that mean?

James Harrington: 22:11

Yeah. Well, and I think it gets back to something you referred to, which is, you know, a lot of people, they measure, the only measurement they have for an organization is how much do they spend on overhead or administration. Yeah. Right. And don't get me wrong, you should ask that question. Yeah. The follow up question would be, should be how do you measure that? Also, what's your overall impact, right. So yeah, but it by no means should be the only measure because here's something that I would say. When we spend money on administration or overhead, we're, part of what that does is ensure that we have professional people Yeah. Who wake up every day, their feet hit the floor, and they are starting their best part of their day focusing on this mission and as a, and so you get professional results. And so, so there's a, there's, when you talk about efficiency. We really wanna focus on high impact. We wanna know that we are helping, you know, the dollars are actually delivered and having impact on lives. So we wanna know how many people's lives are touched and then how, how much they're changed. So we, we like to measure things like when we bring clean water to a school, does enrollment go up? Do test scores go up? Do does the, especially like in secondary schools without safe water, there's a huge drop off. We just celebrated international Women's Day. There's a huge drop off, off in secondary schools of of adolescent girls enrolled in schools if they don't have safe water because they can't they can'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 in the school. So we like to measure, you know, if it's at a clinic, we're looking at we're looking at infant mortality rates and we're looking at you know, infection rates and or just the, the number of, of inpatient versus outpatient. But we wanna see impact and then. We also want to make sure that we have the people we need to deliver a high pro, a high quality product and service. But we also look for ways to do that, that stretches the dollar. So, for instance, we have, most of our staff is in Uganda. Yeah. Partly, partly because we can hire really professional people there. At a much lower rate than we can do here. And that means, sure, the dollars go farther. And so that, things like that make a difference. And we try to, we try, we try to brutally measure ourselves. So there's a couple things we do to, to just really track, hey, how are we doing? So for instance you know, we, we, every year we take every dollar we've spent on anything. We don't separate it out by program or administration or fundraising. We just see every dollar we've spent. How much was that? And then how much, how many people 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're not qualifying anything is just to exist. How many people this year, how many people got safe water? We compare that to other, other organizations that are like ours and we try to see it. And, and usually we've been able to 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 to measure as our, as our program evolves because now we don't just, 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 a bigger 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 organization and just to say you've got a 50 some person team, you would be if you were a CEO of a startup, you'd be a series A or a series B startup who have raised. Multimillion dollars worth of capital at this point, most likely. And I mean like venture venture capital, which I know obviously venture capital is not necessarily a thing, although I guess you could call it venture capital in a way. Give you some, give a, give you a thousand dollars and go and reinvest that. I'm, I'm not looking for a 10 x on 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 the families impacted. What are some of the things that you have learned? People leader organization, time. That you'd like to impart on any other business listener, any other business owner, anybody else in business out there? 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 a million times. Urgency's not as much, and you don't have venture capital. Nobody's like asking you to 10 x the return. And it seems a little like, and and my experience with it, this is my own. My own limited viewpoint is, well, I give the United Way some money, or I throw some money into the Salvation Army, and then they do what they're gonna do that I never have any idea.

James Harrington: 27:20

Yes. So there's certainly, that's, yeah. Yeah. There's certainly, well, I say that,

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 are engaged supporters and donors. Some of them are business owners, some of them are family foundations or, you know, institutional partners that, that really care and are looking to invest significant re resources, you know, five and six figures into this work. And let me tell you, you think you know venture capital, I've, I've, I know people in the VC space. Sure. They will let an organ, you know, 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 the demands on a nonprofit. Are they that significant donors want to see a return on their, an impact on their investment? And they wanna see a, a justified impact on an investment. They wanna see our overhead be less than 20%, and they wanna see that impact in 12 months or less the same year that they, that they give, they wanna see a justifiable impact on that is high performance. Yeah. We have to turn, we have to turn that money around on a dime, implement it, effectively, measure it as we go, and then account for it, report back and do it on, on. On a very light overhead. And hmm. And that also means that it can make 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, and really do some capacity building. Like we, we need to really get on the workbench and start building some skills. We need to build out some of our team. You know, if we have to do any r and d on something, if we have to learn Yeah. A new technology. If we, right now we're trying to onboard. To Asana for project management. Right? Yeah. And that's a pretty heavy lift. Yeah. But we still have to satisfy the expectations of our supporters while we do that. And so yeah. In some ways for a high performance nonprofit, there's some things that are even more demanding 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 gets justified by, and by the way, we think it's gonna make us this much additional revenue or save us this much in cost. Right? You don't have the concept of revenue. And what you do. I mean, you have the, I mean, I mean you have the concept of now with some, with some of the things 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 program director getting this new certification in this thing, that's gonna then create the ability to have us raise this much more money. It's more gonna impact more people being a more effective leader. So it's a different frame of mind.

