Neverthirst: How $50 Gives Someone Clean Water For Life — A Partner Highlight with Matt Letourneau (Ep. 9)

$50.

That's what it costs — sustainably, for life — to take one person off the water crisis and put the gospel in their hands. One of the ministries Tim's team has kept on the ROI Ministry Top 10 since the first annual list.

Since 2008, Neverthirst has provided over 1.6 million people in the 10/40 window with sustainable clean water and the gospel — posted 17 consecutive years of growth, scaled from $2.5M to $10.9M annual budget, and now serves from some of the hardest places on earth. With local pastors at the tip of the spear.

In this Partner Highlight episode of ROI Ministry: The Don't Bury It Podcast, host Tim Barker sits down with Matt Letourneau, Executive Director of Neverthirst, to walk through:

• The Psalm 67 origin story — three Birmingham businessmen, a guest sermon on "May God be gracious to us and bless us," and a mud-hut "hospital" in Sudan that started a 501(c)(3)
• The 17-month client-pipeline collapse that pushed Matt out of a six-figure consulting book and into ministry
• The cost-per-soul math: $50 sustainably takes one person off the water crisis — gospel included — for a 20–30 year life on the water point
• The village-pay-in model: every family contributes money or labor to a repair fund held in escrow by 8 women in the village, so a corrupt chief can't get to it
• The 10/40-window pastor whose two sons (ages 7 and 5) were killed in the very village he was trying to reach — and who went back years later, drilled a well with Neverthirst, and led the village to Christ
• Why "water without the gospel" misses the point — and what "eternal impact per dollar" actually measures
• The story of Neverthirst's growth from $2.5M to $10.9M — and what unlocked it (compelling vision, clear reporting, GPS coordinates on every project)
• How to give to Neverthirst anonymously through the ROI Ministry Top 10 (no fees, no skim, 100% reaches the ministry)

About ROI Ministry

ROI Ministry is a free resource that reviews 100+ ministries each year and publishes a top-10 list of ministries that beat the best charities in the world on cost per person served — while still sharing the gospel and making disciples. Tim calls it EROI: the eternal return on investment.

Every dollar Tim receives from BOOM goes to vetted gospel + compassion ministries. No fees. No overhead. No skim.

Free resources:
https://roiministry.org/
https://neverthirst.org/
BOOM book: https://www.amazon.com/BOOM-What-When-Blows-Around/dp/1646459016/

