danpallotta @danpallotta Twitter profile

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danpallotta

13 days

Listen to my new single, "Voice in My Head," out today on all platforms. It's about that ghost that whispers danger to us incessantly.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

2 years

My 15 year-old daughter after Bruce Springsteen tossed her his harmonica tonight. A magical moment that she will never forget that taught her that magical things really do happen in life if you open yourself to them.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

3 years

Spoke to a reporter this morning who seem unconvinced that nonprofits need to spend money on fundraising and advertising to grow. He said, "If they do good work, they will thrive. Word will get around." Magical thinking is no friend to nonprofits or any of the people they serve.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

3 years

I don’t mind billionaires. But I do mind billionaires being called “philanthropists” when they spend .1% of their time on a cause, while nonprofit workers who spend 150% of their time on it are called opportunists for wanting salaries that dignify the value of their effort.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

Want to know why nonprofit organizations aren’t solving the world’s big problems? Because that’s not what we asked them to do. We asked them to keep their overhead and salaries low. So guess what they did.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

3 years

When people say no one in a nonprofit should earn much money they think they are advocating for those in need. What they are actually saying is that those in need don’t deserve the kind of high-priced talent that goes into selling leisure and luxury.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

1 year

@sawyermerritt @garyblack00 @GerberKawasaki @teslaownersSV @TeslaBoomerMama

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

3 years

When you tell people how little you spend on fundraising you are essentially telling them how little you care about getting other people engaged in what you believe to be incredibly valuable work.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Don't say, "I'm starting a nonprofit." Say, "I'm committed to children," "I'm holding myself accountable to address loneliness in my town," "I'm promising to raise $5 million innovative for cancer research." Who cares about the tax status?What you're committed to is what matters.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

1 year

@sawyermerritt @garyblack00 @GerberKawasaki @teslaownersSV @TeslaBoomerMama

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Herein lies the problem. NYTimes on Charity"water giving bonuses to staff: "Never mind that the point of philanthropy is to give to others, not make for yourself." I always thought the point of philanthropy was to solve problems.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Overhead is a phantom. It doesn’t exist. Unless there’s fraud or ineptitude at play, 100% of the donor’s money is going to advance the cause in one way or another.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

It would not take that much imagination or leadership for 20 of our largest foundations to get together, put $1 million each into a pool, & run four ads on the SuperBowl about the importance of the nonprofit sector in America.We should work toward this for next year. I’m serious.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Trying again. Love my Tesla Model 3 but autopilot would have crashed 3 times in the last month,with my hands on the wheel. Once by accelerating into the car in front of me, once ignoring a UPS truck protruding into the road, once ignoring car merging from right. @Tesla @elonmusk

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

Want to know why nonprofit organizations aren’t solving the world’s big problems? Because that’s not what we asked them to do. We asked them to keep their overhead and salaries low. So guess what they did.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

You can bet your ass not a single Presidential candidate will talk about a role for the nonprofit sector in solving our country's great problems, and no one in our sector is charged with getting them to talk about it. Staggering, times two.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

8 years

My new TED Talk has just gone live: “The Dream We Haven’t Dared to Dream.” Hope you enjoy, and might share:

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

If I ran a foundation I would require every program officer to spend one year working in the development office of a community organization.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

2 years

Five years in the making. Announcing, “Uncharitable,” a documentary movie to liberate the nonprofit sector's true power. Premiers in NY at Lincoln Center 3-28, in L.A. at the Director's Guild 3-30. In select theaters in April. Streaming in May. Trailer:

UnCharitable | Official Site

Featuring Edward Norton and heads of major charities, Uncharitable obliterates obsolete ideas about giving, re-shuffling the saints and sinners. Inspired by Dan Pallotta, whose TED Talk on charity...

uncharitablemovie.com

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

You would never look at someone in a burning building and say, “Well if I can just rescue her foot, that will be something.” Why does the nonprofit sector settle for resources that only allow it to address the problem at miniature scale? We must dream bigger dreams.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

2 years

Tomorrow we’re announcing something that’s been five years in the making that I believe is going to change everything for the nonprofit sector and all those it serves. Stay tuned.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

3 years

Someone should write a business school case study on quality control at Lego because they never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever—no matter how big the set is—ever, ever, ever, ever, ever miss a piece.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

1 year

@sawyermerritt @garyblack00 @GerberKawasaki @teslaownersSV @TeslaBoomerMama @WholeMarsBlog @Tesla @elonmusk

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

God forbid someone should get two direct mail pieces from a charity, but did you ever hear anyone complain about the nine Pottery Barn catalogs they get every month?

