This man, in 20 minutes; -presented me with one of my preconceptions -presented an alternative in a logical way -convinced me to accept his point of view. He is a genius.
@TheAmarican Thank you for these thoughts. I think all in all it was a very good speech pointing out very important phenomena. Of course, it did not describe the whole picture and there's much more to it (and there was one part I didn't like: the one about puritans and Calvinists, it was far-fetched and irrelevant). I just want to add as a Hungarian with several years of experience working in the nonprofit sector that we don't have the tax allowances like NGOs in the US do and still, the same way of thinking applies in general - if you sell your product at normal market prices, or if you want to give your people a normal salary, people will scold you for it and call you corrupted.
@TheAmarican " India is much poorer than the US and has more problems with pollution than the US, and yet cancer rates in India are a small fraction of what they are in the US." It's because India has less diagnosis options and shorter lifespans than the U.S., not because they have less cancer. " The reason why society dislikes seeing the head of a charity making lots of money is that we don't like seeing people fraudulently purporting to do good for society while they are actually only enriching themselves and their associates." People who work for charities still pay personal taxes.
@TheAmarican The German Sociologist, Max Weber, may take issue with your puritan/communist perspective in his seminal work "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," but regardless, thank you for taking the time to offer an alternative point of view on this speech. Always healthy to listen to a variety of points on any given matter. :-)
The most important point of charitable giving that he is missing is that Americans have a budget of how much they are willing/able to donate to charity (this is why the 2% of GDP citation has been stable over 50 years). Advertisement and overhead will not increase the cut of the pie- it simply eats into the limited dollars people have allocated for charitable giving and alters the direction the dollars are going (not how many total dollars are available for charity). This is why people care about overhead in charities and not in private for-profit sector where there is essentially no limits on available dollars for goods and services.
It won't work. There are a lot of flaws with his reasoning. The issues of poverty are related to larger systemic issues such as trade liberalization, tax havens, how economics works like debt restructuring programs. The best way to approach poverty is through local planning, and then cost not related to donations but generated on a case by case basis through a planning process between a group of people that come together and solve the problem together. Imagine you want to volunteer. Instead of saying x amount I say we will partner you will with an individual and you will engage each other, and through that planning process you will come to tackle deeper issues. There are no grants, no donations, no relying on money outside of generating it within the community or through a detailed planning process where you are both equals. Then you take these same principles and scale up. There are no disrupted markets, no private interest, no worry about corruption, and no systemic issues because it marries the spiritual vision of mahatma gandhi with community development best practices. That is my solution. And it is different than anything that currently exists in the world. It also sounds insane but I don't really care. After all stating you will tackle poverty without relying on grants or donatins is counter intuitive.
@@kennethyoung7564 Nonprofits are practicing this by the way. Most local governments and funders do partner with charitable organizations to create a rigorous planning process, which we call "strategic impact and community investment". The partnerships are focused on generating revenue for community development while simultaneously monitoring the effectiveness of the nonprofit's programs and services. Yes, your idea would work in a society founded on Mahatma Gandhi's vision, but the reality is cultural bias and egostism are deeply embedded into U.S. culture. Without transforming the individualistic culture at the local level first, restructuring the economic structure at the institutional level will be nearly impossible.
@@patrickscanlon7903you are missing a critical piece: many people do not give to charity because they have not been asked. Many charities miss out on donations because they have not corrected with the right people. The pie absolutely CAN get significantly bigger.
Wow, I needed this. I'm questioning why our nonprofit brags about being "all volunteer" when if we had funds to invest in our organization and it's people, perhaps we could do MORE good than we do right now.
Thank you Dan for being courageous and challenging the status quo. What stuck to me is the history lesson about the Puritans, as I have experienced the same self-loathing. However, I am a NP professional who works as hard and as smart as I can and I do it for less than others in my same position, in my same org. And everyday I question my value and worth because money is the common language of the workplace and I am given less.
He is NOT challenging the status quo. The status quo sweeps the need for mental health and social services under the rug of 501.c when such services should be primarily provided by government that doesn’t have to rebuild infrastructure all the time and has more accountability and transparency.
I am a combat veteran with a four-year professional degree from a top university. I now work for a non-profit and this has to be one of the best videos I've ever seen.
Brilliant! I work in the non-profit world advocating for victims of human trafficking and if the model changed our impact would be greater. Thanks Dan!
Glenn Barres Juju is all over this thread commenting - it seems her primary complaint is that people making a good income doing good work is unacceptable. She sees it as them "filling their pockets".
***** there's no complaint from me if this guy tells people that only 10% of the money people donate will go to the actual cause, and the remainder of it will be overhead. Yeah, but your argument would be 10% is better than 90% when the pie is a 1000 times bigger. Sure, but if I'm the person donating, you've got to let me know. It's my fucking money. Money that I worked hard for. Lying sons of bitches like the fat politicians that only better themselves, but argues for the betterment of all. Yeah, the fat politicians that made things just a little better, and deserves to be billionaires for that little effort they put in? Fuck, anyone could do that.
As much as I love my job and see the positive impact I have on others' lives, I also see the need to provide for my family and pursue my dreams, which also cost money =). So, thank you for shining light on the source of this internal struggle. Your talk has empowered me to recognize my own worth and to be brave enough to say to those in leadership, I am worth more.
The “Dreams” we enable of materialism and excessive concentration of wealth are a major part of the problem as are the tax evasion of 501.c who by their nature have to rebuild an entire bureaucracy cause Americans don’t support government.
I headed a fundraising team for Movember which benefits the Prostate Cancer Foundation. We were a biotech making a prostate cancer drug and couldn't have been more tied to the patients. We succeeded based on this model. The company paid ~$500 for team hats, $1500 for a end of the month happy hour. Allowing people to be selfish and experience the FUN and INVOLVEMENT meant we raised $20k the first year and $40K the second. From 10 participants in Seattle to 100 across the country. SUPPORT GROWTH!
I cannot love this more. A good friend in the nonprofit space sent me this video. We created a software platform and mobile device to help save lives in at-risk communities. We're aligned with nonprofits and corporates that care to help us save lives in at-risk communities like mental health, medical, and aging. We're creating a nonprofit company that Text Lifeline™ can donate to and also receive donations from corporations that will allow us to gift a subscription to those who can't afford it and to those who need it most, like Veterans. Dan opened my eyes to how we build the foundation for this nonprofit. THANK YOU, DAN!
Having spent many years working in the non-profit sector, I appreciate this perspective on the value of overhead and all expenses associated with running a charity. Thank you, Mr. Pallotta.
Before this talk, I had never heard of Dan but the way he shares & expresses his feelings about the employees loosing their jobs, hard hitting but human & intelligent. I wish more people would listen because we could really change the world. MUST SEE TedTalk... THANK YOU!
This guy is massively biased due to his own experiences and a lot of his data was intentionally misleading. Some of what he said can be true but isn't necessarily, and he left out all context and nuance.
@@Esddi2909 Such as his take on CEO pay and overhead. He specifically makes hyperbolic examples about a bake sale and a multi-million dollar charity. Misleading. You can compare two similarly sized charities and take note of how much they're spending on overhead. Take the Susan G. Komen foundation for instance. They spend less than 20% of their donations on cancer research, and use a lot of their money on fracking drills (for god knows why) and suing other charities. Lot more than can fit into a youtube comment
It's scary how easily he was able to mislead you using faulty logic. He's a persuasive speaker but he's using a ton of false analogies and assumptions.
There is just one charity I donate to. March of Dimes. Every time I say that, I have people tell me March of Dimes is a poor choice because they have a higher overhead than most charities. I respond like this. When I was a kid, the March of Dimes was a polio charity. They worked themselves right out of a job. So They chose a new area to sponsor. Premature births and birth defects. Since they took on premature births and birth defects they have made a huge impact in that field. Entire new procedures, never before done in the womb surgery, new therapies, the list of new help in this field is just too long too list. Maybe the overhead at the March of Dimes isn't too high. Maybe the overhead at other charities is too low. My oldest daughter lived for 93 minutes after she was born. If the March of Dimes can keep another family from going through what we went through (and they are helping to make that happen) then they get my dollar. It's not the overhead that counts. It's making a difference that counts. So My charitable donations will always go to the March of Dimes. The charity that is YOUR choice, don't worry about the overhead. If they are making a difference in the lives of people you chose the correct charity. You keep supporting them.
I support autism spectrum charities when I have money because right now I'm a graduate student but I'm going to graduate this year and work at a fish market in Pacific Beach while I establish my residency in another state. But I will have free housing for a while.
@@cartergomez5390 I am glad to hear that. What is your degree in? My younger daughter is a freshman in college. I've lived in California a couple times. But I hang my hat in Kansas now.
Hello Joe, my degree is in human services and after I establish my residency, my goal is to take the behavior analyst exam and help my community because I'm from California but never lived there till now. I was born in Chula Vista at Scripps Hospital. California is feels like home to me and it's where I belong. @@joecombs7468
As a Founder of a Charity stuck following the old rules, it was revolutionary to learn that it was I who was stuck. Yes, the outdated rules of nonprofit behavior are limiting. But more limiting was my own personal leadership on this same topic. Thanks Dan for this. We are now free to take our charity and bust through that $50 million barrier!
this is why i love ted, he changed my opinion on charities. i use to be certain that they (just like the for profit sector) just took all the onations, sat on them for as long as possible, squeezing every penny out of them before even considering passing them on. but after seeing this I'm willing to see them in another light. thank you :)
This is why I chose to add the entrepreneurship certificate to my social work major. I felt sick about deciding to major in social work even though I know that's where I belong,b/c I can't imagine spending my life broke and begging people to donate to charity. Why should I learn how to ask people for money when i can just make the money?
i work in non-profit and have always struggled to answer the question "how can you claim to be doing good and giving money to (x, y, or z) when you yourself are making money?". now i can answer it.
Dan is amazing. I've been saying the same thing. I get it since I come from a corporate background. Every donor and staff at every charity should watch this video.
Here's an alternate suggestion. If an issue is important enough, we shouldn't be relying on private organizations to solve it. For example, implementing universal healthcare is better solution than relying on a charity to pay off someone's medical debt. For other issues like poverty and homelessness, we should address the root causes. Income inequality and the rising cost of living. I don't trust the economic system and CEO's that created these issues to solve them.
I think this is a TED talk that everyone should see. I currently work with UpFundraising and we partner with Save the Children, No Kid Hungry, ASPCA, etc. I can’t tell you how many looks of disgust I get from people when I ask to talk to them about Save the Children. I had one guy accuse me of taking the money for myself because he had never heard of the organization. There is such a misconception about charity work and fundraising and it really, really sucks that the people who don’t have access to the stuff we do have to suffer from that.
