Dan Pallotta - Charity Case

Praise for Charity Case

Charity Case is an Apollo program for American philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. Pallottas understanding of the hamstrung nonprofit sector is poetic and therapeutic. His prescription is sensible and profound. Charity Case will inspire its readers with an expansive sense of possibility.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Charity Case is visionary in its empathy. It sympathizes with the donating publics confusion about how charity really works and with the nonprofit sectors plea to be held to standards that engender trust and grow support. At that intersection lies the promise of a new era of enlightenment about charity and social change.

Art Taylor, president, Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance

Charity Case takes innovative thinking about the social sector to an entirely new level. Dan Pallotta raises the radical prospect that we can change cultural conventions about charity, making a cause of causes themselves. A powerful call to action.

Jane Wei-Skillern, adjunct associate professor, Haas School, University of California, Berkeley; lecturer, Stanford Graduate School of Business

It doesnt occur to Dan Pallotta that standing on the sidelines is an option. And he makes it impossible for the rest of us to stand back. Charity Case is a wakeup call for every fundraiser around the world. We are the public champions of philanthropyits just that not all of us have been aware of that until now.

Andrew Watt, president and CEO, Association of Fundraising Professionals

Copyright 2012 by Dan Pallotta. All rights reserved.

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Author photo by Paiwei Wei

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pallotta, Dan.

Charity case : how the nonprofit community can stand up for itself and really change the world / Dan Pallotta.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-11752-1 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-22448-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-23768-7 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-26257-3 (ebk)

1. Charity organization. 2. Nonprofit organizations. I. Title.

HV40.P254 2012

361.7'63dc23

2012011791

To Annalisa, Sage, and Rider.

May you live in a world that
thinks different about making a difference.

This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves.

ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL

Preface

My previous book, Uncharitable, was about how our system of charity undermines the causes we love. This book is about how we can undermine that system. Uncharitable was about a problem. This book is about a solution. Uncharitable was about our plight. This book is about deliverance. For those of you who havent read Uncharitable, a synopsis is included in Chapter One.

It was right for the problem to occupy center stage in Uncharitable so that we could meditate on just how damaging the problem is. I didnt want to propose a bunch of solutions. Ill make an analogy to mourning: when youve lost someone you love, you dont want people trying to cheer you up with platitudes. You just want to grieve and be present to the gravity of whats happened to you. In Uncharitable, I wanted to be present to the dysfunction that arises out of our rigid and religious ideas about charity.

In Uncharitable I described how the system of values and ethics governing the conduct of charity today is actually a religion that was formalized some four hundred years ago by the early Puritan settlers in New England. I discussed how that system was designed to secure the Puritans salvation in heaven and avoid eternal damnation in a hell hereafter.

This book is about designing a system that can solve social problems. If we can solve some of the great social problems that have plagued and vexed humankind since the beginning of time, that will be heaven enough. And it will rescue billions of human beings from a hell all too present for them in the here and now.

The Puritans believed that problems like poverty were ordained by God and that they would and should be with us forever. This book is about designing a system of charity that responds to our real capacity to eradicate these problems once and for alland in our lifetime.

In his 2007 keynote address at the MacWorld Conference, Steve Jobs claimed boldly, Today, Apple re-invents the phone, and he proceeded to unveil the iPhone. If we can do it with the phone, we can do it with charity.

Let us begin the reinvention of charity. How? By creating a national leadership movement specifically for that purpose.

Unlike many other books written about the sector, this one is not academic. Its not a new theory, and its not about a new way of thinking about giving. Its an immediately actionable plan to get the public to adopt a new way of thinking about giving. Thats a big difference. That Zen monks may have found the key to enlightenment is of no consequence if theres no plan to get everyone enlightened.

Why focus on changing the way the public thinks about charity? Why that lever? Because its the only lever that really matters. Because the general public donates 75 percent of the $300 billion given to charity every year. Because elected officials and regulators create public policy and contract guidelines based on what they think the public wants. Because board members are also part of the general public. Because charities base their business strategies on what they think the public wants. And because what the public wants is still based on what the Puritans told them they should want four hundred years ago. The way the public thinks about these things gives rise to the system that obstructs us, so it is appropriate to transform the way the public thinks about these things.