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 to keep that admin cost down, but what are, so what are some, I I definitely, 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 not gonna ask one for quite yet, but I do want you to be thinking about Yeah, a podcast, an explicit podcast, appropriate story. From Uganda can be, and like I've heard all sorts of interesting things that isn't gonna scare everybody away, but it's gonna go, Hey, that's an interesting thing. And some of them are, yeah, some of them are quite interesting. Looking again at C-E-O-A-C-E-O mindset with a nonprofit, one of the things that you say that really strikes me as well is how people can work with a nonprofit. And you say that people can give up three things, and I've heard you say this a lot in different speaking engagements and I think you said it to me, let's talk about each of those things.'cause this is another thing Yes. That I wasn't really thinking about. So yeah, how can people get involved in their favorite nonprofit or whatever the thing is.

James Harrington: 31:36

Absolutely. So I always, you know, and again, this is just my style partly I always say you can give your cash, your kung fu or your connections. And cash is obvious. Trademarked. Trademarked. Yeah, that's right. Tm. Cash is obvious, you know, so many of these things. The most efficient way to add value is the portability and immediacy of finances. And I say cash, but really a sophisticated organization is ready to take, take finances in any 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 check and card and you know, a CH of course. But we, you know, we first started working with cryptocurrencies in 2017. Wow. And, and so when it was time to start, you know, talking to other people about, you know, crypto donations and we don't get a lot of'em'cause the markets have been up and down, but but even, you know, donor advised funds and mm-hmm. All kinds of asset donations. So we understand that and that allows us to really partner effectively with sophisticated situations. And don't get us wrong, we're a small organization, but we're, we're trying to make the door easy 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, your abilities, 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, a sales director for a beverage company today and. Hey, we're talking, you know, our AquaTru enterprise. We're trying to talk to communities and say, Hey, will you sign an agreement to let us maintain 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 guy doesn't think of himself as being ready to help us with poverty alleviation, but I guarantee he is. You're a great example. I mean, those of you that listen to your podcast know that you do a lot of a lot of coaching and. Your special skills have been invaluable to our team. Like that's one of the most valuable things that your family's been able to contribute to our mission is helping our team grow. You've coached some of our leaders. You have facilitated sessions to help us be more effective. So kung fu is, is everything from being a diesel mechanic to a sales guy, to a coach or on this side of things, helping, you know, with various different special skills that we need. And then Connections is all about that network, right? The relationship community that you serve. We are still a small organization that is mostly unknown in this world. Yes. And so you are a broadcast tower, whoever you are, the you, that's you and the you. That's me and the you that's listening. And you are broadcasting about the things that you think are interesting and exciting and worth it. And whether you're talking around your dinner table a boardroom table. Or on the street with your friends. You know, people are part of circles of faith communities or civic organizations and and all of those are are places where opening your mouth and talking about the causes you care about are a huge way of inviting more people to get curious and stuff.

Jason Frazell: 35:03

So, James, you had mentioned you're a small organization and I would assert that you all have some outsize impact and you had the chance. To do some pretty cool stuff earlier this year. Maybe it was late last year, and UWP you got to represent Uganda Water Project at the Clinton Foundation. At the, at the Global Global Initiative. The Global, yeah, the Global Clinton Global Initiative. Yep. Let's talk a little bit about that 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 be small in terms of like our, our, our scope and the number of employees. But you all are. Yeah. Another example, and this is where, and I'm, I'm calling this out for all the business leaders, is how do you show up to play with the big boys even if you don't necessarily relate to yourself as the big boys and the big girls, and this is what startup founders do all the time too, is they're in the room, Hey, we're competing against Salesforce, we're competing this other, yes. Not that you're competing, but this is like the vibe that UWP gets off, and I know you've heard this from people, is you all appear. To be a, a, a, a pretty substantial organization based on how you show up, how your team shows up and the, the efficiency which to do things that. So let's talk a lot about the global initiative for a few minutes.

