The way we think about charity is dead wrong | Dan Pallotta
Vložit
- čas přidán 1. 06. 2024
- 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.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.
Find closed captions and translated subtitles in many languages at www.ted.com/translate
Follow TED news on Twitter: / tednews
Like TED on Facebook: / ted
Subscribe to our channel: / tedtalksdirector
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 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.
The idea that spending more on overhead (in the area of efforts to create public awareness of a given charity, and to reach out to people for donations and direct participation) can help grow a charity and make it more effective is a good one to consider.
However, the speaker is missing some important things, and I'll outline them here.
MONEY DOES NOT ALWAYS TRANSLATE INTO RESULTS. He said that despite all the money spent on breast cancer (for example) there has not yet been a cure for breast cancer. So, if thus far $X billion has actually been spent and produced no cure, then how can it be asserted that spending $50X billion will produce a cure? Could it be that the entire thinking about the situation and the subject matter needs to be revamped? (Look at India for example. 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. That cannot be attributed to more money being spent on cancer charities in India compared to the US, but rather to other factors.) Also consider the problem of homelessness which is increasing in LA and San Francisco. Is this happening because not enough money is being spent on charity? Or is it happening due to real estate gentrification and state policies that favor illegal aliens over US citizens in need, and to a socialistic mindset on the part of politicians that make California a difficult place to do business and create jobs that low-skilled people can do? In other words, the speaker is not addressing the much bigger issue which is understanding the root causes of a given problem and addressing those with courage rather than giving out handouts to those in need and to big research organizations in the hope that doing so fixes the problem permanently. As the Chinese saying goes: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
THE US TAX CODE IS WHY CHARITIES ARE TREATED DIFFERENTLY THAN FOR FOR-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS. The speaker did not address the way the overall tax game is structured for nonprofits. This is very critical. Nonprofits do not pay taxes but in exchange are expected to spend their money on the issues that their charters say they will spend on. This expectation naturally includes the expectation to reduce overhead. 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. The speaker should be thinking of ways to structure the tax code differently such that charities do not have to face this kind of scrutiny. Here is a revolutionary idea. What if charities did not take the 501(c)(3) tax deduction at all and instead operated as for-profit enterprises? Or, what if for-profit organizations could get behind a charitable cause and subsume all of their operations under that charitable cause, with the requirement that at least 50% of all revenue must go towards that cause? That way, any time the public buys their product or uses their service, they know that they are giving to a certain charitable cause. There was also the case of the company Hughes which I used to work for. The founder Howard Hughes made his aerospace and technology company a non-profit organization by putting all of its assets into his hospital network which became Kaiser Permanente. That way, his company made lots of money and paid zero in taxes, all while spreading their hospital network far and wide. That was not a perfect model but it can be improved upon.
CHURCHES AND RELIGIONS DO A LOT OF CHARITABLE WORK FOR SOCIETY. When Americans donate to their church or religious organization, they are donating to services to help the homeless and the sick. The speaker seems oblivious to this fact and does not seem willing to learn something from this model of service.
THE PURITANS STARTED OUT AS COMMUNISTS, NOT CAPITALISTS. The speaker is spreading misinformation by saying that the Puritans who landed in what would become Massachusetts were capitalists. He is making that up and he does not know what he is talking about. Communism, in the form of the idea that land and capital should not be owned by anyone because ownership is materialistic and ungodly, was a popular idea among certain religious dissident groups in England at the time. The Puritans were Brownists and there was also a communist faction during the English Civil War (1640s) known as the Diggers. Their communism is exactly why many of them starved to death during their first winter and why the assistance they received from the American Indians was so critical to their survival. They learned the hard way that communism does not work. (See www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/pilgrims-beat-communism-free-market. Also, as a side note, there was communism in the Virginia colony as described here: The Fall of Communism in Virginia | Murray N. Rothbard ) The speaker said that he is "gay", and in America that typically would mean that he does not like religion in general and that he particularly dislikes forms of Christianity which he regards as "conservative" or puritanical (which in his mind means "anti-homosexual"). It is his right to hold that view. However, I think he is wrong to attribute modern American attitudes towards charitable giving to a supposed Puritan hypocrisy on the matter. In 1776, most Christian Americans were not Puritans (or Congregationalists, which they would later be called) and did not hold attitudes derived from those of the New England Puritans to whom the speaker is referring. At least two of America's key founders, Jefferson and Franklin, said themselves that they were not even Christians. America today has lots of non-Christians who follow Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam and other religions. There are also many non-religious people and atheists in America. It would seem quite a stretch to say that all of these people got their views on charitable giving from the Puritans.
@@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.
@@cconnors LOL you have no clue what you're talking about.
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.
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.
This has got to be one of the most underrated Ted talks out there. Wow.
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
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.
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.
This was a amazing video. As a person who is involved with a nonprofit i learned so much in this 19 minutes.
Very true
It is amazing how many people didn't properly understand this talk. Wow, they don't even notice it.
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!
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?
This is undoubtedly one of the most perspective-transforming videos I've ever seen
The best of TED; not only an idea worth spreading, but one that radically illuminates and shifts thinking.
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 man deserved nothing less than a standing ovation.