I work on behalf of multiple charities over here in the UK, fundraising on the street. I do so for a sales company which also markets things like phone, broadband and credit cards; I simply work in the charities division, but we share an office with people who are sales reps for TalkTalk and other major UK clients. One of the main responses I get from people I speak to is that they won't donate because the money doesn't go to the cause, but to the people running the work. In the handouts for a charity called Scope that I often work on behalf of, there's a breakdown of where the money goes. Only 8% is invested in fundraising of all kinds and 4% on running costs. People are often pleased when I show them that and they realise that 88% of their donation goes to helping disabled children, but in reality this is the reason why most of you reading this in the US or elsewhere have never heard of Scope: because we have a social stigma across the globe associated with the marketing of a charitable organisation, which severely restricts the progress such organisations can make on an economic level. You only have to look at the company I work for to realise that it doesn't make a difference whether the company is non-profit: you still need to get the best people (be they sales people such as myself, administrators, or even CEOs) in order to grow, and in order to get the best people, you need to be prepared to pay big money, or they'll go elsewhere. The charities themselves have realised this, hence why I'm employed in much the same role as the guy who comes and knocks on your door trying to sell you a credit card, but they can't invest more money into making the organisation bigger and better, because if they changed their setup to strengthen the core of the business, they would be publicly berated and lose donors. Pretty fucking backwards. What I'm basically trying to say is that what this guy is saying is absolutely right, and society's mindset has to change, in order to improve our world as quickly and effectively as possible.
The biggest problem I see with his reasoning is: If total donations are stuck in 2% of the GPD, then the pie by definition is not getting larger. Your marketing initiatives are not getting more people to donate, they're getting people to donate to your charity. You're growing your pie at the expense of everyone else's. As a result, you might be moving money from low-overhead charities to money-raising behemoths. Few causes will get large sums while many smaller initiatives will starve because they're not capable of doing marketing at the same level. I still fail to see how using money raised for X to raise money for X (instead of doing X) is not a departure from the mission. Citing a few successful cases does not solve the problem. Should all charities now risk their revenue to try to multiply it instead of doing what they're meant to do in the first place?
Not meant for all. If anything, low overhead charities should not participate. Is there a space for both is probably a better question. Can local coffee shops and local book store exist when Starbucks and Amazon exist might be your question maybe? Brooklyn and most of the country says yes. Also, it’s important to tap into money that would’ve never gone to charity. Tap into some of the money that would’ve gone into entertainment. Maybe siphon some money from Fast and the Furious, Coachella, and Tulum, and make charity great again. Philanthropists shouldn’t be limited to the vanderbilts and carnegies.
I know Dan. I met him back in 1996 during the Philadelphia to DC AIDSRide. We spent some time after the ride, discussing various topics. He was a visionary then, and he’s a still a visionary now. I’ve always believed in him.
This is SO sad. Yes, it makes huge sense in our current mutational form of capitalism (which is only a form/bandwidth of consciousness concerning collectively-attributed "value" to things and to time)...but it completely skirts the enormous "elephant" crowding the room, which is capitalism itself, which is relentlessly commodifying EVERYTHING, now including generosity and lovingkindness. In the same way as our current president, who experiences politics as a mere series of deals to "win" at, while somebody else has to "lose." The minute we make CONSCIENCE (Intellect+EMOTIONAL consciousness) a commodity we label ourselves permanent adolescents who refuse to grow up ("Oh, the Market will make everything okay"--i.e., Mommy and Daddy will save us when we drive stoned and crash the car.). So this nice smart talk is just symptomatic of our collective hypnotic state IMO, while the REAL problem to solve--which needs much smarter minds--is how can we make ourselves into a truly sustainable species in which we ALL get to live decently if we put in a day's work...
4:00 The problem, in simple terms, that he's talking about is that we say the good-doers can always do better than they're doing and the bad-doers we see as a lost cause.
wow.. just watched this today even though it was released 8 years ago. Changed my whole perspective of charity. I used to demonise charity but this gives me a whole new perspective
he seems like he's speaking for a certain percentage. like real non profit charities. at first he said it's not about money, then he said he don't get enough money
The issue with all of these is that it’s impossible to verify where the money goes due to a lack of transparency. You have to realize that nonprofit charity operates almost exclusively on FREE money. If there’s a nonprofit with overhead and poor transparency, nobody SHOULD support them. The issue isn’t the “puritan” mindset, it’s that there ARE greedy “charities” that waste money on vanity. Charity is only as effective as it is trustworthy. I’m not giving away 10% of my income when i have zero idea where it goes.
Dan is beyond brilliant. The best part is at 17:42 when he states: "Who cares what the rate of their overhead is is these problems are actually being solved?". If only the rest of society bought into this constructive way of thinking.
The same story goes to people's attitude towards savings vs consumption. They think that savings are bad so they want to stimulate aggregate demand to boost consumption, but what they don't know is that the savings goes to investments in factors of production which increases overall productivity.
Transparency and integrity need to be at the core of all fundraisers. Donors appreciate and deserve the reassurance that their dollars are furthering the nonprofit's mission. #giveup2give
I understand the message behind this talk, but at the same time, we have in Canada a massive charity that is currently embroiled in controversy. With its massive size and growth oriented agenda, it has put growth ahead of principles and people, engaged in illegal or near illegal activities such as bribery of foreign officials, questionable sales tactics, and pandering to corporate donors such as overlooking clients' racist or sexist behaviors and changing programs to cater these donors. In other words, it is run like a growth-oriented corporation. Revenue is prioritized over the real changes done to community and people. Sale of programs of questionable quality justified in terms of charitable intent. Proceeds going to the massive compensation of executives. That is, to some people including myself, the source of skepticism toward corporatization of non profit charities.
Yeath that's why I get nervous about giving to charities. My mom gave so much money to this one charity (like thousands of $$) over a few years thinking that they were great, and then they got exposed for pocketing a lot of the funds. Now I only feel safe funding non-profit.
You are skepical of every nonprofit ever to exist because one nonprofit in your country was lack. in ethics. You are literally what's wrong with the world of philanthropy today. What about the millions of controversies that happen in the for-profit sector. I promise you Amazon's treatment of its workers has never once caused you to hesitate to click "buy now" on a fucking back bomb or yankee candle. You're the reason people like myself have to my lifelong financial sacrifice for committing our professional lives to causes we believe in. Sickening
As someone who has run a non-profit, Pallotta got it spot on. It's one of the best talks I have ever heard encapsulating why our agendas for socially responsible change don't get met. And I worked in Violence Against Women- we know how that looks even today.
Very, very interesting ideas. I love what he had to say and I think he makes excellent points. I do not agree with everything he said, and some nonprofits really must stay small, but this is definitely a TED talk worth listening to and applying to some businesses. I also love when he says we've been "confusing morality with frugality." Good talk.
Very thought provoking and overall I really appreciate Dan Pallotta’s thinking in this video. I have always thought about what a disadvantage charities are at when it comes to attracting the best talent based on limited compensation opportunities. But I never really thought about the other macro goal that Dan talks about which is the scale of the money charities can raise and put to work being a primary goal. I am almost embarrassed about that. Current thinking about charities really does hold them back from huge potential for delivering goodness to society. However, my quandary with this perspective lies in the huge potential for abuse. In the business world, you have to strike a balance and accountably produce results for your customers, employees and investors, or your business fails. So you have lots of market pressures or eyes on how you operate. While this three way balance is not 100% perfect for accountability, it has proven to be very good and stood the test of time. In a charitable world as Dan describes, employees probably act similar to the business world and stay committed to the cause as long as their personal situation is fair and they see organizational success, so that could be one accountability pillar. But the balance gets tipped over as the “customers” would likely be pretty silent as they really cannot vote by going elsewhere, and also investors being highly accountable to their stakeholders would be very skeptical and probably take an awful long time to ramp up. Government is not a viable potential balance force either in my opinion as too many of them are very inefficient or even corrupt. An African charity which I helped raise a lot of money for, and the Haitian government are just a couple of thousands of examples. For Dan’s vision to become a reality at least one or hopefully two more market accountability forces in addition to employees would need to be brought into play. I am not sure what they would be at the moment. Hopefully others have some good ideas on this.
Now I want to ask my non profit to give all my contribution towards advertising, so more people can get the help they need, and the company can meet their mission's dreams.
I'm new to TEDtalks&I just read this: "TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks&performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers&doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design.." 18 minutes is just a snippet of what's needed to understand(just me maybe) some of these topics.I like your point about a forum. Harlan Ellison said no one is allowed to be ignorant, an"informed"opinion is needed.
Great Ted Talk! I fully agree with this. I've worked in a non-profit and see how most of the employees live almost hand to mouth. As a person who thinks in the way of business I never understood why the nonprofit companies were set up like this. How were they to attract the brilliant minds? I now help small to medium nonprofits with fundraising and thankfully I'm able to make a big difference. Funny enough my service is free and I still have push back with the mentality Oh then this isn't worth my time... gees!
I am currently writing my essay about policy submission. The submission is about helping a NGO to fairly allocate limited resources. I have thought about resources allocate system and reduction on administration cost. But this video just give me a brilliant idea. Thank you for helping my essay and thank you for completely change the way of how I think about NGO administration cost. I love this video, I will send it my friends.
This is an important TED Talk and an essential discussion for us to have! Thanks for this Dan Pallotta!! Well done, well said! There is so much out there to explore if we were given the ability to do so! I oversee a Social Enterprise and the potential is really untapped.........why? The necessary resources to tap the potential is lacking for all the reasons you have mentioned Dan! Thanks again for raising this!
Finally, someone who gets it and eloquently and succinctly describes what charities struggle with in PR. I volunteer for various charities, and inevitably someone (usually a pious member of a religious sect) asks "So what percentage goes towards admin, and how much ACTUALLY reaches the cause". My response is 'look it up on CRA website'; I want to ask them, how much does your tithe go toward paying the mortgage on your church/electricity, salary of your clergy, etc...but I just don't want to bother. We need charities, and we need churches. There's a cost to everything. People have limiting beliefs, and this man shines a light on a great solution!
As a long term worker in the non-profit world and I battle peoples thoughts about non-profits everyday. My pay is a joke, I do fundraising, and where I work is all direct services therefore overhead. Donations help pay the salaries of the people who do the work.