Don't bury what you heard and know you're making a difference.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Most giving doesn't produce any lasting measurable fruit. Welcome to ROI Ministry, the Don't Vary It podcast, the show for Christians who measure what really matters. 30,000 times the eternal return on every dollar, every hour, every opportunity, so you know you're making a difference. Because good intentions aren't enough. Wise generosity changes everything. Let's get into it. So, welcome today to ROI Ministries Podcast. I am very excited about this special guest in this ministry today. Neverthirst has done amazing things, as you're going to find out here shortly from its executive director, Matt Laterno. Before I get into that, let me just share it with you listeners if you've never heard of ROI Ministry or what we do or what we're about, a little background so you know where we're coming from. And we were really started because of a holy injustice. About 20 years ago, I ran into some research that showed that there was $270 billion coming into the church every year, which is great news. But where it went out was primarily to preach to the choir nations and people that were already Christians, and only one third of one percent was making it to the poorest lost people in the world, uh, which was heartbreaking uh because my Bible reads that Jesus came to preach the good news to the poor, set the captives free. And on top of that, the 6,000 people are dying every day without the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Well, thankfully, that research also provided a solution, and that was when we provide resources to the poorest lost, whether it's in evangelism, discipleship, or compassion ministries, providing clean water, food, medical, there's a 3,000 times greater results. And so being a typical marketplace guy, I said, Well, this is simple. We just need to find these ministries and promote them so that when people give, they can give and know they're making a difference. So that's how we began, and that's how we found Neverthirst and other organizations that have made our top 10 list. And so we're excited to share them with you today. And so with that, Matt, tell us a little bit about Neverthirst, a little bit about yourself, your background, where you're from, and how how you got into this.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Wow, that's well, that's a lot. Thanks for having me, Tim. Glad to be here. Small background on myself. I'm grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. I grew up in the church, I had wonderful parents that brought me up in the faith. Had my life deeply impacted by uh a campus ministry when I was attending Auburn University and um ended up going on staff with that ministry for a good number of years, almost 15 years working for that organization in various capacities, had a lot of autonomy towards the end of my time there, had my own board as I'd moved to it. I was living in Atlanta. And there was a guy on my board that came to me and asked, basically said, When you're when your time with this organization is up, you should come and work with me in business consulting, uh, strategic execution, leader development. And so the timing was good. And I was praying about and looking for the exit ramp during that time. And I ended up going to work with him and also another guy doing 1099 work and also having my own book of business with a wide array of clients from venture-backed tech startups to a record label to nonprofits to a roofing company, service industry, all sorts of things. And I did that for about four years, and half of it, or a little over half of it, was really good. Very fulfilling work. I loved it. And as the I guess my story would be the way I got to Never Thirst is when I entered into the consulting world, God turned on the phosphate, and it was very good. It was financially very good. It's great for my family. And I had to make a really long and painful story, less long and painful to recall. I had one client that I had been working on. It was a large bank, like a division of a bank. It was identity and access management. And it was going to be that division of the bank would have been my largest client in the history of my consulting career, and it would have almost made that year what I made the entire previous year in revenue. And it got all the way through procurement and was about to sign, and then the decision maker on it got fired, and they put a freeze on all spending in the department for a long time, and it just killed my deal. And I had a pipeline of 17 client engagements after that, and one a month for like 17 months just fell off the table. And I was just hemorrhaging money and uh three kids in private school, my wife didn't work, and uh she ended up going back to work to help. But man, I I basically drained my savings. I was on my face, I was trying to kick up new clients, go back to old clients, and it was like just as much a God had turned the faucet on, God turned it off. And I was just on my face before the Lord, and I said, God, you have my full attention. And uh for about seven years I had been in a uh a small men's group with three other guys that were business owners, and uh they were my best friends, and one of them knew about Neverthirst. One of his old college buddies was running the executive search for to place the new leader at Neverthirst, and he brought it to me and I showed it to my wife, and we interviewed, and in full candor, I didn't even know the water crisis existed. Had no idea. Learned about it in the interview process. My heart was pretty broken for it. I was like, I could get up every morning for this, and uh the kicker was that I had to move to Birmingham out of Atlanta, which I didn't want to do at the time, and now I'm super grateful for it. It's been wonderful for my family. But anyway, the short story is that I ended up getting the job here at Neverthirst, and that was back in summer of 2019. So I've been here about seven years, as we sit here in the summer of 26, and it's been a wonderful, very life-giving journey, a fulfilling thing to do over the last seven years of my life. So that's a little bit of the background on me.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Not only did you move from Atlanta to Birmingham, most people like myself and others that change our focus from, and I'm an independent consultant, I know about consulting fees, they're great, but I'm sure you probably took a pretty good pay cut.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

I took a pay cut. Well, honestly, I was grateful for any regular income because I had taken such a hit with those 17 months of just bleeding clients. I guess it was a substantial pay cut from my good years.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

And as you know, my story, he took me through something similar after I prayed. Do whatever you need to do, God. While my business was incredibly successful, and we're writing checks and around the time of prayer, J Bez thinking, oh, he's just gonna bless the business. We're gonna be able to write bigger checks. And uh again, I said, God, do whatever you need to do. And what he needed to do was work off many rough edges myself and also get me to a place that I would be uh brokenheart hearted about the things that break his heart, and that was really our poor stewardship, which became the beginning of our eye ministry. So I have a similar path and uh love that story, Matt. For those of you who haven't heard Matt's story on the finish line podcast, I guess you would get more of that. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 7:35

That was a number of years ago. I can't remember exactly everything I said on the finish line podcast, but I can vouch that those are really good dudes. And I know I had a podcast episode. That was a little while ago.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Very long time ago, but I do remember it. It was great. I um my story's on there too. So go ahead and continue now with um Neverthirst.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