James Harrington: 36:13

Yeah. Well, I will say excellence over indexes.

Speaker 4: 36:18

So

James Harrington: 36:18

does, so. You know, the truth is just getting good at what you do. Definitely, definitely helps you play above, you know, fight above your weight class. And and, and that is something we've believed in you know, just getting out there and, you know, doing the hard work, you know, hard sometimes. The biggest difference, I mean, I remember early, early in our organization, we, we were starting to grow fast. This went from an idea to something 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 a barbecue. She asked me, she's like, Hey, so what's the secret? What's the secret? I'm seeing all this stuff happen. What's the secret? And I told her, I'm like, it's not a secret. This happened to be the day after I, I said, Hey, yesterday I left my driveway at 4:00 AM and I drove to Pittsburgh for a cup of coffee and a check for$15,000. And then I drove home. And then I had other work to do when I got home. Like it's just a lot of long work this morning, you know, today that we are recording this, my first call was at 5:00 AM because it's, you know, it was partners in Europe, right? And so doing the hard work refines your process and gets you better in excellence over indexes. So part of it is I believe in the quality of what we do because it's been tested in the arena 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 that are the best. And so that allows us to walk with head, our head up into big environments with significant people. Now you also have to balance that with humility in our heart. Yeah, right. I confidence in my gaze, humility in my heart. And because I don't pretend that we're not a small organization, we do have limits, you know? Sure. The truth is I can't take, I can'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 to our capacity because of our side. But to walk into some of these environments, you know, whether it's World Water, we can Stockholm or Clinton Global Initiative you know, and Clinton Global Initiative is one of the most influential rooms when it comes to poverty alleviation and suffering in the world. They take on. They, they enter into the conversations about some of the big, you know, Jane Goodall was there. Yeah. Obviously president. It's Davos.

Jason Frazell: 38:54

It's Davos for Es, Davos, the economic summit, but for nonprofit, and it takes place 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 those kinds 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 Biden and, and his wife showed up one evening. So like mm-hmm. It is global leaders. Yeah. You know, Hamad, Eunice who is currently leading Bangladesh. Mm-hmm. And revolutionized our, our concept of micro micro loans when he wrote his work with Grameen Bank. These people are in the room and I mean in a room in the small rooms and you're, you're there working on stuff together. So high caliber and I think the thing to remember is. They bring certain things to the table. I don't, then we bring things that, that they don't we have a visibility on, on our part of the need and the situation that that needs is vital to the overall conversation.

Jason Frazell: 40:00

Yeah. One last thing about people leader and let's, let's grab a couple stories. Stories from the field. Sure. Stories from the story from putting clean water into Uganda, or giving access to clean water, because I'm sure everybody listening goes, that feels a little fraught with risk. In a variety of, in a variety of ways. Not like, well, lethally, but also just some, you know, just like your, your, your cleanliness and all those things. And I got to witness a couple of these 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 above staffing and all those. How do you ensure that your team. Keeps that in mind that you're keeping your staff excellent all the time. And as the leader, how do you think 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 like we all do of their own breakdowns in their life, or they just need a little extra something. How do you think about that to keep people going and you and excellence? I would assert that excellence. For the Ugandan staff might mean something a little bit different than excellence for Americas, depending on the education level. And I also know for a fact that some of your Ugandans have master's degrees and you know, like medical, like there, there, there's some people that are very highly educated. Edwin, one circles running

