On World Water Day, Felix teams up with charity: water
Felix Capital donates a portion of its carried interest to charity: water
What does water mean to you?
What does water mean to you? To many of us who have water at the twist of a tap, we might never have thought of an answer to this question. We are able to drink, farm, trade, live, and create — every day, in a safe, peaceful and nourishing environment. Within the Felix family, we are very sensitive to the fact that water enables people to build communities. It’s a source of empowerment. With access to clean water, we as a human race are able to unleash our number one superpower, creativity.
However, 1 in 10 people in the world doesn’t have access to clean water. To fetch water, they walk, for hours every day. Often this chore falls to women and girls, and this is time away from producing food, from learning, from earning money, from taking care of the family and from creating. And yet, they have no choice but to make the tediously long trips. Without water, food doesn’t get cooked, children don’t get bathed, hands don’t get washed, and diseases prevail.
charity: water, a modern brand that changes lives
Today, on World Water Day, the Felix family celebrates with our friends at charity: water, who, in their first 15 years, have brought clean water to more than 11 million people, across 29 countries, through almost 60,000 water projects. charity: water has not only built a network of water projects, but a modern brand, similar to many of those Felix has partnered with, built authentically around an engaged community. charity: water takes inspiration from category-defining brands like Apple and Nike, to reinvent the way a charity is run. They leverage the power of social media to build a community, and the power of technology to provide an exceptional level of transparency on the use and impact of the collected funds.
These life-changing water projects have been funded by the generosity and kindness of the general public, as precisely 100% of the donations go directly to water projects. This model has been made possible because the operating costs — staff salary, office costs, travel — of the organisation come entirely from a separate pool of money that is funded by generous individuals and families (in a programme called “The Well”), and now through equity in some of the hottest startups in the world (in a programme called “The Pool”).
Cheers to water, cheers to creativity and storytelling
We first met Scott Harrison, founder of charity: water almost a decade ago, introduced by our common friend Shak who hosted an event in London connecting Scott and his mission to the local startup and venture community. He introduced himself in a very inspiring way, similarly to how he did in this video:
We launched Felix six years ago and worked to gradually build a community around our platform and our mission to “support entrepreneurs with big ideas, help them build strong brands that stand out and that have a positive impact on the world”. We believe that charity: water is totally aligned with such an objective, and decided to go further and give, picking charity: water as our first charity partner. We also associate charity: water with our dear friend Reggie Bradford, an amazing entrepreneur, father & husband, friend, philanthropist who joined our group of Felix advisors at inception, until he passed away in 2018. He was a beloved member of The Well and we wanted to honour his memory by committing ourselves to this cause, just like Reggie did, and his family still continues to do.
As a result, Felix Capital is donating a portion of our returns (i.e. a percentage of our “carried interest”) to “The Pool”, which funds the organisation’s operating costs. Because we believe that, by investing in charity: water’s operations, they can continue to do what they do best — turning donations into clean water for communities around the world, enabling them to grow, to flourish, and to create. We hope we can raise the awareness of charity: water in our community and help them attract even more donors.