I've thought along these lines for a while and wondered why it is this way. Something is very wrong in a society that tolerates profiteering from war, death and scarcity. Caring for those in need and making education accessible would seem like a logical focal point of any society that wants to preserve its self for generations to come. Its great to see humanity waking up.
privileged to have worked in Orlando on FAR1 and FAR2 (also a rider) and volunteered for Day ZERO at CAR6. learned much about asking big from you Dan Pallotta. thank you
I still don't buy a lot of his premises. You can't compare a for profit company blowing money on a failed endeavor to a charity doing the same thing. When a company loses money, you know who it pisses off? The people who fund the company, it's investors and shareholders. The same is true of charities, if they waste their money they piss off the people who fund it, the donors. So charities are RIGHTFULLY criticized if they waste money. Regular companies aren't exempt from criticism, it's just that who is doing the criticism is different. The charity CEO compensation thing is also something I don't agree with. If you're asking people, who make a LOT less, to give their money for your cause and you as CEO of this big charity is getting paid by that money, a salary that's way above the amount your donors and above the amount an average person needs to live comfortably, then it comes off as hypocritical. This guy sounds like he want charities to have all the benefits a for-profit company has with none of the accountability that comes with it. Fact of the matter is, whether or not you're a for profit or a chairty, you're accountable to the ones providing the funding.
its okay for an investor to be pissed if failure occurs, but after one fail the company doesn't go bankrupt, they have a set back but get investment money once again, on the flip side its way higher of a risk for a charity because if they mess up they can completely fall, so the point of this is to help people understand that its okay for a charity to fail, yes you are right to be mad but you shouldn't stop giving away entirely, the punishment charity gets for loss is not fair and if it was less punishing to try growing growth will happen and this will be for the good of the world
Whoa the first major misconception is that the high paid private sector graduate CEO is WORTH the money they are paid. Research into high paid CEOs and their impact on businesses is only measured in their perceived contribution to companies - not in the value that they add. The notion that paying highly for a charitable CEO would result in more productivity isn't evidenced... at least the low paid CEO WANTS to be there - to them its a vocation not a pay check. Infact pay your charitable CEOs too much and these charitites become gravy trains... prolonguing a problem in order to give highly trained graduates high paid jobs to go into and not solve the problems.
Charity is business to some. Charity is a humanitarian act to others. Charity can be a science as well (what he's saying in his TEDtalk) Let's all keep that in mind. Different people, different intentions, both good and bad.
tapiwakay Err, what? As long as it's regulated correctly, anything labeled charity will go to a cause not for making profit to the entity overall. Besides, research isn't a humanitarian endeavor?
I can start a charity today and only pass on 20% of what i bring in. I can pay myself a $150k salary, jet around first class to meetings etc. Do you think that's a good use of your donated money?
+tapiwakay I see what you mean, but not all the money comes from donations. And these people work juat as hard as any other business. They should get paid equally as everybody, especially if they are the ones actually helping other people.
Right. Nobility 8 does 2 good things at once. #1 provide income to charities and #2 provide a job for people with little or no education. If you are interested in making money by recruiting recruiters, email me at prosperitycoalitionllc@gmail.com. I live in Virginia, USA but the method we are using is operated likee crowd sourcing so it can be done anywhere in the World.
This is great tedtalks really prioritize and focus on the heart of the problem. Really smart. Some facts though I want to straighten up, 1. Christians favor charity workers and we don't ban them from deserving money or personal help from others. We just classify love as taking care of our brothers in need like we take care of ourselves. Other people however... 2. Calvinist don't cause this judging culture, it happens everywhere all over the world not just in America.
Much of the talk about charity is meaningless without understanding that an organization that lives on donations is really selling a product to its customers, no different in principle from any other company. That product is the promise of advancing some collective good, proportional to the price paid. That's why e.g. Coca-Cola can spend their revenue however they see fit, the value of the end product is not diminished. But if your product IS the channeling of money to a cause, it's obvious that large overhead makes that product worth less and you get no customers. That is unless you intentionally keep them in the dark, even lying if necessary.
The best metric would be what the percentage of overhead is of the total budget while taking into account the size of the budget. Like he said, who cares if you have 5% overhead and only raise $90,000, wouldn't you prefer an organization that has 30% overhead and raises $30 million? You have to use several metrics to determine the health, success, and sustainability of an organization, there is no single metric that will do it.
Dan Pallotta's talk about the why non-profit sector is not making significant mark and changes the way it intended is worth watching. It is a profoundly meaningful talk and it certainly changes the way we think about changing the world !
Hi, Perhaps the word charity has shifted over time.. I aspire to charity that offers others improved opportunity through better education and greater work potential. It is not money alone that solves big issues. People that are willing to empower communities to overcome their deficit situations do not all donate money alone. Empower people to do something different, a man will always need another bag of rice, don't sell charity as a business model so easily people, instead help someone, please!
But that is the issue. It starts with these mindful people who want to change the world and give people food. But this is not possible to do on its own. For this, there has to be a strong financial support by fact, the non profit sector supports itself by donations. It is about how people should support these non profit organizations so they can give food supplies. How do people get attention to support the non profit sector? He says, through investing in advertising from the profit sector people the non profit sector gets attention. The gab between economy and good cause (charity) is small and twisted. They influence each other. But it's true, that the main reason of helping others should come first. And you are right just wanted to add this. Hope you have a good day! : )
Imagine how many of the worlds greatest minds could shift their focus to helping others, thus creating the opportunity for others, if they knew they weren’t going to be financially disadvantaged by doing so
Dear Ted, I've been in the emergency room so many times since I was 19. I've woken up in hospitals... I've been told I could never do it. I have been told that I was never going to see the light of day.. but I always found a way.... Never wanted money... all I wanted was to touch peoples hearts.. and minds.. I always protected what I love. And I always will. Because I never let fear destroy me. -Shay Todd Walker
Yup. And even though I've been a gamer my whole life, I cannot deny it: Video games are fucking violent. Yes, they are. And huge companies making those games do get a lot of money. Yes, they do. ... A great speech, nonetheless.
That was the only part I didn't like, it just perpetuates misinformation and panic against videogames "Violent videogames for children" aren't really a thing, because violent videogames are not made for kids, that's why have the ESRB rating system that specifically tells you who is it meant for even something like Smash Bros is rated for kids 10+, if little Billy wants to play GTA or Mortal Kombat that's up to the parents to regulate, it is the same for movies, everyone knows that something like the Saw movies are not made for children but nobody seems to be able to do that same connection with videogames Not to mention that videogames are one of the biggest contributors to charity with a bunch of events and organizations entirely fan funded to help children or anyone else who needs it like Childs Play, St.Jude or any of the donations during AGDQ all raking in literally millions of dollars donated by gamers every year, and constantly growing
There is also another issue here, which is money is not necessarily the only way to give. We can give time, we can give ideas, we can give by gifting in kind
The issue isn't overhead being spent well, it is overhead that is going entirely into the back pockets of people not actually doing anything. There have been one too many con artists living fast lives without actually helping and that has turned people off of charities with high "overhead".
If you were to do a count of how many non profit 'Businesses' there are in the U.S. and how many have been proven to be cons you will find that it isn't worth being concerned about. However it is always important to find out the legitimacy of the org. And then remember the words you heard in this video. I'm amazed that when someone takes the time to research the numbers as this gentleman has people like yourself can't help but run with the minority that still hurts the majority.
This is such an interesting topic and raises so many issues. I will add a little to the complexity: He has taken a narrow slice of the charity world - basically just looking at medical research (which is a relatively apolitical topic compared to what a lot of the charity world addresses) and how to fundraise more for it. I am keen to go broader... FAIR WAGES FOR ALL WORKERS. I agree there is a big disparity between private sector and charitable sector CEO wages. But instead of the speaker's solution, I think that corporate CEO wages should be capped (perhaps at something like 10 or 20 times the lowest pay in the country). It's outrageous to see CEOs on remuneration packages that are 500 times the rate of the janitors. How much money do you actually need to live an extremely comfortable life? GREED IS A PROBLEM. And, yes it's great to reward innovation and hard work and CEOs should be paid fairly. But I think we can keep some caps on it. After all, instead of acquiescing to corporate greed, THE CHARITABLE SECTOR SHOULD STRIVE TO BUILD A FAIRER WORLD. What about increasing the pay rate for the janitors before considering the CEO. Much of the suffering that charities respond to is CAUSED BY OR EXACERBATED BY INJUSTICE - poverty, homelessness, war, global inequities, dangerous work conditions, below poverty wages, the climate crisis. The middle class of the world (including me) need to choose to consume (and polute) less and pay more for ethical products (that are good for the earth and for workers). Charities can only advocate for this if they are modelling it. HIGHER PAY DOES NOT ATTRACT BETTER CEOs. The UN has long suffered from criticism in this area. Often the best CEOs are on good but relatively modest remuneration compared to others. As long as people are paid enough to live decently, personal passion for the work provides a much greater return than higher pay packets. THE PIE IS NOT NECESSARILY MUCH BIGGER (and certainly not infinite). Heard of donor fatigue? There is a limit to how much people will donate and the more the charitable sector moves to professionalise asking for donations the more these charities end up competing with each other for the same donations. An individual charity may get more by spending more - but it may be largely at the expense of other charities. CHARITIES ASK FOR DONATIONS DO DO GOOD WORK. BUSINESSES SELL PRODUCTS. I would buy a product from a company with some crazy high paid executives as long as the product was good. However, I would be loath to donate any money to a charity where I knew that 40% of it was going to pay excessively high salaries for some staff. Of course, a social enterprise is a different matter. They sell a product and they serve a social good. Nice win-win. In reality, usually a bit more grey than that. I would be interested in learning more about ways of comparing charities in terms of impact made per dollar donated. And I am not talking about impact as just multiplying the dollars. It has but about the actual outcomes generated for the cause it exists to serve as a whole. I know that it is impossible to measure very well in many situations. For example, how do you really measure the full impact of an anti-racism program in building a more peaceful and harmonious society? Just my initial thoughts...
A problem with TED talks is that you hear only 1 side of an issue, unlike in a forum. Also, TED talks do little detailing what they are talking about. E.g., Dan Pallotta didn't tell us where he got his history of Puritans. I dispute the accuracy of his assertions. Puritans already gave at least 10% of their income to the church, then more to other non-profit causes. They didn't do this for penance; they did this because it is commanded by their religion, and out of concern for others.
hahah so you mean puritans were actually MORE pathetic than he asserts? and you were triggered by how he misrepresented this? You're claiming that they didn't do it for penance (i.e. they felt bad for making money), they did it simply because their little daddy god made them not because they wanted to? And this makes them more admirable? Also, let me give a little taste of your logic: you do little detailing what you're talking about. E.g. you didn't tell us where you got your history of Puritans. I dispute the accuracy of your assertions. OOOOOOOh, see what i did there?
