ReThinking: Matt Damon on solving one of the planet’s biggest problems, in partnership with Gary White

What It Covers

Adam Grant speaks with Matt Damon and Gary White, co-founders of water.org, about their microloan model that has delivered clean water access to 85 million people across the developing world, reducing the philanthropic cost per person from $25 to $5 through a revolving loan system with a 98% repayment rate.

Key Questions Answered

• •Microloan repayment model: Water.org's WaterCredit program issues microloans averaging $300 to the world's poorest households, 90% of whom are women, who repay at a 98% rate. Because capital recycles back into the system, the cost per person reached drops from $25 via traditional well-drilling to $5, stretching philanthropic dollars dramatically further.
• •Partner selection framework: Matt Damon attributes his most productive long-term collaborations to deliberate partner selection based on three criteria: domain expertise, shared curiosity bent toward innovation, and alignment of values. He stress-tests potential partners through intensive questioning sessions, treating the process like a chemistry read, before committing to any joint venture.
• •Zero-based goal setting: Rather than anchoring next year's targets to last year's budget with a 10% adjustment, Adam Grant recommends organizations periodically start from scratch, asking what moonshots they would pursue if taking over for the first time. Water.org applied this thinking to launch an asset management arm that has raised $500 million in committed capital.
• •Innovation tournament structure: Grant cites Dow Chemical's decade-long innovation tournament as a replicable model: set clear parameters (ideas costing under $200,000 with a one-year payback potential), open submissions to all staff, and run continuously. Over ten years, Dow funded 575 ideas and saved an average of $110 million annually, with most winning ideas originating from factory floor workers.
• •Bottom-up goal setting: Research shows leaders systematically underestimate how ambitiously committed teams will set their own targets. Grant recommends giving small teams unconstrained blue-sky sessions to propose goals independently, then aggregating those targets upward. Water.org's international offices, staffed entirely by local nationals, already surface ground-level projections but have not yet run fully open-ended innovation sessions.