The Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong
Activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta calls out the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities. Too many nonprofits, he says, are rewarded for how little they spend — not for what they get done. Instead of equating frugality with morality, he asks us to start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments (even if that comes with big expenses). In this bold talk, he says: Let’s change the way we think about changing the world.
“The next time you’re looking at a charity, don’t ask about the rate of their overhead. Ask about the scale of their dreams.”
“We have a visceral reaction to the idea that anyone would make very much money helping other people. Interesting that we don’t have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money NOT helping other people.”
“Our generation does not want its epitaph to read, ‘We kept charity overhead low.’ We want it to read that we changed the world.”
Audit your spending through the lens of impact: what would you invest in if scale mattered more than appearances?
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