@@connorblake1390 I'm wondering why he thinks that somebody would leave a prosperous, modern city for a remote, harsh, undeveloped frontier, where life was known to be brutal and short, so that he could become wealthy? Does it make sense to you for, say, a wealthy Wall Street executive to travel to one of the most remote, undeveloped regions--say Haiti--with nothing but his ability to build everything with his own hands in hopes of becoming wealthier? This is what he proposes the Puritans did, and succeeded in doing. England was a powerful nation that was experience profound economic growth when the Puritans decided they had enough and struck out for completely isolated and undeveloped wilderness. Several of their early efforts resulted, not in them becoming wealthy, but in half of them dying of starvation in the first year. Yet, they persisted, starting again and again. This character says they did it to become rich. What's his evidence of this? Does that claim even make sense? This TED talk has a lot of other problems and inconsistencies. He began by telling us that some causes simply cannot be supported with an economic market model, but then he makes the central theme of his talk about adopting an economic market model to support these causes. He uses as examples of the success of his plan some causes that could be called "Purple Pigeons," that is, popular causes with a lot of glamor and positive press. As it happens both of the causes he mentions--AIDS research and breast cancer research--are funded far out of proportion for their risk to the general population, and at the expense of other research that is more significant to the general public. The website, "World History" has a good article on Puritan charity in the New World. You should read it. "A Model of Christian Charity and the City on a Hill," by Joshua J. Mark.
Wow. What a powerful video-truly a must-see for every non-profit person in the fundraising world. My only beef is with great historical inaccuracies mentioning the Puritans and Calvinism.
What historical inaccuracies? I think he exaggerated a bit, but everything he said about the historical aspects is 100% true. There's so much about America that can be explained through the lens of the history of religious conflict.
Look. He is totally right. Lots of people need to hear this. I think rather than think of your donation going to directly help one person. Think instead your money is going to the non profit so they can use it efficiently for how they need it. That’s just as good.
Thank you very much for this amazing eye opener. It has inspired me to try to create a new "business/charity" model (25 years of experience in finance) in Switzerland where the laws are favorable for charity organisations. If it becomes alive I will definitely let you know and explain it to you, if you are interested of course.
Excellent talk. A lot of points in there about how we perhaps rethink how charity works. I am not without my reservations though, with my biggest one being the proportion spent on overheads: When a charity gets a donation from someone, it generally comes at the expense of a donation to another charity. So if you are going to increase the proportion you spend on overheads, and take donations away from charities with smaller overheads, then you should ensure that you are either inspiring new generosity where there was none before, or working that money harder to provide more results per dollar, so as to offset the loss to other charities. Not impossible, but I think important to consider.
There are so many holes in the logic here. You can't compare overhead costs when the economics of running a charity are nothing like running a business. Unlike business customers, charitable donors receive nothing directly in return for their donations. Charities simply collect money from donors and decide how to best use that money to benefit the cause. Therefore, the entire purpose of a charity is to maximize the impact of each dollar taken in by spending money wisely and keeping overhead costs as low as possible. While it's true that charities with a larger revenue "pie" end up donating more money overall, many of the largest charities achieve this only by spending the vast majority of their money on advertising. However, studies show that the OVERALL charitable giving rate depends mainly on factors like personal income, tax incentives, and the frequency of natural disasters, NOT on the overall amount of advertising. So, even if spending millions on ads provides your charity with millions of dollars in extra revenue, that revenue almost certainly comes at the expense of other charities. The 6 and 7-figure salaries are completely unjustified though. While I personally admire the people who operate non-profits for good causes, these salaries are extremely excessive for just an administrative role.
Sustainability is probably important if you want to run a charity or contribute to a charity. Should you contribute to charity as a renter for example when buying a home might put you in a category to where you can contribute MORE at a later date? When I was a student I spent a percentage of my time in charitable activities because I figured the experience would benefit me in the future and in the long run. I worked part time too but there are limits on how much a kid can work. To be honest you don't want to put yourself in a class where the donor admires the benefactor! And you want to make sure you are appreciated. I was in a program in College where I am guessing I was not appreciated. The students, administrators and faculty pushed me into a project where in the near term it appeared to me mostly charity but in the long term they indicated it would lead to a paid gig as a University Lecturer in Business and maybe more with possible consulting income and such in most major Business Schools. Turns out they got me involved with Communists and Labor Union groups in a way where I was not aware of their activities because I am American. If I lived in Europe I would have known I was involved with Unions and possibly Communists. Quite honestly these people were hostile to me for reasons only they know and I have stayed far away from charity since graduation from College because it takes time to recover from associations with extremist and radical political groups. Even if they are hiding the insiders who run this country know who they are. And what did it do to my tentative goal of going to Law School? Law was my primary reason for going to college and not charity or helping the poor. I have had to give up my goal of Law School out of fear I'd be cornered and forced to work with political groups that really did not seem to like me. I guess we all make mistakes, there has never seemed to be any "upside" charity. Quite honestly, people seem to complain that I don't do more even while hating me for what I did. So if someone can make millions administrating a huge charity, best of luck to him. Better than donating your time and actually admiring the people you helped and then spat in your face when their luck changed!
As a charity, this is exactly correct. Innovation in the sector is held at it's lowest common denominator because of this type of thinking. Now, with that said, social entrepreneurship solves this issue, BUT like he said, it has a fundamental flaw in that the ones needing the most services are not being addresses with those models. A certain amount has to be given to true charities and the vision that salaries are overhead and not part of the business model is flawed.
80% of the people in these comments missed the point. Bottom line: Nonprofits are limited in its effectiveness because systems are not set up to allow nonprofits to reinvest or compete for talent.
Some very good insight. Talented people are not cheap and there is a competitive market for their skills. They may take some degree of reduced pay to do good in a charitable organization, but there is a practical limit to that. Furthermore, like any organization, you have to invest for growth. If we are to empower charity to step up so that we can reduce the size and scale of government, these are good suggestions to heed.
This sounds incredibly compelling. HOWEVER, what strikes me as an overwhelming flaw is that this kind of thinking establishes a slippery-slope whereby charities can pay their CEOs and staff more, advertise more, pay their CEOs and staff more etc, and face no consequences for doing so! I see two underlying assumptions in Pallotta's argument that are wrong: Firstly, that charities **would be able** to "multiply" their revenue through corporatisation in the same way that advertising for coca-cola etc can. I don't think they could. Why? Because marketing charity is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT to marketing a product that benefits the individual. I would suggest that for many people, no amount of advertising will make them donate because they simply don't want to give their money away to others. Secondly, that charities **would actually** use their revenue to help people. If they are run as corporations, that means they WILL BE RUN AS CORPORATIONS: they won't be transparent. They won't have integrity, because they won't need to. And therefore, the biggest problem I foresee is they won't have an incentive to actually help people. Why should they, when they can, like any corporation, use their funds for greater CEO salaries???
Jack Harley Excellent criticisms, but it still seems pretty tempting to try the advertising-for-charities method for a longer time and observe the longer term process.
Jack Harley I absolutely agree with you. Advertising is necessary for charities to make sure they will be acknowledged. On the other hand running and advertising a charity is fundamentally different, as the role of customer (donor) and Service recipient is very special.
Jack Harley I work as operations director for a non-profit and I am sorry to say but you are wrong. Advertising does increase donations and makes people give away more money. A well-paid advertisement campaign can increase donations immensely. Regarding your second point, if they are non-profits, they are not run as corporations. Corporations strive for making shareholders rich, a non-profit organization does not make anybody rich, therefore the money needs to be put somewhere, projects, salaries, maintenance etc. Sure they can pay more to the CEOs but then it is up to you to check the charity. There is a website called charity navigator and it ranks charities on several aspects, you should check it out. Thirdly, what if the charity does wanna pay more to the CEO? A CEO that made possible a growth of more than 100%, increasing the impact the organization has and achieving more of its goals. It is not wrong, it is fair. As he says in the beginning, it is okay to pay millions to people that will do bad for the world, stamp them in front of a magazine and call him/her a hero, but you cannot do the same to a CEO that is actually making the world a better place? It does make sense. You should check Charity Water, an organization that has a different approach to charities, invests a lot in marketing and has grown a lot lately, increasing the number of projects and impact, which would not be made possible with a bad CEO and no investment in advertisement. Visit charitywater.org
![ILLSLICK - KILLSHOT REMIX [FULL VERSION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RIK8RrqIAzE/mqdefault.jpg)
This man, in 20 minutes;
-presented me with one of my preconceptions
-presented an alternative in a logical way
-convinced me to accept his point of view.
He is a genius.
@TheAmarican Thank you for crafting such a well thought out and constructive response! You summarized the entire situation incredibly well.
@TheAmarican Thank you for these thoughts. I think all in all it was a very good speech pointing out very important phenomena. Of course, it did not describe the whole picture and there's much more to it (and there was one part I didn't like: the one about puritans and Calvinists, it was far-fetched and irrelevant). I just want to add as a Hungarian with several years of experience working in the nonprofit sector that we don't have the tax allowances like NGOs in the US do and still, the same way of thinking applies in general - if you sell your product at normal market prices, or if you want to give your people a normal salary, people will scold you for it and call you corrupted.
@TheAmarican " India is much poorer than the US and has more problems with pollution than the US, and yet cancer rates in India are a small fraction of what they are in the US."
It's because India has less diagnosis options and shorter lifespans than the U.S., not because they have less cancer.
" The reason why society dislikes seeing the head of a charity making lots of money is that we don't like seeing people fraudulently purporting to do good for society while they are actually only enriching themselves and their associates."
People who work for charities still pay personal taxes.
@TheAmarican The German Sociologist, Max Weber, may take issue with your puritan/communist perspective in his seminal work "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," but regardless, thank you for taking the time to offer an alternative point of view on this speech. Always healthy to listen to a variety of points on any given matter. :-)
Dan is compassionate and benevolent 🌞
Not many TED talks manage to completely change my perspective on a topic. This one did.
The most important point of charitable giving that he is missing is that Americans have a budget of how much they are willing/able to donate to charity (this is why the 2% of GDP citation has been stable over 50 years). Advertisement and overhead will not increase the cut of the pie- it simply eats into the limited dollars people have allocated for charitable giving and alters the direction the dollars are going (not how many total dollars are available for charity). This is why people care about overhead in charities and not in private for-profit sector where there is essentially no limits on available dollars for goods and services.
It won't work. There are a lot of flaws with his reasoning. The issues of poverty are related to larger systemic issues such as trade liberalization, tax havens, how economics works like debt restructuring programs. The best way to approach poverty is through local planning, and then cost not related to donations but generated on a case by case basis through a planning process between a group of people that come together and solve the problem together. Imagine you want to volunteer. Instead of saying x amount I say we will partner you will with an individual and you will engage each other, and through that planning process you will come to tackle deeper issues. There are no grants, no donations, no relying on money outside of generating it within the community or through a detailed planning process where you are both equals. Then you take these same principles and scale up. There are no disrupted markets, no private interest, no worry about corruption, and no systemic issues because it marries the spiritual vision of mahatma gandhi with community development best practices. That is my solution. And it is different than anything that currently exists in the world. It also sounds insane but I don't really care. After all stating you will tackle poverty without relying on grants or donatins is counter intuitive.
