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“Dan Pallotta has written the clearest and most articulate critique I have read of the system of values that our charities and other nonprofit organizations are supposed to follow. He explains in graphic detail how these values undercut what charities are trying to do and prevent them from accomplishing all that they might. Not everyone may agree with his position, but the nonprofit world will surely benefit from a vigorous discussion of his arguments.”—Derek Bok, Former President of Harvard University
A courageous call to free charity from its ideological and economic constraints
Uncharitable goes where no other book on the nonprofit sector has dared to tread. Where other texts suggest ways to optimize
performance inside the existing paradigm, Uncharitable suggests that the paradigm itself is the problem and calls into question our fundamental canons about charity. Author Dan Pallotta argues that society’s nonprofit ethic acts as a strict regulatory mechanism on the natural economic law. It creates an economic apartheid that denies the nonprofit sector critical tools and permissions that the for-profit sector is allowed to use without restraint (e.g., no risk-reward incentives, no profit, counterproductive limits on compensation, and moral objections to the use of donated dollars for anything other than program
expenditures).
These double-standards place the nonprofit sector at extreme disadvantage to the for profit sector on every level. While the for profit sector is permitted to use all the tools of capitalism to advance the sale of consumer goods, the nonprofit sector is prohibited from using any of them to fight hunger or disease. Capitalism is blamed for creating the inequities in our society, but charity is prohibited from using the tools of capitalism to rectify them.
Ironically, this is all done in the name of charity, but it is a charity whose principal benefit flows to the for-profit sector and one that denies the nonprofit sector the tools and incentives that have built virtually everything of value in society. The very ethic we have cherished as the hallmark of our compassion is in fact what undermines it.
This irrational system, Pallotta explains, has its roots in 400-year-old Puritan ethics that banished self-interest from the realm of charity. The ideology is policed today by watchdog agencies and the use of “efficiency” measures, which Pallotta argues are flawed, unjust, and should be abandoned. By declaring our independence from these obsolete ideas, Pallotta theorizes, we can dramatically accelerate progress on the most urgent social issues of our time. Pallotta has written an important, provocative, timely, and accessible book—a manifesto about equal economic rights for charity. Its greatest contribution may be to awaken society to the fact that they were so unequal in the first place.
“Challenging hallowed premises is difficult; challenging the foundational premises underlying our understanding of charity is even more so. Dan Pallotta has done exactly that and, in doing so, requires us all to rethink the very nature of what it means to be charitable and how charity actually functions. He liberates charity from its Puritan constraints and cogently attaches it to entrepreneurship in a way that should make us all take two steps back and imagine a new philosophy and theory of charity itself. This is nothing less than a revolutionary work.”—Gary Hart, Former United States Senator and Scholar in Residence, University of Colorado
“Uncharitable is the most courageous and necessary of all of the recent books that have been written about philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. Dan Pallotta understands that being faithful to those that charities are designed to serve requires more than generosity and good management. It requires taking risks, confronting antiquated notions of politically correct charity, and most of all remembering that nonprofit efficiency should be a means to an end not an end in itself. Uncharitable charts a new path that if followed, could finally create the incentives needed to unleash the enormous potential of nonprofits to change the world.”—Bill Shore, Founder & Executive Director, Share Our Strength
“What scales would our nonprofit organizations have to achieve to eradicate the great social problems that confront us, and how do our traditions and beliefs about charity stand in their way? Dan Pallotta has elevated the questions we need to be asking. His book provocatively challenges traditional views of how charities should operate and provides a thought-provoking alternative.”—Dr. David Ho, Time Magazine Man of the Year, 1997, Director, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center
“Uncharitable poses a bold challenge to the orthodoxy that drives American non-profit business practice. In an era when civilization is challenged with unprecedented threats from disease, climate change and globalization, unleashing imaginative leadership in the creation of social good is of paramount urgency. If we are indeed going to succeed in innovating our way to a sustainable future in the 21st century, we will need to unlock the moral and creative potential of the non-profit sector, enable it to interact more comfortably and flexibly with the market, create the right incentives for the recruitment of America's most talented social innovators, and rethink our approaches to capitalizing our best ideas and institutions. If this is heresy, we need more of it.”—Raymond C. Offenheiser, President, Oxfam America
“Dan Pallotta voices what nonprofits don't dare mention, for fear of losing their donor support: Why fundraising expenditures are not only good, they are essential for nonprofit survival; How investment in "overhead" can catapult an organization into a more efficient and productive sphere of operation; How donor distaste for spending on marketing puts our greatest causes at a severe disadvantage to the giant consumer brands; How low salaries prevent nonprofits from attracting top talent to the world's most important jobs. Pallotta's testy and spirited review of the public's weird misconceptions about how nonprofits ought to run should be required reading for all nonprofits, board members, donors and foundations.”—Renee Irvin, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Director, Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management Program, University of Oregon
Click here for TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Dan Pallotta founded Pallotta Team-Works, the company that invented the AIDS Rides and Breast Cancer 3-Day events, which raised over half a billion dollars and netted $305 million in nine years—more money, raised more quickly for these causes than any known private event operation in history. 182,000 people participated in the events. The company had more than 350 full-time employees in sixteen U.S. offices, was the subject of a Harvard Business School case study, and fundamentally re-invented the paradigm for special event fundraising in America.
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