Donating over the Distance: Seniors Start a Company to Donate Money to a Charity

Senior Hank Breckenridge moved to India in July of 2012, and in a matter of days his entire family was sick in bed throwing up because of the contaminated water. They lived solely off of plastic water bottles for three years. He even had to train himself to drinking tap water once he got back.  While he was volunteering in Maharashtra sipping out of a water bottle full of fresh water, the citizens of India were left to walk 10 miles for muddy and stagnant creek water.

Three years after he returned to the US, Breckenridge’s time in India sparked the idea to start a company called RSRVR BTTL alongside his girlfriend senior Elle Angelo. Breckenridge wanted to start a company that would impact people and expose him to the business world. With these ideas in mind, they began a company that would sell water bottles to help people in India gain access to drinkable water.

Breckenridge and Angelo spent the last year building a company that donates 25 percent of its profits to a charity called Chaitanya Educational and Rural Development Society that helps build wells in India. Building wells in India provides uncontaminated and safe drinking water. Each bottle is priced at $30 and for each bottle sold, $7.50 is donated. RSRVR BTTL has chosen a vendor for their water bottles based in Pakistan that donates to the same charity as RSRVR BTTL.

According to Breckenridge, residents in India can either drink bottled water or contaminated creek water. They even have to be careful about some of the fruits and vegetables they eat because they are exposed to contaminated water. While Breckenridge and Angelo know they cannot supply everyone in India with clean water, they want to try and provide accessible clean water to as many people as they can.

While their primary goal is to help build wells in India, starting RSRVR BTTL has also given them skills that will help them in their future careers — Angelo and Breckenridge both want to be entrepreneurs. Angelo is gaining design experience through creating their logo, which shows fresh water running out of a tap, as well as running their Instagram account to market their product.

Breckenridge knows that he wouldn’t have started this company without living in India for three years of his life and seeing first hand the effects that contaminated water had on the people around him.  It was important to Breckenridge and Angelo that their business would not only benefit them but influence society as well.

“We wanted to find a way to help people while still having our business, [and] water bottles made sense,” said Angelo. “And then when we found CERDS it just all came together.”

They’ve found that a major component of creating a business is research and brainstorming. They spend valuable time away from their IB schedule trying to design their logo and get their product out to the public. Gaining attention on the market has been a major issue for them as their product is mainly spread through word of mouth.

Right now they are working on expanding, but to do so, they need their bottles placed in popular retail spots and up on the shelves.  

However, they know it might be a while before they can do that. RSRVR BOTTL needs to increase their sales before they can even think about expanding the company. Right now, their main sales stem from friends and family.

“We are investing our time and our money into the company right now,” said Breckenridge. “All of our money goes right back into the bottle, we’re able to grow our product itself more, it also goes into marketing along with maintaining our company website.”

Their first marketing attempt was selling stickers in the cafeteria with their company logo on them, and ended up earning them $70 as a start. Now, they run a website and are mainly putting their bottles out there by relying on their friends and family to promote. So far, they’ve sold over a 100 bottles.

“It’s not the fastest way of sharing our company but it works,” Breckenridge said. “With an ad, you cover a few thousand people over the course of a day.”

Even though Angelo finds it awkward to self-promote their product, she and Breckenridge want to make sure their company continues as they go to college.

“We want to keep expanding and keep it running, we don’t want it to be a one time thing,” Angelo said. “We want to see how many wells we can build and how many people we can help, hopefully making a name for our brand at the same time.”