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Wow. I just tweeted something very factual about the dangers of autopilot on my Tesla model 3 and Twitter deleted it. @Tesla @elonmusk

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

When this is over, and it will be over, let us not return to the ghetto of our tiny careful thoughts. Let's not make it about getting nonprofits back on their feet. Let us set our sights on taking our rightful place in the annals of history and changing the fucking world.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

The biggest foundations in America must do more than announce flexible grants. They should all join resoundingly in a pledge to give away 15% of assets instead of 5% this year. They are sitting on well north of $1 trillion. #Philanthropy15

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

When you tell people how little you spend on fundraising you are essentially telling them how little you care about getting other people engaged in what you believe to be incredibly valuable work.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Part of the reason nonprofits cannot scale is because we will not allow them to run at a loss for years, the way we did with Amazon and Twitter and Facebook and Tesla.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Roger, with all respect you, like many Americans, don’t realize that 1) low overhead doesn’t equal effective impact, and 2) overhead allows good organizations to scale rapidly, find more donors and help many more people. We inadvertently suffocate scale by demanding low overhead.

Roger Moore

@movienation

5 years

@danpallotta 40% overhead? He can't spin that pal.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Sometimes it seems that we want the answers to social change to be sexy, shiny and new. But the older I get the more I see that it is labor, labor, labor, persistence, persistence, persistence, mundane, mundane, mundane. There is actually liberation in this recognition.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

If I ran a foundation, I would have most of the grants go to strengthen the fundraising and civic engagement of the best grantees, rather than to episodic program funding unable to sustain itself after the grant period is over. Independence, not dependency.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

There are some people in the nonprofit sector for whom it is fundamentally more important and ethical for salaries to be low than for problems to be solved.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

3 years

A nonprofit can get very big selling a powerful cocktail of sentiment and low overhead ratios to the public. That doesn’t mean it’s making a damned bit of difference.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

If the TED talk has been a valuable tool for you, there’s something we’ve been working on for five years that will be announced soon that I believe will be a game-changer for elevating civic literacy about how our sector works. I don’t think things will be the same after this.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

3 years

Donor: I don’t want my contribution eaten up by event expenses. I’d rather just give it to the charity directly. Reality: But you didn’t. So they had to stage this big event to motivate you to contribute, so that money is already spent.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Apple didn’t engage in strategic planning to get where they are today. They took gigantic risks and committed themselves to their dreams. We didn’t get to the moon with a strategic plan. It was a dream and a deadline. No strategic plan can substitute for courage.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

3 years

Asking the general public what they think charity overhead should be is like asking the general public, How long do you think thoracic surgery should take?, and then using that as the rule for thoracic surgeons. What on earth expertise does the general public have about it?

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

2 years

Scary

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

Being busy and overwhelmed doesn’t correlate with making an impact. It’s just being busy and overwhelmed.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Yes, donations, should process themselves, thank you letters should write themselves like they would at Hogwarts, and funds should teleport, with the aid of their own supernatural intelligence, to the proper end-users. When will the Red Cross ever get it?

The Guardian

@guardian

5 years

Australian Red Cross defends spending 10% of bushfire donations on office costs

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

A foundation should not be concerned most with its long-term stability. It should be pursuing strategic, daring audacious efforts to eradicate social problems, even if that comes with heavy risk. NASA was not concerned foremost with its survival. It wanted to get to the moon.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

If Apollo had used modern nonprofit jargon, instead of, “the moon by 1970,” it would have been, “Strategic Impact Plan: Space 1970.” Lose the ambiguity. Get specific. Put your reputation on the line for something breathtaking.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Uber loses $1B in a quarter and capital markets give it more money. Imagine if that capital windfall came to No Kid Hungry or Feeding America. Time is long overdue to give nonprofits the freedom and resources given to business. Ignore business vernacular at your peril.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

8 years

Too many nonprofits talk things to death. Just try something. Start something. Fail. Learn. But stop talking about it!

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

It is long overdue that those of us in the nonprofit sector moved decisively out of the cozy domain of, “good causes“ and into the realm of high-stakes, daring, scare-the-shit-out-of-us impossible dreams.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

Jimmy made me a mask. Two pieces of bed sheet and a shirt. Like, made it. Sewed it and everything. Did I marry the right guy or what?