I guess the bow on that last part was like I I tell people that God dragged me kicking and screaming into joy. It wasn't something that I ever thought I would do with my life, was lead an organization like this, but it's been wonderful. So about the organization Neverthirst, the high level is that there were three businessmen here in Birmingham, they're all attending the same church. A guest pastor came in, gave a message on Psalm 67, 1 and 2, and basically said, You've been blessed to be a blessing, and have you disconnected God's blessing in your life with God's purposes for your life? It was really penetrating for them, and they ended up getting together weekly, praying, asking the Lord, Lord, what would you have us do? They started traveling around the world to just kind of see needs. They ended up in Sudan, which is now South Sudan, uh, outside of a little uh mud hut, two uh wasn't a little mud hut, two-story windowless mud building that they called a hospital. And it's basically where parents' moms would take their kids to die of diarrhea, waterborne illness. And so these guys saw a lady standing out there, her child was there. They said, Why are you here? Why is your child in this building? She said, It's because of the water we drink. And they said, Show us where you get your water. So they walked a mile and a half away, came up to the nasty algae-covered little puddle pond, and they said, They knew right then this is what we've been waiting for. This is the clarity that we need. Here's a solvable problem that a billion people in the world are suffering from. And uh we want to uh provide clean water to these people, but we want to do it through the ministry of the church. And so they came back and they formed a 501c3 and a board raised first uh 10 grand or something like that, and uh did a water point in that village, and that was uh December 8th, uh, 2008, was uh when that was implemented. And so Everthurst uh kind of grew like a really nice local following and pool of donors in Birmingham. And then uh organization grew, more people heard about it, and more people began to give to it. And I think as of last year, I believe it was seven year 17, and it's been 17 years of growth every year. So about a $10 million a year budget right now, and uh we've a little over 1.6 million people uh with clean water and access to the gospel. We work through local partners where we go and vet local NGOs that are and try to scale their businesses to create jobs, helping them solve their own problems. And then they bring in local pastors that speak the language through the underground church or Christians that are looking for a way to minister to their own people. We put them at the tip of the spear of the water project. And so we work through MOUs of five years, working with our partners, how many people are in this zip code, we'll call it. You know, I'm sitting in Shelby County, Alabama right now. So we would say, hey, how many people live in Shelby County? How many water points would it take to completely saturate and end the water crisis in Shelby County? How much will it cost and how long will it take? You know, and so take that and break that into three to five year chunks, fundraise for those three to five years to be able to honor that commitment to saturate everywhere with water, and are taking Christians that have otherwise been either persecuted or have not been able to gain traction uh in these the pastor or the Christian goes in and says, Hey, do you want clean water? They say, Of course we want clean water. He says, I can help you get clean water. And then they that pastor takes the village through the process. They have to put skin in the game. We don't believe in a free lunch, we're not trying to create more of a welfare state. It's like they have to contribute money somehow or labor, which is put into a repair fund because it's a mechanical solution. Anything mechanical is eventually going to break down, it's gonna need a repair, it's gonna need an upgrade down the line. And so because of the money that we raise in a repair fund, it's put into escrow. About eight women in a village are kind of over that so that a corrupt chief can't get to it. And then when it needs a repair or maintenance, the money is there to do it. It's their solution, it's not our solution. If you've read the book When Helping Hurts, that's what we're trying to do. We're we're helping hurting. And um so yeah, that that's my level nutshell of neverthirst. And then because the pastor was the implementer, pastor has tremendous traction, has gained voice, and usually we do hygiene and sanitation with all of the different projects we do. The pastor goes around, helps them dig their own latrine. And while they're digging out the toilet, and he's looking for the person of peace to be able to share, like, hey, you know why I'm really here? I'm here because there's a God who created you and loves you and wants you to have safe water to drink so that you and your children aren't sick anymore. That is in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Well, let me touch off on a couple things there, um, which excites me greatly because there are other organizations that provide water, but without much thought in the long term. They're just coming in, putting in wells or doing other things. But as followers of Christ, as Christians, we and I assume that you and your whole organization will agree with me, that we can provide somebody water, food, education, meet their medical needs, housing, all the things that we have on our top 10 list. But if we fail to provide them or introduce them to or take them along in their relationship with Jesus, what have we really given them in light of eternity? And what a disservice. For I feel that's my personal belief. I'm not saying this is never thirst or anyone that you partner with or give to you, but my my personal belief is followers of Christ to give to organizations that aren't sharing Jesus. That's fine here and there. But overall, big picture, the majority of what we've been entrusted with should include that. If we believe, which we should, that there is an eternity and it's a long, long time. I just want to applaud you for that. I um again, there's other organizations that are a lot larger, and and sometimes I feel like they're larger because they threw Jesus under the bus. Now you wouldn't know that if you do your research like we do at ROI Ministry to do our due diligence to understand what they're about and and what their their mission and and vision is and what their focus is. But again, I just want to applaud you for that. Um, and so can you now speak? I'm gonna come back to a story that you shared with me one time. I hope you recall it. I hope I don't get it wrong, but I'm gonna save it towards the end because this is a tearjerker, and I've thought about it a lot since you shared it with me many years ago. But can you tell us a little bit about your impact per dollar per person as our metric? And for those who aren't familiar with ROI ministry that you're listening, we look at organizations and we evaluate them based upon their measurable kingdom impact per dollar. And then we have a third-party organization, Calvin Edwards, that does a deep dive into looking at the support for that. Uh, we do trust the ministries, but we, you know, in the words of Reagan, we trust and verify uh through this third party. And thanks to a Jackson Family Foundation grant that covers half, and then the ministries cover the other half. Here in Georgia right now, listening today's election day for Rick Jackson. I don't know when this is gonna show, probably in a week or two from now. We'll know if he if he made it as the the Republican Party governor. But we're very appreciative of Jackson Family Foundation for that. Very appreciative that the ministries will cover the ever the other cost to verify what that impact per dollar is. But can you tell us what that is, Matt, and uh what you anything else you'd like to speak about as it relates to somebody wanting to know, hey, I've got five, ten, fifty dollars, but I want to know what what the results are from that. Jesus calls that fruit, by the way. This is a biblical principle. You can you can look it up, Jesus Jesus fruit many times. But can you speak to that a little bit for our listeners?