@@kennethyoung7564 Nonprofits are practicing this by the way. Most local governments and funders do partner with charitable organizations to create a rigorous planning process, which we call "strategic impact and community investment". The partnerships are focused on generating revenue for community development while simultaneously monitoring the effectiveness of the nonprofit's programs and services. Yes, your idea would work in a society founded on Mahatma Gandhi's vision, but the reality is cultural bias and egostism are deeply embedded into U.S. culture. Without transforming the individualistic culture at the local level first, restructuring the economic structure at the institutional level will be nearly impossible.
But that’s just tax deductible @@patrickscanlon7903
@@patrickscanlon7903you are missing a critical piece: many people do not give to charity because they have not been asked. Many charities miss out on donations because they have not corrected with the right people. The pie absolutely CAN get significantly bigger.
This has got to be one of the most underrated Ted talks out there. Wow.
Wow, I needed this. I'm questioning why our nonprofit brags about being "all volunteer" when if we had funds to invest in our organization and it's people, perhaps we could do MORE good than we do right now.
6 months later, any better?
@@bioshazard Your comment timestamp says "4 months ago" as of now, you pulling someones leg?
@@spokentruth7290 was curious if they indeed needed this and if they found success in applying it.
@@bioshazard Yeah I hear you, I was just trolling a little. Have a good day....
@@bioshazard Nothing yet, but I just came back to get re-inspired.
Thank you Dan for being courageous and challenging the status quo. What stuck to me is the history lesson about the Puritans, as I have experienced the same self-loathing. However, I am a NP professional who works as hard and as smart as I can and I do it for less than others in my same position, in my same org. And everyday I question my value and worth because money is the common language of the workplace and I am given less.
He is NOT challenging the status quo. The status quo sweeps the need for mental health and social services under the rug of 501.c when such services should be primarily provided by government that doesn’t have to rebuild infrastructure all the time and has more accountability and transparency.
I am a combat veteran with a four-year professional degree from a top university. I now work for a non-profit and this has to be one of the best videos I've ever seen.
This was a amazing video. As a person who is involved with a nonprofit i learned so much in this 19 minutes.
Very true
I've been mulling over social innovations and communications for a year now. This provided a foundation for me. Thank you!!
This man deserved nothing less than a standing ovation.
Brilliant! I work in the non-profit world advocating for victims of human trafficking and if the model changed our impact would be greater. Thanks Dan!
This is one of my favorite TED talks of all time.
because it's full of deception and if you don't think hard enough you fall into this guy's trap?
Juju jujuria LOL what? Instead of opinion, provide some data to backup such a wild assertion.
Glenn Barres Juju is all over this thread commenting - it seems her primary complaint is that people making a good income doing good work is unacceptable. She sees it as them "filling their pockets".
***** sounds like envy to me.
***** there's no complaint from me if this guy tells people that only 10% of the money people donate will go to the actual cause, and the remainder of it will be overhead. Yeah, but your argument would be 10% is better than 90% when the pie is a 1000 times bigger.
Sure, but if I'm the person donating, you've got to let me know. It's my fucking money. Money that I worked hard for. Lying sons of bitches like the fat politicians that only better themselves, but argues for the betterment of all. Yeah, the fat politicians that made things just a little better, and deserves to be billionaires for that little effort they put in? Fuck, anyone could do that.
I have spent 3 decades in non profit sector and vouch for genuinity of the points raised in the video
As much as I love my job and see the positive impact I have on others' lives, I also see the need to provide for my family and pursue my dreams, which also cost money =). So, thank you for shining light on the source of this internal struggle. Your talk has empowered me to recognize my own worth and to be brave enough to say to those in leadership, I am worth more.
The “Dreams” we enable of materialism and excessive concentration of wealth are a major part of the problem as are the tax evasion of 501.c who by their nature have to rebuild an entire bureaucracy cause Americans don’t support government.
This is undoubtedly one of the most perspective-transforming videos I've ever seen
I headed a fundraising team for Movember which benefits the Prostate Cancer Foundation. We were a biotech making a prostate cancer drug and couldn't have been more tied to the patients. We succeeded based on this model. The company paid ~$500 for team hats, $1500 for a end of the month happy hour. Allowing people to be selfish and experience the FUN and INVOLVEMENT meant we raised $20k the first year and $40K the second. From 10 participants in Seattle to 100 across the country. SUPPORT GROWTH!
I cannot love this more. A good friend in the nonprofit space sent me this video. We created a software platform and mobile device to help save lives in at-risk communities. We're aligned with nonprofits and corporates that care to help us save lives in at-risk communities like mental health, medical, and aging. We're creating a nonprofit company that Text Lifeline™ can donate to and also receive donations from corporations that will allow us to gift a subscription to those who can't afford it and to those who need it most, like Veterans. Dan opened my eyes to how we build the foundation for this nonprofit. THANK YOU, DAN!
This is just what I needed to hear and see.
Dan, thanks for inspire us to dream and for show us a way to support those dreams.
Blessings.
Great
Having spent many years working in the non-profit sector, I appreciate this perspective on the value of overhead and all expenses associated with running a charity. Thank you, Mr. Pallotta.
Thank you for talking about charity. It is essential to me and the children. Without, we can not survive. ❤️
Before this talk, I had never heard of Dan but the way he shares & expresses his feelings about the employees loosing their jobs, hard hitting but human & intelligent. I wish more people would listen because we could really change the world. MUST SEE TedTalk... THANK YOU!
its scary how many of these misconceptions were in my worldview.
yes
This guy is massively biased due to his own experiences and a lot of his data was intentionally misleading. Some of what he said can be true but isn't necessarily, and he left out all context and nuance.
@@gorginhanson such as?
@@Esddi2909 Such as his take on CEO pay and overhead. He specifically makes hyperbolic examples about a bake sale and a multi-million dollar charity. Misleading.
You can compare two similarly sized charities and take note of how much they're spending on overhead.
Take the Susan G. Komen foundation for instance. They spend less than 20% of their donations on cancer research, and use a lot of their money on fracking drills (for god knows why) and suing other charities.
Lot more than can fit into a youtube comment
It's scary how easily he was able to mislead you using faulty logic. He's a persuasive speaker but he's using a ton of false analogies and assumptions.
I could feel the emotion and sincerity with which he had reasoned out the 'real problem' of all problems. Amazing talk.
He's gay though so of course he will be emotional.
@@reecem367 - Wtf? Straight people are "emotional" all the time...
@@mrbabydows Gay men are more emotional than straight men- FACT.
There is just one charity I donate to.
March of Dimes.
Every time I say that, I have people tell me March of Dimes is a poor choice because they have a higher overhead than most charities.
I respond like this.
When I was a kid, the March of Dimes was a polio charity.
They worked themselves right out of a job.
So
They chose a new area to sponsor.
Premature births and birth defects.
Since they took on premature births and birth defects they have made a huge impact in that field. Entire new procedures, never before done in the womb surgery, new therapies, the list of new help in this field is just too long too list.
Maybe the overhead at the March of Dimes isn't too high.
Maybe the overhead at other charities is too low.
My oldest daughter lived for 93 minutes after she was born.
If the March of Dimes can keep another family from going through what we went through (and they are helping to make that happen) then they get my dollar.
It's not the overhead that counts.
It's making a difference that counts.
So
My charitable donations will always go to the March of Dimes.
The charity that is YOUR choice, don't worry about the overhead. If they are making a difference in the lives of people you chose the correct charity. You keep supporting them.
I support autism spectrum charities when I have money because right now I'm a graduate student but I'm going to graduate this year and work at a fish market in Pacific Beach while I establish my residency in another state. But I will have free housing for a while.
@@cartergomez5390 I am glad to hear that.
What is your degree in?
My younger daughter is a freshman in college.
I've lived in California a couple times. But I hang my hat in Kansas now.
Hello Joe, my degree is in human services and after I establish my residency, my goal is to take the behavior analyst exam and help my community because I'm from California but never lived there till now. I was born in Chula Vista at Scripps Hospital. California is feels like home to me and it's where I belong. @@joecombs7468
As a Founder of a Charity stuck following the old rules, it was revolutionary to learn that it was I who was stuck. Yes, the outdated rules of nonprofit behavior are limiting. But more limiting was my own personal leadership on this same topic. Thanks Dan for this. We are now free to take our charity and bust through that $50 million barrier!
Preston Frantz How much percentage can a Business save donating to a 501-c3 organization?
this is why i love ted, he changed my opinion on charities. i use to be certain that they (just like the for profit sector) just took all the onations, sat on them for as long as possible, squeezing every penny out of them before even considering passing them on. but after seeing this I'm willing to see them in another light. thank you :)
This is one of the best Ted Talks I have ever watched 🙏
This is why I chose to add the entrepreneurship certificate to my social work major. I felt sick about deciding to major in social work even though I know that's where I belong,b/c I can't imagine spending my life broke and begging people to donate to charity. Why should I learn how to ask people for money when i can just make the money?
Converted to his point of view, it makes so much sense and cant believe I didn't see it before. Well done!
This is one of my lovable TED talks of all time.
This made me cry and gave me a whole new perspective on nonprofits.
I saw this in one of my classes. He makes some really great points and it forces us to reevaluate our metrics of measuring NGOs' performances.
i work in non-profit and have always struggled to answer the question "how can you claim to be doing good and giving money to (x, y, or z) when you yourself are making money?". now i can answer it.
Eye opening talk. Everyone needs to see this.
Dan is amazing. I've been saying the same thing. I get it since I come from a corporate background. Every donor and staff at every charity should watch this video.
Here's an alternate suggestion.
If an issue is important enough, we shouldn't be relying on private organizations to solve it.
For example, implementing universal healthcare is better solution than relying on a charity to pay off someone's medical debt.
For other issues like poverty and homelessness, we should address the root causes. Income inequality and the rising cost of living.
I don't trust the economic system and CEO's that created these issues to solve them.
I think this is a TED talk that everyone should see. I currently work with UpFundraising and we partner with Save the Children, No Kid Hungry, ASPCA, etc. I can’t tell you how many looks of disgust I get from people when I ask to talk to them about Save the Children. I had one guy accuse me of taking the money for myself because he had never heard of the organization. There is such a misconception about charity work and fundraising and it really, really sucks that the people who don’t have access to the stuff we do have to suffer from that.