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

3 years

I've accepted a role as a Hauser Center Leader at the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. Looking forward to helping the next generation of leaders see a new horizon for the nonprofit sector and its role in changing the world.

Dan Pallotta

Dan Pallotta is a builder of movements. He invented the multi- day charitable event industry. He created the Breast Cancer 3-Day walks and the multi-day AIDS Rides, which raised in excess of half a...

www.hks.harvard.edu

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

It's not the nonprofit sector's fault that giant social problems persist. But I believe – deeply – in the sector and its peoples' potential to solve them, if only we would liberate them to do it. Critics of this argument either don't understand it, or don't have the same faith.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Don’t confuse frugality with morality. Just because a charity spends less doesn’t mean they accomplish more. In fact, it probably means the opposite.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

I only want my funding to go into the rocket. You have to guarantee me that none of it will go into the launch pad.

Jacob Harold

@jacobcharold

6 years

“I heard that you are trying to land a shuttle on Mars. I’d like to invest $500. I will need quarterly reports.” - @NonprofitAF

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

1 year

My dad passed away 53 weeks ago to this day. I never posted anything on social media because I’m not a big fan of internet condolences but on this Father’s Day it feels like time to come out about it. It hurts and I hope somehow I get to see and talk to him again someday.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Thank you, to everyone who engages in the difficult, difficult, work of trying to change the world every day, and to all those who support them.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

10 years

Right above my favorite pizza place. How cool and powerful is this at night! http://t.co/3P8hC4dJH1

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

10 years

So psyched! I just passed this on the highway! How cool! http://t.co/WED3tnCzij

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

Coming this week: Three big announcements about three important new tools, the likes of which the nonprofit sector has never had before, to change the thinking of your entire ecosystem, from donors to staff to boards. I built these for you and have spent years on them.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Fundraising is the cost to society of people not giving unless they are asked. Homes don’t sell unless people are asked and we pay those sales people based on the number of homes they sell. Why would we not want to incentivize people trying to raise enough money to end poverty?

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 months

@jgebbia I don’t understand why police are present and not doing anything.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

10 years

Our suicide prevention charities are miniscule up against the scale of the problem. 35,000 suicides a year.17 times that number in attempts.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

3 years

Most nonprofits and their boards still live in a mythical world in which low overhead helps the people they serve.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

10 years

We are up on eight billboards in MA with over 1,050,000 people seeing this each week. @CharityDefense http://t.co/pyLNCEP9NS

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

7 years

The nonprofit/for profit binary reinforces the inequality it is designed to mitigate.When the wealthy give at the margins of their wealth, they are anointed "philanthropists."The lowly nonprofit executive who gives their life to a cause is an "opportunist" for being compensated.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

7 years

When we apply our "nonprofit" asceticism to the part of our soul that yearns to dream, we do the whole world a disservice. Why should we not have the same right to dream as big as Elon Musk, and the same access to massive capital that he has with which to carry them out?

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

I believe local nonprofit organizations are a better bet than the federal government for solving community problems because local nonprofits have massively more grassroots data and experience. If we want to raise taxes, fine. But give the cash to the best local organizations.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

How could nonprofits believe they have a right to their most magnificent dreams if we consistently tell them they don’t have a right to any of the tools, practices or resources they would need to make their most magnificent dreams come true?

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

C.S.Lewis Screwtape Letters

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

When you tell people how little you spend on fundraising you are essentially telling them how little you care about getting other people engaged in what you believe to be incredibly valuable work.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

10 years

Nine times out of 10 the other person isn't thinking what we think they're thinking, and therein lies most of the trouble in the world.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

Fundraising is not a narrow grab for more money. It is an investment in civic engagement and in strengthening civil society—in getting people invested in the great causes of our time, and God knows, we need a more engaged civil society.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

7 years

The nonprofit sector suffers from chronic strategic planning disease. Because planning is all you can really do when you are chronically denied resources.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

2 years

When a foundation makes a program grant, it makes a one-time purchase on a dollar-for dollar-basis. When it invest in fundraising it builds a revenue stream, possibly in perpetuity, that can multiply into tens, hundreds of times the initial investment. This is poorly understood.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

You want your hometown baseball team to pay whatever it takes to find a pitcher who can win the World Series, and you willingly pay the addition to the ticket price. Why wouldn’t you want your favorite charity to pay whatever it takes to find and hire the people who can win too?