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Yeah, well, it would be helpful to understand. I I think first that like, you know, no water technology, water implementation is necessarily equal. I mean, it depends on where you're working in the world. We work across um sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East, and Southeast Asia, which would commonly be known, I guess, in missions world as the 1040 window, exclusively amongst unreached people groups. That's what I guess I left out in terms of uh explaining what Neverthirst does. That's where we do it, and that's who we do it amongst. 1040 window, 10 and 40 latitude on the on the map, and uh unreached people groups. In Southeast Asia, it's it's a little bit more simple solutions that can be implemented. You know, you can drill about a hundred feet, you know, hit the aquifer and put in something like a hand pump that with regular maintenance every few years, you know, will last 25, 30 years, whatever, without needing to be replaced. You know, that's a fairly cheap solution. But in Africa, we are drilling thousand feet in the ground, building a solar farm 50 yards wide, doing deep boring to do ductrial pipes and like you would have in our in our waterwork system, you know, and pumping that solar power to miles and miles of villages. And that's like a very difficult price than like installing a hand pump or docker is easy to get to. And so all of that combined, you know, if we take the number of what it costs um on a cheaper solution and more expensive solution, the average is that fifty dollars will give one person sustainable, safe, clean water and access to the gospel. So $50 takes someone off the board of the water crisis uh sustainably, and um, which is quite incredible. Like if you think about how much our water bills can be, you know, every month. But yeah, so one one person, $50 gets it done. Like I said, over the last 17 years, we served over 1.6 million, almost 1.61 million people uh in that way. Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Yeah, that's all so the the story, I guess we'll jump into it now, and then we'll continue with some other questions and maybe recall this or not. But you had mentioned about uh a guy who went into a village to share Jesus, and he had his two sons, and uh they killed his two sons and he left. And then a year later he he felt like God's calling to go back into the same village. Now, just I have two sons, and um, if I went back into that, I would probably go back with the Navy SEALs, and there'd be no village left. Got to do a lot of work on my heart, right? But uh he went back to the village with Neverthirst put in a well and uh led the village to the Lord because now he was they were bringing something that they needed. And uh I'm sure I didn't do that story justice, but I'll never forget it because I just thought that was so powerful as we're seeing, as you just share the 1040 window for our listeners that aren't familiar. It's there's some hard ground in there, some places that are not receptive to the gospel, and uh they don't provide missionary visas. And we're seeing organizations such as Neverthirst using water to enter into these nations, these village villages with and the received with open arms from the government, from the communities, and then they're you're using that as a platform to share Jesus. Now, did did I get half that story right? It was many years ago that you shared it with me, but I'll it it definitely left a mark on me.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Yeah, everything you said was true. If you go back and listen to maybe the uh finish line podcast, that was my very first trip right after I had gotten here with Never Thirst. They have asked us not to speak specifically about the country or the region that that's in because the persecution right now is untenable. It's like very, very difficult for them to operate in the open as a Christian. But yeah, Pastor had a guy in the south of that country, had a heart for unreached people groups in the north of his country and went there, spoke the language, uh, they told him not to come back. He came back, he brought up his family, they killed his two sons, seven and five. He connected at a at a missions conference that Neverthurst was at and was given the opportunity, asked if he still had a heart for those people. He said he did. And he said, If if we could help you bring them clean water, would you want to go back? And he goes, Yeah, I think they'll listen to me if I could meet their biggest need. And that's what happened. And so when I met him, he told me that story, and I was of course like in shock. But the people that met us at that water point were the people who were like the uh the the home church, the believers who had come to faith through his ministry, uh, since uh you know, bringing them through the process of getting clean water to that village. So yeah, I mean, here hero of the faith. There's really no words. I mean, we get persecuted for our faith in different ways for sure, but you know, that's that's pretty incomparable.