Pallotta - Uncharitable: how restraints on nonprofits undermine their potential

More Advance Praise for Uncharitable and Dan Pallotta

For those of us who have labored in the trenches of the nonprofit world, this book comes like a rainstorm to a parched land. For too long society has demanded that the nonprofit sector put traditional operating procedure ahead of innovation.... Dan and his team have raised unprecedented sums to help treat devastating human disease. Our lab received $100,000 for research from one of his companys events. The findings from that research allowed us to secure over $20 million more in federal grants. Those who would take issue with doing things in a new way will have to reconcile their reservations with those results.

Peter Anton, M.D., Professor of Medicine, and Director, Center for HIV Prevention Research, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Dan is a pioneering individual of tremendous vision. A decade ago, he reinvented the concept of charitable fundraisingand his ideas now promise to reengineer the entire non-profit industry. The lines between the private sector and civil society already are blurring, but the momentum of Dans ideas will accelerate this fusion. Uncharitable is a must read for people seeking careers in social enterprise or attempting to drive meaning into their work.

Jonathan Greenblatt, Co-Founder, Ethos Water, and CEO, Good Magazine

Do the norms and values that have defined the way charity has been undertaken for centuries continue to make sense in the current age of globalization, mass marketing, and technology? Dan Pallotta makes a convincing case that the time has come to rigorously measure strategic impact rather than overhead ratios, be more competitive in regard to mass communications and marketing, and more adequately invest in administrative systems and program support.

Charles MacCormack, President and CEO, Save the Children

Charitable non-profits exist to leverage our countrys prosperity for the benefit of those in need, and yet too often non-profits reject the tools and the techniques that have made that prosperity possible, shortchanging their noble causes in the process. With passion and logic, and drawing on his own deep well of experience, Dan Pallotta shows how the power of capitalism can be marshaled to the cause of compassion.

Yuval Levin, Ethics and Public Policy Center, and former Associate Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and Coordinator of National AIDS Policy

America needs the smartest and most creative people operating its multi-billion dollar nonprofit sector. To attract them, we must be competitive in compensations, business management and fundraising ideas. Nonprofits who see themselves poor as a church mouse do their mission and supporters a disservice.

Morris Dees, Founder and Chief Trial Counsel, Southern Poverty Law Center

Dan Pallottas book is a brilliant take on the absurdities that constrain the potential of our fastest growing sectorthe nonprofit world in America. He raises questions that every executive director asks him or herself every week, but finds no public discourse on. Dan has put together a timely manifesto that outlines the only direction that makes senseembracing true entrepreneurial initiative and challenging the paradoxical split in America that sets business free but straitjackets charities.

Torie Osborn, Senior Advisor to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and
former Executive Director, Liberty Hill Foundation, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center

As the chairman of a nonprofit policy institute, Dan Pallotta has clarified for me the explicit and many implicit constraints under which we operate. My thanks.

William A. Niskanen, Chairman, The Cato Institute

Dan Pallotta writes a commanding and compelling vision of what charities and non-profit organizations are capable of becoming if freed to fully embrace free enterprise thinking and action. He would have us break permanently from the notion that spending money in the service of raising money for deserving social causes is a sin. Anyone who cares about the vexing social and health problems facing society should pay close attention to the brilliant ideas percolating in this groundbreaking book.

Everette J. Freeman, President, Albany State University

I have long considered Dan Pallotta a wise and visionary man with much to contribute to our world. This book proves it. His insights into charities and non-profits are as brilliant as they are unexpected and unorthodox. It has always seemed to me that the impulse in our culture to give to worthy causes is a manifestation of what is best about us as people and as a society. This book explains how we limit the effectiveness of our organizations and undermine the realization of our purest dreams and our highest hopes. It is essential reading for anyone who cares about non-profit organizations or the money they give to them. I truly believe that following the wisdom in this book would lead us to impacting on the problems of our world in a genuinely amazing way.

Judith Light, two-time Best Actress Emmy-Award Winner, and AIDS Activist

Uncharitable is the most courageous and necessary of all of the recent books that have been written about philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. Dan Pallotta understands that being faithful to those that charities are designed to serve requires more than generosity and good management. It requires taking risks, confronting antiquated notions of politically correct charity, and most of all remembering that nonprofit efficiency should be a means to an end not an end in itself. Uncharitable charts a new path that if followed could finally create the incentives needed to unleash the enormous potential of nonprofits to change the world.

Bill Shore, Founder and Executive Director, Share Our Strength

Civil Society: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

SERIES EDITORS:

Virginia Hodgkinson Public Policy Institute, Georgetown University

Kent E. Portney Department of Political Science, Tufts University

John C. Schneider Department of History, Tufts University

For a complete list of books that are available in the series, visit www.upne.com.

Carl Milofsky, Smallville: Institutionalizing Community in Twenty-First-Century America

Dan Pallotta, Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential

Susan A. Ostrander and Kent E. Portney, eds., Acting Civically: From Urban Neighborhoods to Higher Education

Peter Levine, The Future of Democracy: Developing the Next Generation of American Citizens

Jason A. Scorza, Strong Liberalism: Habits of Mind for Democratic Citizenship

Elayne Clift, ed., Women, Philanthropy, and Social Change: Visions for a Just Society

Brian OConnell, Fifty Years in Public Causes: Stories from a Road Less Traveled

Pablo Eisenberg, Challenges for Nonpofits and Philanthropy: The Courage to Change

Thomas A. Lyson, Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food, and Community

Virginia A. Hodgkinson and Michael W. Foley, eds., The Civil Society Reader

Henry Milner, Civic Literacy: How Informed Citizens Make Democracy Work

Ken Thomson, From Neighborhood to Nation: The Democratic Foundations of Civil Society

Bob Edwards, Michael W. Foley, and Mario Diani, eds., Beyond Tocqueville: Civil Society and the Social Capital Debate in Comparative Perspective

Phillip H. Round, By Nature and by Custom Cursed: Transatlantic Civil Discourse and New England Cultural Production, 16201660

Brian OConnell, Civil Society: The Underpinnings of American Democra

UNCHARITABLE

How Restraints on Nonprofits
Undermine Their Potential