- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Tufts University (15 Jan 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1584657235
- ISBN-13: 978-1584657231
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.5 x 3.3 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 779,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Uncharitable
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Product Description
Synopsis
This is an unabashed call to free charity from its ideological and economic constraints.Uncharitable is an unorthodox call to arms, inviting us to think beyond nonprofit ideology and bring economic freedom to the causes we love. Author Dan Pallotta argues that nonprofit ideology is a religious edifice that acts as a strict regulatory mechanism on natural economic law, thereby putting the nonprofit sector at an extreme disadvantage vis-a-vis the for-profit sector. In other words, the very system long cherished as the hallmark of American compassion undermines itself. This irrational system, Pallotta explains, has its roots in 400-year-old Puritan ethics that banished self-interest from the realm of charity.Today, nonprofit ideology creates an economic apartheid that acts against charity's self-interest. While the for-profit sector is permitted to use all the tools of capitalism to advance the sale of consumer goods, the nonprofit sector is prohibited from using any of them to fight hunger or disease.Capitalism is blamed for creating the inequities in our society, but charity, by its own ideology, is prohibited from using capitalism's tools to rectify them, creating the most extreme injustice. By ridding ourselves of these obsolete ideas, Pallotta theorizes, we can dramatically accelerate progress on the most urgent social issues of our time. Pallotta has written an important, provocative, timely, and accessible book that seeks to remedy this wrong and that will forever change the way you think about "charity."
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24 reviews
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Uncharitable- A push in the right direction
19 Nov 2008
Format:Hardcover
I read Uncharitable and I LOVED IT! I am a big believer in the potential of the nonprofit sector and I also believe that there are many structural issues that impact how effective nonprofits can be at achieving their missions. Dan's premise is that human beings are innately charitable and that we have a desire to help our fellow man. Our current system of charity is the bureaucracy that we set up to fulfill that need to help one another. This system has remained unexamined because doing "good" is good enough. In this book Dan asks some key questions: Does this system work? Is it the best system we could have? What other systems are available? His vision is to set free charities and all of the people that work for them from a set of rules that were designed for another age and another purpose and begin to use the rules of free-market capitalism to supercharge the sector. Before you get all high and mighty and say that the free-market system is collapsing around us everyday and that opening up the nonprofit system to its corruption and volatility wold ruin the purity of the sector, I'd like to remind you that the sector is already influenced by the corruption of the for profit sector, as evidenced by many high profile scandals and the volatility for the free-market is what is shrinking my foundation's endowment. The nonprofit system has all of the pitfalls of a free-market system with none of the benefits (e.g tolerance for risk, investment in research and development, and competitive pay). This book is destined to start some great conversations, which are very overdue.
Trista Harris
[...]
Trista Harris
[...]
22 of 29 people found the following review helpful
A Passionate, Well-Argued, Fascinating Analysis of the World of Charity
14 Dec 2008
Format:Hardcover
Because I read a lot of books and articles on charity and philanthropy, I assumed this would be yet one more dull, earnest, attempt to improve the world of charitable giving, blah, blah, blah.
To my great surprise, upon reading it I find instead of earnest well-intentioned gobbeldy-gook - BOOM!!!! Gay AIDS activist meets Ayn Rand, with all the moral passion and intelligence of both. Dan is someone who has seen countless friends die and committed his life to helping to find a cure for AIDS, raising over half a billion in charitable contributions in nine years, only to discover that the philosophical constraints on non-profits and conventional attitudes towards charity and philanthropy shackled his efforts and prevented him from doing more. And then instead of simply walking away bitterly after these forces destroy his organization in 2002, he sublimates his passion into a brilliant analysis of how our existing paradigm of charitable giving and non-profit structure is itself the problem.
Dan had built a highly successful for-profit company that organized three day walks for breast cancer and multi-day bicycle riding events that were focused on fund-raising. His company raised more than half a billion dollars and netted more than $300 million dollars in unrestricted funds for AIDS and breast-cancer charities, as Dan says, "more money, raised more quickly, for these causes than any private event operation had raised in history." After his company collapsed, in part because of a breach of contract by the Avon Products Foundation after the controversies associated with his for-profit business model came to the fore, subsequent non-profit events based on the same model raised only a fraction of the amount his company had been raising. For instance, in 2002 Pallotta Teamworks raised $142.6 million for the breast cancer cause. The very next year, when Avon decided to try producing similar events on their own (in violation of their contract with his company), their events raised only $28.5 million and after four years they had only brought that up to $48.7 million - and yet Pallotta Teamworks had been criticized for operating as a for-profit; not focusing enough on the cause! Somehow it was more legitimate for a for-profit corporation's nonprofit arm - Avon - to raise less money for the cause simply because of our collective bigotries against capitalism.
Palotta's book brilliantly integrates personal anecdote as a social entrepreneur, data-driven analysis of the weaknesses of the non-profit model, and deep insights into the fundamental guilt psychology of our existing models of charity. Give "Uncharitable" to someone for Christmas this year, a highly original gift that keeps on giving.