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Yeah, those are those are the kind of people that I'm just excited I may get to visit them in heaven. Um I'm sure I won't be living in the same community. They'll have mansions that are that are massive, um, and uh just really inspire me. What what do you think about I shared in the beginning? Most of all Christian giving is really going to preach to the choir when there's so many opportunities for people to invest in places and through organizations like Neverthirst where they know they're making a difference, where they know rather than maybe meet 10, 20, 30 people on the other side of the eternity that they impacted, they have an opportunity to maybe meet hundreds or thousands. What do you think? You know, and keep in mind it's a loaded question because it it was the holy injustice that started ROI ministry. And I gotta tell you, it uh 2025 they updated that information, and my heart was broken again because the good news is generous giving has succeeded. Giving has trip more than tripled to over a trillion, but unfortunately, we're still giving one third of one percent to reach the poorest lost people in the world. To ministries that are doing that. What what what do you feel about that? What are your words of wisdom? People might be listening to this.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Well, um I think there's some reasons why people may maybe don't give to the overtly needy places in the world. And I honestly think part of the reason is that there's not a ton of options. Honestly, like there's there's some options. There's not a ton of organizations solely focused on working in in these parts of the world. Even if you say it by number, there's there's a lot of organizations. I think only like 90, well, I was just saying not only, only six percent of all nonprofits like have a budget of a million dollars or more a year. Like it's very few nonprofits, you know, that ever hit that seven-figure mark. And so part of my job is I fly around the country, I meet with donors, major donors, mega donors, you know, very generous, very generous people. The issue is kind of like they want to give generously. Your organization, ROI, is understand like what it takes to vet an organization and be like, is this organization a worthy, number one, a worthy organization to give to? But the other thing is there's a lot of organizations that if you dump millions and millions of dollars on, they just couldn't deploy it. You know what I mean? They couldn't necessarily deploy it. And so do you think there's an issue there? And then I guess my other take on it is when I meet with donors and hear their heart and and when they ask me similar questions, my counsel has always been like, hey, I'm for a diversified portfolio. I think everybody should have, if they're part of a local body, and I think that's really where the deep questions go in is like, what local body are you part of? Because if you're part of a local body, you know, when you're giving to it, upgrading their coffee or getting another flat screen TV or something like that, that doesn't do anything for me. But I do think people should have a local strategy, local church body to make sure that their local church body is doing the work that a local church body should be doing in the community. And then a national strategy, looking around and saying, hey, I'm a I'm a citizen of this country. I need to be invested here too. What can I give to here of being a uh of building Christendom and where I live, and then looking in the and having an international strategy, right? In terms of unreached peoples, people that haven't heard the gospel. It's like, what can I do here? Who would be a good investment and return on my investment here? So I don't know, that might go be a different train of thought than maybe the person that's maybe looking for this podcast. But I do think we need more organizations that are able to scale to where you can take, they can take large amounts of capital and to be able to deploy it so that an organization like yours could vet them and be like, hey, listen, this is great. X amount of percent is going into the ground, and it's not just going towards marketing and overhead and all the things, but there just aren't a ton. There's just a few. And then some that are you know under 10% of these organizations can take big amounts of money. So that's one problem. And then the other, the other thing, I would just like just like your investments, I would I would say, where's God placed me? How can I be a great, faithful Christian here in my in my community and my and then internationally to help play my bit in the Great Commission to make, you know, to disciple the nations.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

