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Re:Thinking with Adam GrantMatt Damon's passion outside of movies, in partnership with Gary White | Rethinking with Adam Grant
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At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Matt Damon and Gary White rethink solving water crisis together
- Matt Damon describes partner selection as a core strength, linking his long-term creative collaborations to building water.org with Gary White.
- Gary White explains why solving water access is as much a finance problem as an engineering one, leading to “water credit” microloans that convert existing water spending into repayable financing.
- The water credit model achieves extremely high repayment (about 98%), lowers philanthropic cost per person reached (to roughly $5), and has scaled to tens of millions reached far faster than well-drilling alone.
- They explore the communications challenge of making water scarcity emotionally relatable in wealthy countries, contrasting statistical need with powerful individual stories from Zambia, Haiti, Uganda, and Tanzania.
- Adam Grant coaches them on setting ambitious, non-anchored goals in a nonprofit context via zero-based thinking and innovation tournaments to surface bottom-up ideas and sustain scale.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasPick partners for complementary expertise and shared ethos.
Damon sought a field-leading expert and found alignment with White’s curiosity, rigor, and “boldness with humility,” echoing how durable creative partnerships are built in film.
Water scarcity is often a finance problem disguised as an engineering problem.
White shifted from “build infrastructure” to “redirect capital,” arguing that money already circulates in poor communities through high daily water costs—what’s missing is affordable financing.
Microloans for water can be income-enhancing even if not income-generating.
Because households already pay large shares of income (sometimes cited up to 25%) or pay with time, a loan that buys back hours—especially for women and girls—improves education and earning capacity.
Repayment and recycling capital can dramatically reduce philanthropic cost.
With ~98% repayment and funds reused, water.org reports driving cost per person reached down to about $5 versus ~$25+ for typical well-drilling approaches.
Scaling impact requires evolving the model, not defending “best-in-class” tradition.
They note that staying with well drilling alone would have taken centuries to match current reach, underscoring the need to rethink assumptions as evidence accumulates.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesAfter the movie came out, he said, "Matthew, don't ever give me a script to read again."
— Matt Damon
The water in our toilets is cleaner than 2 billion people have access to around the world-
— Matt Damon
These loans that are taken out by the most economically vulnerable people on the planet, 90% of them are women, by the way, uh, they pay back at 98%.
— Matt Damon
Now if, and if we had stayed just drilling wells, which we were, we were very good at, if we had kind of sat on our laur- laurels and accepted our kind of best in class status, it would've taken us 600 years to reach the number of people that we've reached today.
— Matt Damon
She said, "I've, I've taken the water buckets down from women's heads because now they can have a tap and come and get the water."
— Gary White
SPEAKERS
Adam Grant
hostOrganizational psychologist and Wharton professor, host of the Re:Thinking podcast.
Matt Damon
guestActor and filmmaker; co-founder of Water.org alongside Gary White.
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