I've been mulling over social innovations and communications for a year now. This provided a foundation for me. Thank you!!
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.
3:44 I can sense his emotion when they cheered right before he could make his punchline.
Thank you for talking about charity. It is essential to me and the children. Without, we can not survive. ❤️
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.
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
Converted to his point of view, it makes so much sense and cant believe I didn't see it before. Well done!
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?
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.
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.
This is one of my lovable TED talks of all time.
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 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.
This video has really changed the way I think about charity
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 :)
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.
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!
Eye opening talk. Everyone needs to see this.
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.
Very good! Great speaker! And on a topic of great importance and significance.
This made me cry and gave me a whole new perspective on nonprofits.
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
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!
Wow...he managend to change my view on the topic with just one speech.
A great guy.
Wow.... Well said! We definitely need to work on our generosity.
Absolutely brilliant. The model for non-profit revenue needs to change. We've developed the solution. Thanks for being such an inspiration!
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.
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.
Such innovative thinking! We ALL need to follow his model for the future of nonprofits!
We'll be working to modify the mindset of our community to embrace this stellar model of thinking. We will be agents of change !
2020 anyone?
fantastic talk, really opened my eyes, thanks
if i used FB i would share this and tag all my friends... man, this needs to be heard and understood.
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.
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
Brilliant. Just brilliant!
Totally changed what I think about charity fundraising!!! Thank you, Ted.
Fantastic. This is so inspirational. Makes us realize to never give up on our dreams
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
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.
Yep, this is true. I remember seeing the same theme in a textbook back in college and remember thinking how it seemed counterintuitive but actually made sense.
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
wow!! fantastic video.... it changed my view on fundraising !
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
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!
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?"
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.
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.
19 minutes ago I was blind, but now I see
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.
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...
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.
Never thought of that. Thanks Dan.
@Ama I agree with Dan that we need a paradigm shift. And I wish I could focus on the pure positive as you can. Unfortunately, the world is not as pure and not only contain the great examples Dan used in his talk. Scammers wear the same clothing as us, in fact better clothing than me!
May be the new paradigm needs to have an independent reviewer or something. I am convinced by Dan that there are problems, I am less convinced with how best to solve the problems. May be with additional oversights?
Wonderful. Great talk. Many great points made. Thank you :)
The problem is the idea that philanthropy is the same for everyone. It isn't. The wealthy including businesses are supposed to give their money because that is what they have plenty of. Most people should not be asked for or expected to give money to charity. For most people care is shown by sharing the recourses they have and have to use for themselves anyway: inviting someone to your home to share its heat so they can leave their home unheated that day and then return the favour another day; swapping home-grown produce with neighbours; inviting people to dinner where company and sense of community means people don't feel lonely and can survive on less food because they get more love. There are so many ways that people can be there fore each other, but charity has been depersonalised and made into a business. When wealthy people spend lots of money on charity dinners for fund raising, that's fine, they would be going to dinner anyway, they're not actually giving anything up. When the average person is asked to give the money they would have spent on going out for dinner to someone else because they are going hungry, that isn't fair. We do need to rethink our attitudes to charity. We need to look at the fact that most charities should not be charities in the first place but are actually social injustice and that giving financially is for those who have plenty of finances.
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!
Amazing Talk! Share this with everyone you know!
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 !
Thanks Dan,
I'm using this in my Social Welfare Services Course at Benedictine University in Springfield IL for students seeking Psychology and Sociology Degree.
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!
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.
A great Ted talk and I agree some changes do need to be made in the charitable sector and the way society thinks about charitable donating.
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.
This is amazingly powerful!
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.
Thank you! Really clear point on the so far overlooked or downplayed importance of overhead costs in non profit organisations, I truly support the message that investment in overhead is just as important as the direct service delivery since both are indispensible for it. I am a little surprised however that there is no mentioning on the government's role at the beginning when talking about "stuck" in social problems such as poverty for many years. While this might go beyond the time frame of this video, not mentioning the government's role in tackling social problems sounds like leaving a central player out of the game.
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.
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 true when successful but money can be thrown in high salaries and advertisers of "my friend-relative" company as I saw in many ONG's
A lot of nepotism here.
How do you expect to get the best people if you don't want to pay them competitive rate compare to the market?
@@TideasOfficial is it really the best people you are getting though? Since when have the best people worked at charities? In general most high paid people I’ve seen aren’t the best.
@@everything1023 well, if you just take a look at companies achieving their missions, clearly private companies have been able to do that much more than public. Google and Apple ain't #1 without a reason
@@TideasOfficial did apple always have the highest paid people? No. They started being paid nothing and then they got rich.
This is a great speech ever. Thank you Dan!
Thanks for the great words.
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
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.
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
Thank you so much. You just completly inspired me on rethinking.
The main purpose of advertising is to take away customers from other brands. So this overhead is money that *would* have otherwise gone to the needy, just a different cause.
Do you have any data that supports the truth of your premise of the main purpose of advertising being taking customers away from other places?
Advertisement can't be used to create new customers in any given market?
How do you quantify it was used for one and not the other?
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?
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
Extremely valuable information, must be shared with others.