By the way, on uh all my intro podcasts, so over the first three to five podcasts.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

I knew I should have listened to those, Tim.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

You should have listened to those because they address all that. I'm just gonna touch off on real quick and then people can go back and listen. But for those who are interested in the details behind the what I think to be the greatest problem facing the church today, that we have one less less than one third of one percent making it to the ends of the earth. Now keep in mind Jesus said to go into Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. I don't know if that was one third, one third, but it certainly wasn't 97, 2.9%, and then one third of one percent, which is what it works out to right now. So again, episode one, episode two, what Jesus says about this for anyone who's interested. And then episode three gets to the solution. Um, we're not about, and you know that, we're not about robbing Peter to pay Paul, Peter representing the local church, Paul representing ministries. Um, but at the same time, you know, the church in America has has declined 20% in the last 20 years, and you got to look at that and go, you know, what why is that? Jesus said to the to the religious people of his day, if you're not producing fruit with what he's given to you, he'll take that away from you and give it to a nation that is producing fruit. And it's interesting that the Christian South is growing at a rapid pace. And we're coming at this at, hey, this there, there is an issue here. It's uh like you said, for those of you who don't know, ROI ministries first and foremost support and tie to your local church. And the reason why, one of the many reasons why is we find that people that do that, God blesses them, then to give more beyond that. And uh, but really the the problem is most people don't realize this with a trillion coming into the church now, over a hundred billion or nearly a hundred billion is being embezzled every year. And so that's just poor stewardship. A hundred billion? Ninety-two billion. Embezzled? Embezzled. And so and about two another couple hundred billion. Now that's illegal, but then you have twice that amount that's going to organizations that cannot tell you what it did. So not illegal, but just as bad. Again, Jesus talks about fruit in the New Testament 30 of the 60 times it's referenced. It's it's not the fruit that Paul talks about, fruit of this fruit, the good fruit that should be uh that we should see from our lives. We're not to judge anyone's motives or hearts. We we don't know what's in their heart or motives, but Jesus did say you'll know them by their fruit. And so um we cover that, and hopefully the listeners here can go listen to those episodes. But in three, we provide the solution, and the solution is not again robbing Peter to pay Paul, it's really doing your due diligence, right? Um, I hear that it that to me it's an excuse, and I cringe every time I hear about the capacity thing. Hey, Tim, your ministries are small, but you just pointed out, Matt, that our ministries are actually large because none of them are below a million dollars. So they're they're they're in that 6%. And sometimes I just think that's an excuse. Hey, there's a capacity issue here. Well, try us out. We've been doing this for 10, 15 years, and you know what? We've never met the capacity of our top 10. And and actually, we're in a little bit of a drought right now. Why aren't more people using our free service? Our board underwrites the cost, we don't get a commission, we were not selling or giving away contact information. We're we're doing this as a service to the kingdom because our members are marketplace leaders and and we want to know we're making a difference by helping people be better stewards of their resources. So, again, if you or your listeners get a chance to go back and listen to those episodes, uh, that would be great. And then lastly, uh episode five, we've got a lot of views, a lot of interest, but there's a lot of money sitting in donor advice funds and foundations. And people and and unfortunately, the wealth managers, they still get a commission on it while it's sitting in the donor advice fund. So it's working against it, getting into the kingdom. And so because of that, uh people get the tax break, but they have not been generous. They have not given a dime by getting a tax saving. It's wise to have a donor advice fund. We have one for each of our top ten. But when that money sits there and it's not deployed into the kingdom, you're basically saying that your financial planner can is is better than God because we're missing the next Billy Graham, we're missing the next Bill and Von A. Bright, Mother Teresa, you name it. Again, hopefully you get an opportunity to listen to these episodes five, but we address all these things that are talked about as you and I know Matt in the giving circles, um, and we're hoping to debunk some of those things, uh, or at least challenge the giving community to say, hey, is there really a capacity issue with our our top 10 for that? I'm like, well, test us out. Should you try us out? Because I've talked to you guys, I've talked to others that are on our list, and they're saying, we're skillable. If we have the money, we can we could do a lot more. And but the reality is there's a lot more money going to charities and other organizations that are not sharing Jesus, that are not moving the ball forward in the areas that matter most. So I really appreciate this. Do you I think you just answered my next question, and research showed that when resources make it to the poorest lost nations on average, they're 6,000 times more fruitful. Now, I know many of the poorest, 20th poorest nations in the world are in the 1040 window, but we're finding out some that are just south of that in Africa and different places are just as responsive. And there's some places in the 1040 window that's hard ground that is hard to share the gospel. Yes. But are you seeing overall that there's a greater responsiveness of the poorest lost nations in the world as compared to others that have more uh as it pertains to being receptive to uh what you're doing and the gospel message?