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

Some time yesterday, the TED talk that I gave, “The way we think about charity is dead wrong,,“ passed 5 million views. It’s so fulfilling to me that is has been so helpful to so many people and organizations.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

7 years

A tip for better board engagement: stop looking for tips for better board engagement. Stop boring your board to tears. Commit to a daring dream for impact that takes their breath away.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Nonprofit toilet paper would come without the cardboard roll because, well, that’s overhead, not toilet paper programming, so you wouldn’t actually be able to slide it onto you toilet paper roller at home, but hey, the overhead would be low.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

Reading an article about researchers studying how humans can talk to dolphins, and I am thinking that it would be wonderful for humans to learn how to talk to humans too.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

7 months

So beautiful

Restoring Your Faith in Humanity

@HumanityChad

7 months

Teen with Down syndrome visits mother's grave to tell her that he graduated 😭❤️

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

Nonprofits- fear is not your friend right now. Never has been.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

11 years

Great piece by @NickKristof on awe, hiking, national parks, and the public good: http://t.co/aW7YOXpK8e

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

If my parents go out to buy eggs again I’m just going to kill them myself.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

Trying to convince some people to ask about impact instead of overhead is like trying to convince them that a pound of feathers and a pound of bricks weigh the same. They just can’t get beyond the bricks.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

Person A goes to the store and spends one dollar. Person B spends four dollars. Person A is regarded as more efficient. No one asks what either bought. This is with the overhead measure is like.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

8 years

If you truly believe failure is integral to success, then stop ridiculing people who fail at things they at least had the courage to try.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

Nonprofits serving minorities don’t have access to the affluent donor bases that support other organizations. Therefore they must resort to higher-cost fundraising methods, like direct mail and special events. In this sense, overhead measures are actually inherently racist.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

4 years

The real estate agency who took a person on one visit to a million dollar home gets a 3% commission, but we call it unethical for a fundraiser who spent years cultivating a million dollar gift to be paid a commission. This is not conducive to increasing million dollar gifts.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

A huge role of the nonprofit sector must be to strengthen civil society and increase giving. It must be permitted to do that job. No one else coming to do it. That means it must invest much more in fundraising. We should change the nomenclature. “Fundraising” is too narrow.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

8 years

On #GivingTuesday let's ask people to change the constraints they put on giving itself:

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Now would be a good time for The Giving Pledge to give.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

We should not be seeking “answers for our sector.“ It is not about “the sector.“ It is about hunger, poverty, disease, suffering and how to address these as quickly as possible. It is to these issues that we should be seeking answers.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

3 years

Imagine if donors and the media gave non-profits the wide latitude to spend money in whatever way they see fit to achieve long-term objectives that investors give to all of the corporations in which they buy stock.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

The nonprofit sector needs a lot more love-driven deviance, and a lot less fear-driven deference.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

3 years

You cannot simultaneously change the world and comply with the traditional nonprofit mindset that keeps you from changing it in the first place.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

Donors are not going to give you permission to spend more on overhead, growth and salaries unless you create a serious literacy campaign and have a dream for impact big enough to merit them behaving differently. It’s not going to happen simply by complaining about it.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

If you don’t tell donors -emphatically - to stop asking about overhead, they will keep asking about overhead, in exactly the same way your four-year-old child will keep asking you for an ice cream if you don’t tell her there will be consequences if she continues.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

2 years

Sign we keep lit in the front of my office building every night.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

There is a special place in hell reserved for unsubscribe pages that make you re-enter your email address.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

People upset about big giving to Notre Dame vs. hunger, poverty etc. Not rocket science. Notre Dame was massively publicized. Same thing happens with big natural disasters. Just demonstrates what happens when you allow nonprofits to get attention at the level Coca-Cola gets it.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

8 years

I'd be very, very sad to tell my daughters when they wake up in the morning that we don't have our first woman President.

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

5 years

A charity tells you, "95% goes to the cause!" You think, "They don't waste any money!" But how do you know they're not wasting the 95% that goes to the cause? That's the biggest opportunity to waste money, because that's where all the money goes!

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

To all those who say we don’t need financial incentives in charity, that there is “a wide body of research showing that money doesn’t impact performance,“ I have a simple question: would you work for half of your current salary? And when will you let your supervisor know?

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danpallotta

@danpallotta

6 years

Silly that we think money contaminates motives in charity, but not in a great MLB pitcher whom we pay millions, or a great artist like Hockney who makes tens of millions, or a great chef like Thomas Keller, or CEO like Jeff Bezos. They seem to juggle money and motives quite well.

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