James Harrington: 41:18

there. Several. Several of our Ugandan staff have a better formal education than I do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Many, many of them went to a more pedigree university than I did. Yeah. Many of them have had formal instruction beyond mine for sure. But so first of all you know, I look and say, Hey, when, when people, when humans are having human experiences that impact their performance, and that could be anything from, you know, especially, I mean, and don't get me wrong, I don't wanna go too deep in this direction too fast. Sure. Keep in mind the people that you. Are still living in the context of, of abject poverty as a nation in so many ways. Absolutely. It comes with a lot of things. I never realized how many of our team I would have to walk through tragedy with. Yeah. And, and so it is a regular occurrence. 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's not the time to measure their performance. Primarily, it, it's the opportunity to build trust. To build trust and care and that loyalty. Right. You know, even from a practical business standpoint, first of all, I think that's good. Being good humans and good community, right. That, that's a, that's a something I wanna be part of. But even in terms of the efficiency of the organization you know, community on a mission and engagement and with low turnover becomes efficient and effective. And so when people have their life, you know. On the rocks, then that's the time to focus on how do you build care and trust and, and that really develops that tight bond of loyalty among you. When they're struggling now when they're trying to learn or they're, or, it's not a major crisis, it's just a struggle. Coming alongside people, making sure we've defined success, created opportunity. And then one of the first things I 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 your ability to do the work. You can't build capacity. Yeah. If a hundred percent it takes some capacity to build capacity. Yeah. And so if you're completely redlined, you cannot get any better. And so you actually have to support people so that they can, you know, have a little bit of vibrancy in their work, whether it's creativity or cross pollination with other professionals, or taking, even taking the time to read a book or to step away from the work. And so you, you know, you do need that. We also recognize that it's important that this is serious work. We try to cultivate a culture that 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've been around, it's a lot of laughter. Yeah. A lot of laughter. There's a lot of laughter in all of our offices. Yeah. And and I think that really helps that helps people perform better as well, because, you know you can, you can have a serious conversation about someone's struggle or failure or something. They blew it on. Or you can come alongside'em and, you know, and say, Hey so how do you, how do you think that went? You know, and it, and it's clear, you know, and, and you go, yeah, that's a, you know, or I'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 sit this 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 other information, but it is a dumpster fire. You read into that what you will.

James Harrington: 44:55

But we, what we do is really hard. It's one of the most persistent problems on the planet. Of course, we're gonna encounter some dumpster fires of course, but that's not the measure of them as a person. Right. It's, it's, yeah. It's just a measure of how one outcome 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 get up 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 then we'll wrap, we'll leave the cliffhanger for a tail from your journey. And I, and I don't even know if I'm gonna know the story, so let's start with people wanna learn more. Obviously you can just Google. You got a water project. There's only one. You got Water project in the world, 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 right now, 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 annual events. That's a great opportunity for. No matter where you are our, our office is based in Rochester, New York, so we certainly do a in-person version of it. You can meet us you know, on April 12th in the morning, we get together at Powder Mills Park here, and we, we run and walk this 5K, but virtually we have people participate wherever you are. We'll, we'll send you out a t-shirt and a race bib and some fun stuff. So fun. But between now and then, you can register as an individual or as a team at Ugandan water project.com/ 5K. And it's a lot of fun because people compete. I don't care how fast you are in the race. We like to celebrate people doing, doing, setting fundraising goals and raising money, and they compete against each other. And Jason, you and your family have gotten into it in some hilarious ways. In fact, I think you cracked a rib last year.

Jason Frazell: 46:50

I, I didn't quite crack rib, but I, I definitely, I was too old and I did a cartwheel on camera and it did not go well. So that's not happening this year.

James Harrington: 46:56

Right. Motivational antics, right. Watch antics. Yeah. If you watch our social media, I just put out the first leaderboard. It's really fun news desk update. But we, we pit teams against each other. I. And, and it just is so fun for about three or four weeks of just intense you know, effort to kind of draw some attention. And then we get together and we try to raise up. 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 the leaderboard and, and you know, move somebody up. You know? It's a great way to, to help fuel the work that happens all year long. And yeah, you know, everybody can 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 see the community show up for you all. I was really impressed with how many people you had and just to, and not to put a damper on the weather was awful. It, I don't think it could have gotten, it was like 40 degrees and raining and there was kids out 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 love people have for you and your team. Just a, and I mean, that room is packed. Yeah. I don't know how many people were there, but I said The number of people that are gonna shr up for this thing when it was that miserable out. 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 of something like that again, like, you know, sometimes you wonder what does it feel like to actually belong to a community that has a cause? Because, you know, again, I've done the donations where it feels like I'm just. Throwing my, my, yeah, of course. A few bucks into the ocean of good intentions and this is different. This is community on a mission and we, we show up for one another. We show up for the cause and we show 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 in learning more, there will be a link in the podcast show notes. We're a specific team that's raising funds for the second time in a row. Yes, it's called Sunshine Daydream. We finished in second place last year. 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 and another family who raised all that money. We finished in second place. The people who finished in first, 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 like they, they, they had like scaled impact that had them barely beat us and we kind of crushed it.