SPEAKER_00 31:10

I mean, I I couldn't speak with any intelligence on the other nations that we don't work in. So I I I don't know what they're seeing, I don't know what those those numbers are. I will tell you that it's hard ground where we are, and but the gospel is going forward, and you know to go back to what you were saying before, I'll I'll tie this into my answer is if there's yet another nonprofit leader that would be watching this episode, so like this would be for them in response to what you just said. When I got to Never Thirst in 2019, we're a two about a two and a half million dollar organization annually, and last year we ended at about almost 10.9 million. And what we saw was our growth was from people, you know, people that had wealth, you know, whether it was uh assets, donor advised fund. And we had a tremendous amount of growth going to people that just had money sitting in their donor vice funds, uh, like you just mentioned. And and what we saw was that they just said, hey, we're just number one, we're waiting for a compelling vision of something that we think is actually will move the needle, you know, something that's solvable. And number two, we want to know like what you did with it. You know what I mean? What is the impact? Like, give me a clear vision and show me what you did with it. That's really how we grew. And the money was released from these donor advise funds as our as we increased our ability to take on large capacity dollars to increase doing it, the dollars came in. And what we found was they continued to increase giving year over year because if you give to Neverthirst, we give you a very specific thing that can with a very specific number with a promise. And then we communicate with you the whole time, and then at the end, you get like at the very least, like a high res PDF booklet, you know, has testimonies of the pictures, GPS coordinates. You go to it on Google Map, you see exactly who it where it is, testimonies of the people whose lives have been impacted, testimonies from the pastor, you know, that was the implementer on the project, exact number of people whose lives were changed because of your generosity, your family or your business, or somebody's name is on the plaque on the water point. You know, it's just there forever. And we just saw like if you have a compelling vision and then you can prove what you did with it and then report back, then the money that's sitting in those funds, people are more than happy to release that money, but they just I think they want to steward that the way that they would steward any other money, towards like they don't want to just throw good money for bad or good money for I don't even know what the heck this is doing in the world. And my advice for other nonprofit leaders is like if you're hunting for that money and it's and it's already allocated for giving, then that would be that'd be great. Another issue I think with donor advice funds is like that nonprofits are up against is that you can invest in for-profit you know, ventures out of your donor advice fund, uh, like call a business like a B Corps company or something like that. And then obviously you can't make that return personally, like you can't go out and buy a boat with it, but you can you know funnels it back into the DAF, you know, to build your DAF, and that's a strategy. But I think a lot of guys have fallen in love with that strategy of being like, oh, I'm a business guy, I love business, I think we can solve a lot of problems through business, which I agree with too. We can solve a lot of problems through well-run kingdom-minded businesses. But I think a lot of nonprofits, because they're unclear, they don't report, it's nebulous, it's murky. I think a a savvy guy could say, well, I have this money sitting in my DAF, and here's my buddy starting a company, or here's this cool idea that I really could understand and get my teeth behind. I can invest in it through my DAF. It's very low risk to me. And if it works, I get a big return back into my DAF and I can redeploy to charitable giving once I hear something compelling. So I think that's also competition for DAF money right now in the nonprofit world. But full circle, we are seeing the Holy Spirit move, pastors taking tremendous risks, people responding uh out of gratitude for water, knowing that, you know, their government has abandoned them and hasn't taken care of them, false religion that their land follows, the false gods that they have worshipped have never done anything for them. And here in the name of Jesus, you know, someone's coming and sharing with them not only the good news of Jesus, but they're meeting their most desperate physical need in order to meet their most desperate spiritual need. So, and we get stories of these all the time, and they are in the reports that we're sending out to our donors all the time.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Yes, and I've gotten several of those undeserved because they were other people giving to uh never thirsting. So it's always very exciting to see that. And and we're we're we're the first to say that our top ten, no offense, is not God's top ten. At the same time, all the other issues that you brought up, we're we're addressing them. We but by providing this reservice for people that are trying to be good stewards and and as you mentioned, just looking for somewhere they can move the needle. And so uh we, you know, we're happy uh users of this this service and and want to share it with others. And again, we get nothing out of it personally except what others get out of it, and that's our reward on the other side of heaven uh that God was able to use us in a greater way. As you know, we're about EROI and and you're right, some sometimes uh there's a lot of I wouldn't call them games, but different strategies used within the DAFs that is not furthering the kingdom. And and I think uh, you know, God wins every time. If we're trying to outgive God, if we're trying to outstrategize God, uh He's gonna win every time. And and the key is really finding those organizations like Neverthirst uh that have been faithful, continue to be faithful, and um have been vetted by third parties so that people know when they invest and what you're doing, uh they know that they're making a difference. So uh let me just finish with a couple things, then you can add to this. But I just want to let people know if you wanted to give today to Neverthirst, you can find them on our OI Ministry Top 10 website. You'll give 100% of it will make it to them. You can do that in a way that it's anonymous. We don't take a fee or provide any uh your information to anyone. Uh, but we also strongly encourage you to just give straight to the ministry, and then Matt, or maybe one of his folks, will follow up with you and and you can stay engaged in the project, follow up with them directly. We do have a Calvin Edwards report that I mentioned on the website so that you can see the due diligence that was performed. You can see the questions that we asked that are in our standards, and uh, we found that to be very helpful. Again, what we're about is to really help people give and know that when they give, it's making a difference, and that it's to an organization that has been vetted. We're we're not, we're all for ECFA, charity navigator, all these other resources, and they provide a great service, but we take it one step further, and that is what are what is the fruit? What what what can I expect to see if I invest in Neverthirst and most importantly, why that matters forever. So thank you, Matt. Please finish finish this out with any other words of wisdom or anything that uh our listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

