I recently met the founder of charity: water and was profoundly inspired by his work and his organization's mission. Charity: water provides clean water to people who desperately need it.

Charity: water inspires me for so many reason - I'll share a few here:

- We can make a real impact. Unsafe water kills more people a year than all forms of violence, including war - yet we don't need to navigate the politics of something like gun control. Money = guaranteed impact.

- Unsafe water is an epidemic with a solution. 30,000 people (10,000 of them children) die each week because of unsafe water. But this is not cancer; these are deaths that we know how to prevent.

- Charity: water takes the mystery out of charity. 100% of donations go to providing clean water - the organization's overhead is supported independently by generous individuals. What's even cooler than that, though, is we can literally see where our dollars go: we'll get pictures and videos of the water wells getting drilled, along with GPS data to understand exactly where in the world the impact is made.

- We're spoiled. In California, we're in a terrible drought. I don't want to belittle that - but I still get to drink as much clean water as I want, whenever the hell I want. Shit, farmers use it to grow luxury goods (like grapes and marijuana) and ski resorts use it to make snow.

So, instead of buying me a beer for my birthday tomorrow... let's give an entire village clean water, forever.

Cheers!