It is amazing how many people didn't properly understand this talk. Wow, they don't even notice it.
I work on behalf of multiple charities over here in the UK, fundraising on the street. I do so for a sales company which also markets things like phone, broadband and credit cards; I simply work in the charities division, but we share an office with people who are sales reps for TalkTalk and other major UK clients. One of the main responses I get from people I speak to is that they won't donate because the money doesn't go to the cause, but to the people running the work. In the handouts for a charity called Scope that I often work on behalf of, there's a breakdown of where the money goes. Only 8% is invested in fundraising of all kinds and 4% on running costs. People are often pleased when I show them that and they realise that 88% of their donation goes to helping disabled children, but in reality this is the reason why most of you reading this in the US or elsewhere have never heard of Scope: because we have a social stigma across the globe associated with the marketing of a charitable organisation, which severely restricts the progress such organisations can make on an economic level. You only have to look at the company I work for to realise that it doesn't make a difference whether the company is non-profit: you still need to get the best people (be they sales people such as myself, administrators, or even CEOs) in order to grow, and in order to get the best people, you need to be prepared to pay big money, or they'll go elsewhere. The charities themselves have realised this, hence why I'm employed in much the same role as the guy who comes and knocks on your door trying to sell you a credit card, but they can't invest more money into making the organisation bigger and better, because if they changed their setup to strengthen the core of the business, they would be publicly berated and lose donors. Pretty fucking backwards. What I'm basically trying to say is that what this guy is saying is absolutely right, and society's mindset has to change, in order to improve our world as quickly and effectively as possible.
The biggest problem I see with his reasoning is: If total donations are stuck in 2% of the GPD, then the pie by definition is not getting larger. Your marketing initiatives are not getting more people to donate, they're getting people to donate to your charity. You're growing your pie at the expense of everyone else's. As a result, you might be moving money from low-overhead charities to money-raising behemoths. Few causes will get large sums while many smaller initiatives will starve because they're not capable of doing marketing at the same level. I still fail to see how using money raised for X to raise money for X (instead of doing X) is not a departure from the mission. Citing a few successful cases does not solve the problem. Should all charities now risk their revenue to try to multiply it instead of doing what they're meant to do in the first place?
Not meant for all. If anything, low overhead charities should not participate. Is there a space for both is probably a better question. Can local coffee shops and local book store exist when Starbucks and Amazon exist might be your question maybe? Brooklyn and most of the country says yes.
Also, it’s important to tap into money that would’ve never gone to charity. Tap into some of the money that would’ve gone into entertainment. Maybe siphon some money from Fast and the Furious, Coachella, and Tulum, and make charity great again. Philanthropists shouldn’t be limited to the vanderbilts and carnegies.
@@etaesu83 👍Got ‘em.
I know Dan. I met him back in 1996 during the Philadelphia to DC AIDSRide. We spent some time after the ride, discussing various topics. He was a visionary then, and he’s a still a visionary now. I’ve always believed in him.
3:44 I can sense his emotion when they cheered right before he could make his punchline.
Absolutely brilliant. The model for non-profit revenue needs to change. We've developed the solution. Thanks for being such an inspiration!
This video has really changed the way I think about charity
This is SO sad. Yes, it makes huge sense in our current mutational form of capitalism (which is only a form/bandwidth of consciousness concerning collectively-attributed "value" to things and to time)...but it completely skirts the enormous "elephant" crowding the room, which is capitalism itself, which is relentlessly commodifying EVERYTHING, now including generosity and lovingkindness. In the same way as our current president, who experiences politics as a mere series of deals to "win" at, while somebody else has to "lose." The minute we make CONSCIENCE (Intellect+EMOTIONAL consciousness) a commodity we label ourselves permanent adolescents who refuse to grow up ("Oh, the Market will make everything okay"--i.e., Mommy and Daddy will save us when we drive stoned and crash the car.). So this nice smart talk is just symptomatic of our collective hypnotic state IMO, while the REAL problem to solve--which needs much smarter minds--is how can we make ourselves into a truly sustainable species in which we ALL get to live decently if we put in a day's work...
4:00 The problem, in simple terms, that he's talking about is that we say the good-doers can always do better than they're doing and the bad-doers we see as a lost cause.
We'll be working to modify the mindset of our community to embrace this stellar model of thinking. We will be agents of change !
wow.. just watched this today even though it was released 8 years ago. Changed my whole perspective of charity. I used to demonise charity but this gives me a whole new perspective
he seems like he's speaking for a certain percentage. like real non profit charities.
at first he said it's not about money, then he said he don't get enough money
The fact that you would ever demonize charity at all is stupid 😂
The issue with all of these is that it’s impossible to verify where the money goes due to a lack of transparency. You have to realize that nonprofit charity operates almost exclusively on FREE money. If there’s a nonprofit with overhead and poor transparency, nobody SHOULD support them. The issue isn’t the “puritan” mindset, it’s that there ARE greedy “charities” that waste money on vanity. Charity is only as effective as it is trustworthy. I’m not giving away 10% of my income when i have zero idea where it goes.
Wow...he managend to change my view on the topic with just one speech.
A great guy.
Dan is beyond brilliant. The best part is at 17:42 when he states: "Who cares what the rate of their overhead is is these problems are actually being solved?". If only the rest of society bought into this constructive way of thinking.
The same story goes to people's attitude towards savings vs consumption. They think that savings are bad so they want to stimulate aggregate demand to boost consumption, but what they don't know is that the savings goes to investments in factors of production which increases overall productivity.
Transparency and integrity need to be at the core of all fundraisers. Donors appreciate and deserve the reassurance that their dollars are furthering the nonprofit's mission.
#giveup2give
I understand the message behind this talk, but at the same time, we have in Canada a massive charity that is currently embroiled in controversy. With its massive size and growth oriented agenda, it has put growth ahead of principles and people, engaged in illegal or near illegal activities such as bribery of foreign officials, questionable sales tactics, and pandering to corporate donors such as overlooking clients' racist or sexist behaviors and changing programs to cater these donors.
In other words, it is run like a growth-oriented corporation. Revenue is prioritized over the real changes done to community and people. Sale of programs of questionable quality justified in terms of charitable intent. Proceeds going to the massive compensation of executives. That is, to some people including myself, the source of skepticism toward corporatization of non profit charities.
The reality is that unfortunately some bad apples will exist. It is worth asking whether it is worth it.
I know.... he's complaining that charities don't have enough money. It seems like propaganda. I mean... their product is literally "asking for money"
What is "fundraising"? It's essentially organized begging.
Yeath that's why I get nervous about giving to charities. My mom gave so much money to this one charity (like thousands of $$) over a few years thinking that they were great, and then they got exposed for pocketing a lot of the funds. Now I only feel safe funding non-profit.
You are skepical of every nonprofit ever to exist because one nonprofit in your country was lack. in ethics. You are literally what's wrong with the world of philanthropy today. What about the millions of controversies that happen in the for-profit sector. I promise you Amazon's treatment of its workers has never once caused you to hesitate to click "buy now" on a fucking back bomb or yankee candle. You're the reason people like myself have to my lifelong financial sacrifice for committing our professional lives to causes we believe in. Sickening
As someone who has run a non-profit, Pallotta got it spot on. It's one of the best talks I have ever heard encapsulating why our agendas for socially responsible change don't get met. And I worked in Violence Against Women- we know how that looks even today.
Very, very interesting ideas. I love what he had to say and I think he makes excellent points. I do not agree with everything he said, and some nonprofits really must stay small, but this is definitely a TED talk worth listening to and applying to some businesses.
I also love when he says we've been "confusing morality with frugality."
Good talk.
May I ask, what do you mean by some nonprofits "needing to stay small?"
Very thought provoking and overall I really appreciate Dan Pallotta’s thinking in this video.
I have always thought about what a disadvantage charities are at when it comes to attracting the best talent based on limited compensation opportunities. But I never really thought about the other macro goal that Dan talks about which is the scale of the money charities can raise and put to work being a primary goal. I am almost embarrassed about that. Current thinking about charities really does hold them back from huge potential for delivering goodness to society.
However, my quandary with this perspective lies in the huge potential for abuse. In the business world, you have to strike a balance and accountably produce results for your customers, employees and investors, or your business fails. So you have lots of market pressures or eyes on how you operate. While this three way balance is not 100% perfect for accountability, it has proven to be very good and stood the test of time. In a charitable world as Dan describes, employees probably act similar to the business world and stay committed to the cause as long as their personal situation is fair and they see organizational success, so that could be one accountability pillar. But the balance gets tipped over as the “customers” would likely be pretty silent as they really cannot vote by going elsewhere, and also investors being highly accountable to their stakeholders would be very skeptical and probably take an awful long time to ramp up. Government is not a viable potential balance force either in my opinion as too many of them are very inefficient or even corrupt. An African charity which I helped raise a lot of money for, and the Haitian government are just a couple of thousands of examples.
For Dan’s vision to become a reality at least one or hopefully two more market accountability forces in addition to employees would need to be brought into play. I am not sure what they would be at the moment. Hopefully others have some good ideas on this.
Now I want to ask my non profit to give all my contribution towards advertising, so more people can get the help they need, and the company can meet their mission's dreams.
Thank You
I'm new to TEDtalks&I just read this: "TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks&performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers&doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design.." 18 minutes is just a snippet of what's needed to understand(just me maybe) some of these topics.I like your point about a forum. Harlan Ellison said no one is allowed to be ignorant, an"informed"opinion is needed.
Great Ted Talk!
I fully agree with this. I've worked in a non-profit and see how most of the employees live almost hand to mouth. As a person who thinks in the way of business I never understood why the nonprofit companies were set up like this. How were they to attract the brilliant minds?
I now help small to medium nonprofits with fundraising and thankfully I'm able to make a big difference. Funny enough my service is free and I still have push back with the mentality Oh then this isn't worth my time... gees!
I am currently writing my essay about policy submission. The submission is about helping a NGO to fairly allocate limited resources. I have thought about resources allocate system and reduction on administration cost. But this video just give me a brilliant idea. Thank you for helping my essay and thank you for completely change the way of how I think about NGO administration cost. I love this video, I will send it my friends.
This is an important TED Talk and an essential discussion for us to have! Thanks for this Dan Pallotta!! Well done, well said! There is so much out there to explore if we were given the ability to do so!
I oversee a Social Enterprise and the potential is really untapped.........why? The necessary resources to tap the potential is lacking for all the reasons you have mentioned Dan!
Thanks again for raising this!