Well, you know, Tim, just talking about those different third-party watchdogs, you know, like the charity navigators and stuff in the world made me think like what one of the reasons why we're so grateful for you. I know all the top ten guys uh are so grateful for our OI ministries is not only because, you know, thoughtful Christians that are looking to steward their wealth, finding your website, and you know, obviously finding organizations like us and the other nine, you know, to be generous in the kingdom with. But um, you know, you guys are a pure meritocracy, which I think is a rare feat, you know, in the world that we're today. It's like truly black and white, you know, zeros and ones and points, and it's straightforward and it's on stewardship. Whereas um, you know, we have to get looked at. We have to pay for a third-party auditor to come in every year and go through our books with a fine-tooth comb. And then we put that out on our 990s and on our audited financial reports on our website. But then, you know, charity navigator and these other organizations look at us, but they're rating us since 2022, I believe it changed, where they'll knock you down a star, not based on your fiduciary stewardship and accountability and transparency, but rather because it's like, I mean, if they don't like the ethnic makeup of your staff or your if they don't like, you know, if you're not representing, you know, certain protected classes of people and things like that, they they'll knock you down and not and down a rung. And it has nothing to do with the stewardship of the finances, but rather like, are you meeting our uh DEI and cultural our DEI standards and our cultural preferences and that? And so I'll just say, man, if you're looking for a totally non-woke, merit-based organization to do your vetting, I can't think of a better one than ROI. It is the uh nonprofit colonoscopy for sure. Uh every year uh they do their diligence and numbers don't lie. Anyway, we're grateful for you. Thanks for this opportunity to come and speak to your audience and just to get a little more FaceTime with you, Tim.

SPEAKER_01 40:36

Thank you too. Well, I appreciate it. Thanks again, Matt. You just heard what wise generosity looks like when it actually works. Go deeper with Tim Barker's book, Boom What to Do When Life Blows Up Around You. A field guide for the moment your money, your marriage, your health, or your calling falls apart. And what to do in the wreckage that actually matters. Every one of my dollars of every copy goes straight to vetted ministries that transform lives. Grab one for you today, hand it to someone in the blast zone, but don't bury what you have heard and know you're making a difference.