To my great surprise, upon reading it I find instead of earnest well-intentioned gobbeldy-gook - BOOM!!!! Gay AIDS activist meets Ayn Rand, with all the moral passion and intelligence of both. Dan is someone who has seen countless friends die and committed his life to helping to find a cure for AIDS, raising over half a billion in charitable contributions in nine years, only to discover that the philosophical constraints on non-profits and conventional attitudes towards charity and philanthropy shackled his efforts and prevented him from doing more. And then instead of simply walking away bitterly after these forces destroy his organization in 2002, he sublimates his passion into a brilliant analysis of how our existing paradigm of charitable giving and non-profit structure is itself the problem.
Dan had built a highly successful for-profit company that organized three day walks for breast cancer and multi-day bicycle riding events that were focused on fund-raising. His company raised more than half a billion dollars and netted more than $300 million dollars in unrestricted funds for AIDS and breast-cancer charities, as Dan says, "more money, raised more quickly, for these causes than any private event operation had raised in history." After his company collapsed, in part because of a breach of contract by the Avon Products Foundation after the controversies associated with his for-profit business model came to the fore, subsequent non-profit events based on the same model raised only a fraction of the amount his company had been raising. For instance, in 2002 Pallotta Teamworks raised $142.6 million for the breast cancer cause. The very next year, when Avon decided to try producing similar events on their own (in violation of their contract with his company), their events raised only $28.5 million and after four years they had only brought that up to $48.7 million - and yet Pallotta Teamworks had been criticized for operating as a for-profit; not focusing enough on the cause! Somehow it was more legitimate for a for-profit corporation's nonprofit arm - Avon - to raise less money for the cause simply because of our collective bigotries against capitalism.
Palotta's book brilliantly integrates personal anecdote as a social entrepreneur, data-driven analysis of the weaknesses of the non-profit model, and deep insights into the fundamental guilt psychology of our existing models of charity. Give "Uncharitable" to someone for Christmas this year, a highly original gift that keeps on giving.
24 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Narrow focus, fails to address real ideas and issues
9 Jan 2009
Format:Hardcover
What is new in Dan Pallotta's book is not really important, and what is important, isn't really new. Mr. Pallotta's main reason for writing the book is to expose what he feels were unfair critiques of his commercial fund raising company. His rendition of his company's experience provides the only real new information in the book. But that is a narrow focus, and has little value for most volunteers, staffs, and suppoters of charitable causes.
The important issues he covers include questions such as can nonprofits take risks and does a fixation on "overhead" costs prevent the nonprofits from rewarding talent? But he offers little to the discussion because he fails to distinguish between his experience, running a commercial fund raising company, and an actual charity.
I agree with the sentiment he uses as a chapter heading: Let's stop asking this question. His arguement is that when we focus on asking charities how much goes to program versus overhead we fail to look at other important indicators. Low overhead does not mean the organization provides good services.
But that applies to asking the question of charities. The question is still appropriate, even mandatory, to ask of a commercial fund raising firm.
Another example is his observation about charities being afraid to take risks. But does he follow this up with a discussion of charity taking a hard look at how it provides services or bravely underwritting the costs of bringing services to an underserved community? No; his example is the "risk" his organization took in trying innovative fund raising events. Yet a full reading seems to indicate that the cost of the risk really fell to the charitable recipient of the event proceeds. Mr. Pallotta's example of a risk that failed is when an event yielded only 20% to 30% to the charity because it failed to gain enough participants. I may be jumping to conclusions, but my reading seems to indicate that Dan Pallotta and his firm still met their costs.
The best part of the book is the case study of Mr. Pallotta's firm which is included. It sheds some light both on the positive and negative aspects of the large scale events that his firm produced.
The important issues he covers include questions such as can nonprofits take risks and does a fixation on "overhead" costs prevent the nonprofits from rewarding talent? But he offers little to the discussion because he fails to distinguish between his experience, running a commercial fund raising company, and an actual charity.
I agree with the sentiment he uses as a chapter heading: Let's stop asking this question. His arguement is that when we focus on asking charities how much goes to program versus overhead we fail to look at other important indicators. Low overhead does not mean the organization provides good services.
But that applies to asking the question of charities. The question is still appropriate, even mandatory, to ask of a commercial fund raising firm.
Another example is his observation about charities being afraid to take risks. But does he follow this up with a discussion of charity taking a hard look at how it provides services or bravely underwritting the costs of bringing services to an underserved community? No; his example is the "risk" his organization took in trying innovative fund raising events. Yet a full reading seems to indicate that the cost of the risk really fell to the charitable recipient of the event proceeds. Mr. Pallotta's example of a risk that failed is when an event yielded only 20% to 30% to the charity because it failed to gain enough participants. I may be jumping to conclusions, but my reading seems to indicate that Dan Pallotta and his firm still met their costs.
The best part of the book is the case study of Mr. Pallotta's firm which is included. It sheds some light both on the positive and negative aspects of the large scale events that his firm produced.
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