Finally, someone who gets it and eloquently and succinctly describes what charities struggle with in PR. I volunteer for various charities, and inevitably someone (usually a pious member of a religious sect) asks "So what percentage goes towards admin, and how much ACTUALLY reaches the cause". My response is 'look it up on CRA website'; I want to ask them, how much does your tithe go toward paying the mortgage on your church/electricity, salary of your clergy, etc...but I just don't want to bother. We need charities, and we need churches. There's a cost to everything. People have limiting beliefs, and this man shines a light on a great solution!
19 minutes ago I was blind, but now I see
As a long term worker in the non-profit world and I battle peoples thoughts about non-profits everyday. My pay is a joke, I do fundraising, and where I work is all direct services therefore overhead. Donations help pay the salaries of the people who do the work.
I've thought along these lines for a while and wondered why it is this way. Something is very wrong in a society that tolerates profiteering from war, death and scarcity. Caring for those in need and making education accessible would seem like a logical focal point of any society that wants to preserve its self for generations to come. Its great to see humanity waking up.
privileged to have worked in Orlando on FAR1 and FAR2 (also a rider) and volunteered for Day ZERO at CAR6. learned much about asking big from you Dan Pallotta. thank you
I still don't buy a lot of his premises. You can't compare a for profit company blowing money on a failed endeavor to a charity doing the same thing. When a company loses money, you know who it pisses off? The people who fund the company, it's investors and shareholders. The same is true of charities, if they waste their money they piss off the people who fund it, the donors. So charities are RIGHTFULLY criticized if they waste money. Regular companies aren't exempt from criticism, it's just that who is doing the criticism is different.
The charity CEO compensation thing is also something I don't agree with. If you're asking people, who make a LOT less, to give their money for your cause and you as CEO of this big charity is getting paid by that money, a salary that's way above the amount your donors and above the amount an average person needs to live comfortably, then it comes off as hypocritical.
This guy sounds like he want charities to have all the benefits a for-profit company has with none of the accountability that comes with it. Fact of the matter is, whether or not you're a for profit or a chairty, you're accountable to the ones providing the funding.
its okay for an investor to be pissed if failure occurs, but after one fail the company doesn't go bankrupt, they have a set back but get investment money once again, on the flip side its way higher of a risk for a charity because if they mess up they can completely fall, so the point of this is to help people understand that its okay for a charity to fail, yes you are right to be mad but you shouldn't stop giving away entirely, the punishment charity gets for loss is not fair and if it was less punishing to try growing growth will happen and this will be for the good of the world
Whoa the first major misconception is that the high paid private sector graduate CEO is WORTH the money they are paid. Research into high paid CEOs and their impact on businesses is only measured in their perceived contribution to companies - not in the value that they add. The notion that paying highly for a charitable CEO would result in more productivity isn't evidenced... at least the low paid CEO WANTS to be there - to them its a vocation not a pay check. Infact pay your charitable CEOs too much and these charitites become gravy trains... prolonguing a problem in order to give highly trained graduates high paid jobs to go into and not solve the problems.
Precisely!
Charity is business to some.
Charity is a humanitarian act to others.
Charity can be a science as well (what he's saying in his TEDtalk)
Let's all keep that in mind. Different people, different intentions, both good and bad.
tapiwakay Err, what? As long as it's regulated correctly, anything labeled charity will go to a cause not for making profit to the entity overall. Besides, research isn't a humanitarian endeavor?
I can start a charity today and only pass on 20% of what i bring in. I can pay myself a $150k salary, jet around first class to meetings etc. Do you think that's a good use of your donated money?
+tapiwakay If that 20% isn't having enough impact, donors won't donate to your charity.
+tapiwakay I see what you mean, but not all the money comes from donations. And these people work juat as hard as any other business. They should get paid equally as everybody, especially if they are the ones actually helping other people.
Right. Nobility 8 does 2 good things at once. #1 provide income to charities and #2 provide a job for people with little or no education. If you are interested in making money by recruiting recruiters, email me at prosperitycoalitionllc@gmail.com. I live in Virginia, USA but the method we are using is operated likee crowd sourcing so it can be done anywhere in the World.
This is great tedtalks really prioritize and focus on the heart of the problem. Really smart. Some facts though I want to straighten up, 1. Christians favor charity workers and we don't ban them from deserving money or personal help from others. We just classify love as taking care of our brothers in need like we take care of ourselves. Other people however... 2. Calvinist don't cause this judging culture, it happens everywhere all over the world not just in America.
Much of the talk about charity is meaningless without understanding that an organization that lives on donations is really selling a product to its customers, no different in principle from any other company. That product is the promise of advancing some collective good, proportional to the price paid. That's why e.g. Coca-Cola can spend their revenue however they see fit, the value of the end product is not diminished. But if your product IS the channeling of money to a cause, it's obvious that large overhead makes that product worth less and you get no customers. That is unless you intentionally keep them in the dark, even lying if necessary.
Exactly. We are literally being sold the product of social justice by the wealthy and told we shouldn't expect it not to fanatically benefit them.
The best metric would be what the percentage of overhead is of the total budget while taking into account the size of the budget. Like he said, who cares if you have 5% overhead and only raise $90,000, wouldn't you prefer an organization that has 30% overhead and raises $30 million? You have to use several metrics to determine the health, success, and sustainability of an organization, there is no single metric that will do it.
Very good! Great speaker! And on a topic of great importance and significance.
Dan Pallotta's talk about the why non-profit sector is not making significant mark and changes the way it intended is worth watching. It is a profoundly meaningful talk and it certainly changes the way we think about changing the world !
Wow. He actually called the different rules for non-profits "an apartheid".
its appropriate, non-profits are segregated from other markets and treated as a lesser thing
I got a lottle angry, but mostly I cried out of empathy and hope. Thanks for sharing, Dan 😅
Hi, Perhaps the word charity has shifted over time.. I aspire to charity that offers others improved opportunity through better education and greater work potential. It is not money alone that solves big issues. People that are willing to empower communities to overcome their deficit situations do not all donate money alone. Empower people to do something different, a man will always need another bag of rice, don't sell charity as a business model so easily people, instead help someone, please!
Exactly how I see it. Well said.
Amen. May God bless you and the wise heart within you. May God forgive the confused person who thinks high pay is what nonprofits need to help people.
But that is the issue. It starts with these mindful people who want to change the world and give people food. But this is not possible to do on its own. For this, there has to be a strong financial support by fact, the non profit sector supports itself by donations. It is about how people should support these non profit organizations so they can give food supplies. How do people get attention to support the non profit sector? He says, through investing in advertising from the profit sector people the non profit sector gets attention. The gab between economy and good cause (charity) is small and twisted. They influence each other. But it's true, that the main reason of helping others should come first. And you are right just wanted to add this. Hope you have a good day! : )
Imagine how many of the worlds greatest minds could shift their focus to helping others, thus creating the opportunity for others, if they knew they weren’t going to be financially disadvantaged by doing so
@@ciaranbarr7812 yes!
Dear Ted, I've been in the emergency room so many times since I was 19. I've woken up in hospitals... I've been told I could never do it. I have been told that I was never going to see the light of day.. but I always found a way.... Never wanted money... all I wanted was to touch peoples hearts.. and minds.. I always protected what I love. And I always will. Because I never let fear destroy me. -Shay Todd Walker
Yup. And even though I've been a gamer my whole life, I cannot deny it: Video games are fucking violent. Yes, they are. And huge companies making those games do get a lot of money. Yes, they do.
... A great speech, nonetheless.
That was the only part I didn't like, it just perpetuates misinformation and panic against videogames
"Violent videogames for children" aren't really a thing, because violent videogames are not made for kids, that's why have the ESRB rating system that specifically tells you who is it meant for even something like Smash Bros is rated for kids 10+, if little Billy wants to play GTA or Mortal Kombat that's up to the parents to regulate, it is the same for movies, everyone knows that something like the Saw movies are not made for children but nobody seems to be able to do that same connection with videogames
Not to mention that videogames are one of the biggest contributors to charity with a bunch of events and organizations entirely fan funded to help children or anyone else who needs it like Childs Play, St.Jude or any of the donations during AGDQ all raking in literally millions of dollars donated by gamers every year, and constantly growing
This might be the best and most needed Ted talk of our time.
This presentation had a lot of "...oh" moments for me. I've definitely been guilty of the "overhead = bad/evil/greedy/inefficient" way of thinking.
There is also another issue here, which is money is not necessarily the only way to give. We can give time, we can give ideas, we can give by gifting in kind
The issue isn't overhead being spent well, it is overhead that is going entirely into the back pockets of people not actually doing anything. There have been one too many con artists living fast lives without actually helping and that has turned people off of charities with high "overhead".
How is this different from the for profit sector? At least some good is also getting done in this case...
If you were to do a count of how many non profit 'Businesses' there are in the U.S. and how many have been proven to be cons you will find that it isn't worth being concerned about. However it is always important to find out the legitimacy of the org. And then remember the words you heard in this video. I'm amazed that when someone takes the time to research the numbers as this gentleman has people like yourself can't help but run with the minority that still hurts the majority.
Such innovative thinking! We ALL need to follow his model for the future of nonprofits!
Brilliant. Just brilliant!
This is such an interesting topic and raises so many issues. I will add a little to the complexity:
He has taken a narrow slice of the charity world - basically just looking at medical research (which is a relatively apolitical topic compared to what a lot of the charity world addresses) and how to fundraise more for it. I am keen to go broader...
FAIR WAGES FOR ALL WORKERS. I agree there is a big disparity between private sector and charitable sector CEO wages. But instead of the speaker's solution, I think that corporate CEO wages should be capped (perhaps at something like 10 or 20 times the lowest pay in the country). It's outrageous to see CEOs on remuneration packages that are 500 times the rate of the janitors. How much money do you actually need to live an extremely comfortable life?
GREED IS A PROBLEM. And, yes it's great to reward innovation and hard work and CEOs should be paid fairly. But I think we can keep some caps on it. After all, instead of acquiescing to corporate greed, THE CHARITABLE SECTOR SHOULD STRIVE TO BUILD A FAIRER WORLD. What about increasing the pay rate for the janitors before considering the CEO.
Much of the suffering that charities respond to is CAUSED BY OR EXACERBATED BY INJUSTICE - poverty, homelessness, war, global inequities, dangerous work conditions, below poverty wages, the climate crisis. The middle class of the world (including me) need to choose to consume (and polute) less and pay more for ethical products (that are good for the earth and for workers). Charities can only advocate for this if they are modelling it.
HIGHER PAY DOES NOT ATTRACT BETTER CEOs. The UN has long suffered from criticism in this area. Often the best CEOs are on good but relatively modest remuneration compared to others. As long as people are paid enough to live decently, personal passion for the work provides a much greater return than higher pay packets.