James Harrington: 49:33

You did. You, you did a really good job coming 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, goading that I do. So basically this is what I do for the next three weeks three or four weeks as we're leading up 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 bit of 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 goes back to when I was a kid. I went to this private school and we did a fundraiser, and if we sold enough of whatever it was, we could pick something from the prize sheet. And I, that was when Walkman radios were new and there was a picture of Walkman. And that's what my sister and I worked hard for. And when we got it, it was a piece of junk. Like it broke, like it broke the first day and it was only an AM radio like, and so I was so dis disillusioned. I said, if I'm ever in a position to make sure that we can do something with prizes, it's gonna be stuff that people really feel like, oh, that was great. What an awesome thing to be part of, 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 and like things for sponsors. Like genuinely stuff donors are amazing. Yeah, like I remember, I remember 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 so lot definitely. So if you like that kind of thing, you'll, you wanna get out, get active. It's a lot of fun no matter where you are. We, the virtual version is still a 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 five minutes to give us whatever you wanna share about a ti one of the times that in Uganda, something that interesting that happened to you and the team.

James Harrington: 51:35

Yeah. Let's see. I can remember, gosh, there's been, there's been so many situations, but you know, I remember one time when we were, we were trying to go out, we're trying to head down to this one area about, it was supposed to be about three and a half hours away. And I mean this just to understand some of the context of where we have to get to and as we're driving to get to this site we encountered the fact that one of the bridges had washed out. And it's not like there's a lot of 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 putting up 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 sidetrack and we get we get way down this road and. Really late. And so it's, there's no one else on the road, dirt road. And and we're in a, a, a van. It's a four wheel drive van, but it'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 flooded out and I can see, you know, it's about 50 yards. And I'm thinking, I wonder how deep that is. And I get out and I'm, I'm looking at it in the night and I'm like, I kneel down to feel what 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 really sticky, slick mud. Mm. And I'm like, e lots of clay that grabs your tires. And I hear some people in the bushes off to the side, you know, there's no street lights. So I'm like, and they're kind of just murmuring and talking. 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 were people going through today? And they're like, Hmm, not so much. And I said, this car, what do you think? Can I make it? And they said, if you, if you try 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 another way? And they said, there's another way, but you will not find it. And, and I said, is there someone I can show me the way? And so this mother and her teenage son get in the car'cause she knows the way and he speaks English and they, they pile in and we go back and we, we get to a part of the road and they said, turn up. And I look and it's just a rock hillside. 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 up this thing and it's like. Pretty precarious. Get up and sure enough, at the top of this ridge, there's a, but it was touch and go. Yeah. And we found our way down and around and we ended up getting on it. But like that's just everyday stuff 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 stories also of. You know, trying to fix wells that have been broken for years and fish and pipes out of'em and, and restoring water. And there's all kinds of stories of, of really restoring hope at the other end that makes, whether it's, you know, I've had food poisoning, you know, more times than I can count. I've had chronic diarrhea, you know, on so many trips or sunburn burned or all kinds of stuff. We've had stuff stolen, we've had car accidents, all kinds of things. It's a rough place, but at the end of the day, when, when it works. People get safe water and their lives transform. Yeah. And I, and I think of Christine Jungo, who just last week got water, a water connection at her home.

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 for being on. You know, I have so much appreciation for the work that you do and the rest of your team does, both here and in Uganda and abroad. We wish you the very best success in 2025 with all you're doing. Again, if you're interested in and want to engage in any way, we'll put all these show notes in the link. The main one though, is the Sunshine Daydream fundraising link. That is the one'cause myself and my teammate Tanner, we are very competitive individuals. And we don't like to lose and we don't like being the first losers. So please

James Harrington: 56:05

show up some love. They can, they can take the first place position this year. I'm confident

Jason Frazell: 56:08

we can take the first place. We're gonna beat a car dealership with the two of us, but James, yeah. Seriously, it's such a, such a pleasure to get to know you and the team and just, you all are doing 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 the race course.

Jason Frazell: 56:22

On the race course, definitely not driving up a rock hill in the middle of Uganda. If you happen to visit Uganda, James will not subject you to that. That's for, that's for CEOs who work 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 and give us a shout out or take a moment to leave a review on iTunes. If something from today's episode pique your interest and you'd like to connect, email us at podcast@jasonzell.com. We love hearing from our listeners because you're cool people too.