THE PIE IS NOT NECESSARILY MUCH BIGGER (and certainly not infinite). Heard of donor fatigue? There is a limit to how much people will donate and the more the charitable sector moves to professionalise asking for donations the more these charities end up competing with each other for the same donations. An individual charity may get more by spending more - but it may be largely at the expense of other charities.
CHARITIES ASK FOR DONATIONS DO DO GOOD WORK. BUSINESSES SELL PRODUCTS. I would buy a product from a company with some crazy high paid executives as long as the product was good. However, I would be loath to donate any money to a charity where I knew that 40% of it was going to pay excessively high salaries for some staff.
Of course, a social enterprise is a different matter. They sell a product and they serve a social good. Nice win-win. In reality, usually a bit more grey than that.
I would be interested in learning more about ways of comparing charities in terms of impact made per dollar donated. And I am not talking about impact as just multiplying the dollars. It has but about the actual outcomes generated for the cause it exists to serve as a whole. I know that it is impossible to measure very well in many situations. For example, how do you really measure the full impact of an anti-racism program in building a more peaceful and harmonious society?
Just my initial thoughts...
A problem with TED talks is that you hear only 1 side of an issue, unlike in a forum. Also, TED talks do little detailing what they are talking about. E.g., Dan Pallotta didn't tell us where he got his history of Puritans. I dispute the accuracy of his assertions. Puritans already gave at least 10% of their income to the church, then more to other non-profit causes. They didn't do this for penance; they did this because it is commanded by their religion, and out of concern for others.
hahah so you mean puritans were actually MORE pathetic than he asserts? and you were triggered by how he misrepresented this? You're claiming that they didn't do it for penance (i.e. they felt bad for making money), they did it simply because their little daddy god made them not because they wanted to? And this makes them more admirable?
Also, let me give a little taste of your logic: you do little detailing what you're talking about. E.g. you didn't tell us where you got your history of Puritans. I dispute the accuracy of your assertions. OOOOOOOh, see what i did there?
@@connorblake1390 I'm wondering why he thinks that somebody would leave a prosperous, modern city for a remote, harsh, undeveloped frontier, where life was known to be brutal and short, so that he could become wealthy? Does it make sense to you for, say, a wealthy Wall Street executive to travel to one of the most remote, undeveloped regions--say Haiti--with nothing but his ability to build everything with his own hands in hopes of becoming wealthier? This is what he proposes the Puritans did, and succeeded in doing. England was a powerful nation that was experience profound economic growth when the Puritans decided they had enough and struck out for completely isolated and undeveloped wilderness. Several of their early efforts resulted, not in them becoming wealthy, but in half of them dying of starvation in the first year. Yet, they persisted, starting again and again. This character says they did it to become rich. What's his evidence of this? Does that claim even make sense?
This TED talk has a lot of other problems and inconsistencies. He began by telling us that some causes simply cannot be supported with an economic market model, but then he makes the central theme of his talk about adopting an economic market model to support these causes. He uses as examples of the success of his plan some causes that could be called "Purple Pigeons," that is, popular causes with a lot of glamor and positive press. As it happens both of the causes he mentions--AIDS research and breast cancer research--are funded far out of proportion for their risk to the general population, and at the expense of other research that is more significant to the general public.
The website, "World History" has a good article on Puritan charity in the New World. You should read it. "A Model of Christian Charity and the City on a Hill," by Joshua J. Mark.
Wow. What a powerful video-truly a must-see for every non-profit person in the fundraising world. My only beef is with great historical inaccuracies mentioning the Puritans and Calvinism.
What historical inaccuracies? I think he exaggerated a bit, but everything he said about the historical aspects is 100% true. There's so much about America that can be explained through the lens of the history of religious conflict.
2020 anyone?
Look. He is totally right. Lots of people need to hear this.
I think rather than think of your donation going to directly help one person. Think instead your money is going to the non profit so they can use it efficiently for how they need it. That’s just as good.
Thank you very much for this amazing eye opener. It has inspired me to try to create a new "business/charity" model (25 years of experience in finance) in Switzerland where the laws are favorable for charity organisations. If it becomes alive I will definitely let you know and explain it to you, if you are interested of course.
Did anything ever happen??
@@calandrajones3480 update us
Let’s hear more!
This is a great speech ever. Thank you Dan!
fantastic talk, really opened my eyes, thanks
Excellent talk. A lot of points in there about how we perhaps rethink how charity works.
I am not without my reservations though, with my biggest one being the proportion spent on overheads: When a charity gets a donation from someone, it generally comes at the expense of a donation to another charity. So if you are going to increase the proportion you spend on overheads, and take donations away from charities with smaller overheads, then you should ensure that you are either inspiring new generosity where there was none before, or working that money harder to provide more results per dollar, so as to offset the loss to other charities. Not impossible, but I think important to consider.
There are so many holes in the logic here. You can't compare overhead costs when the economics of running a charity are nothing like running a business.
Unlike business customers, charitable donors receive nothing directly in return for their donations. Charities simply collect money from donors and decide how to best use that money to benefit the cause. Therefore, the entire purpose of a charity is to maximize the impact of each dollar taken in by spending money wisely and keeping overhead costs as low as possible.
While it's true that charities with a larger revenue "pie" end up donating more money overall, many of the largest charities achieve this only by spending the vast majority of their money on advertising. However, studies show that the OVERALL charitable giving rate depends mainly on factors like personal income, tax incentives, and the frequency of natural disasters, NOT on the overall amount of advertising. So, even if spending millions on ads provides your charity with millions of dollars in extra revenue, that revenue almost certainly comes at the expense of other charities.
The 6 and 7-figure salaries are completely unjustified though. While I personally admire the people who operate non-profits for good causes, these salaries are extremely excessive for just an administrative role.
Sustainability is probably important if you want to run a charity or contribute to a charity. Should you contribute to charity as a renter for example when buying a home might put you in a category to where you can contribute MORE at a later date? When I was a student I spent a percentage of my time in charitable activities because I figured the experience would benefit me in the future and in the long run. I worked part time too but there are limits on how much a kid can work. To be honest you don't want to put yourself in a class where the donor admires the benefactor! And you want to make sure you are appreciated. I was in a program in College where I am guessing I was not appreciated. The students, administrators and faculty pushed me into a project where in the near term it appeared to me mostly charity but in the long term they indicated it would lead to a paid gig as a University Lecturer in Business and maybe more with possible consulting income and such in most major Business Schools. Turns out they got me involved with Communists and Labor Union groups in a way where I was not aware of their activities because I am
American. If I lived in Europe I would have known I was involved with Unions and possibly Communists. Quite honestly these people were hostile to me for reasons only they know and I have stayed far away from charity since graduation from College because it takes time to recover from associations with extremist and radical political groups. Even if they are hiding the insiders who run this country know who they are. And what did it do to my tentative goal of going to Law School? Law was my primary reason for going to college and not charity or helping the poor. I have had to give up my goal of Law School out of fear I'd be cornered and forced to work with political groups that really did not seem to like me. I guess we all make mistakes, there has never seemed to be any "upside" charity. Quite honestly, people seem to complain that I don't do more even while hating me for what I did. So if someone can make millions administrating a huge charity, best of luck to him. Better than donating your time and actually admiring the people you helped and then spat in your face when their luck changed!
As a charity, this is exactly correct. Innovation in the sector is held at it's lowest common denominator because of this type of thinking. Now, with that said, social entrepreneurship solves this issue, BUT like he said, it has a fundamental flaw in that the ones needing the most services are not being addresses with those models. A certain amount has to be given to true charities and the vision that salaries are overhead and not part of the business model is flawed.
80% of the people in these comments missed the point. Bottom line: Nonprofits are limited in its effectiveness because systems are not set up to allow nonprofits to reinvest or compete for talent.
Some very good insight. Talented people are not cheap and there is a competitive market for their skills. They may take some degree of reduced pay to do good in a charitable organization, but there is a practical limit to that. Furthermore, like any organization, you have to invest for growth. If we are to empower charity to step up so that we can reduce the size and scale of government, these are good suggestions to heed.
This sounds incredibly compelling. HOWEVER, what strikes me as an overwhelming flaw is that this kind of thinking establishes a slippery-slope whereby charities can pay their CEOs and staff more, advertise more, pay their CEOs and staff more etc, and face no consequences for doing so! I see two underlying assumptions in Pallotta's argument that are wrong:
Firstly, that charities **would be able** to "multiply" their revenue through corporatisation in the same way that advertising for coca-cola etc can. I don't think they could. Why? Because marketing charity is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT to marketing a product that benefits the individual. I would suggest that for many people, no amount of advertising will make them donate because they simply don't want to give their money away to others.
Secondly, that charities **would actually** use their revenue to help people. If they are run as corporations, that means they WILL BE RUN AS CORPORATIONS: they won't be transparent. They won't have integrity, because they won't need to. And therefore, the biggest problem I foresee is they won't have an incentive to actually help people. Why should they, when they can, like any corporation, use their funds for greater CEO salaries???
Jack Harley Excellent criticisms, but it still seems pretty tempting to try the advertising-for-charities method for a longer time and observe the longer term process.
Jack Harley I absolutely agree with you. Advertising is necessary for charities to make sure they will be acknowledged. On the other hand running and advertising a charity is fundamentally different, as the role of customer (donor) and Service recipient is very special.
Jack Harley please help with the recovery
igg.me/at/-UlCKvR2aVY/x/9049775
Jack Harley I work as operations director for a non-profit and I am sorry to say but you are wrong. Advertising does increase donations and makes people give away more money. A well-paid advertisement campaign can increase donations immensely.
Regarding your second point, if they are non-profits, they are not run as corporations. Corporations strive for making shareholders rich, a non-profit organization does not make anybody rich, therefore the money needs to be put somewhere, projects, salaries, maintenance etc. Sure they can pay more to the CEOs but then it is up to you to check the charity. There is a website called charity navigator and it ranks charities on several aspects, you should check it out.
Thirdly, what if the charity does wanna pay more to the CEO? A CEO that made possible a growth of more than 100%, increasing the impact the organization has and achieving more of its goals. It is not wrong, it is fair. As he says in the beginning, it is okay to pay millions to people that will do bad for the world, stamp them in front of a magazine and call him/her a hero, but you cannot do the same to a CEO that is actually making the world a better place? It does make sense.
You should check Charity Water, an organization that has a different approach to charities, invests a lot in marketing and has grown a lot lately, increasing the number of projects and impact, which would not be made possible with a bad CEO and no investment in advertisement. Visit charitywater.org
Carl L Fritze Yes, advertising a charity will increase the awareness of the charity. What makes you believe otherwise?
we should all listen to this man - we need to change our worldview.