Summary: On this week's show, I speak with nonprofit sector innovator and author Dan Pallotta (http://www.danpallotta.com)who is challenging Americans' long-held beliefs about charities that he says constrain nonprofits from solving the problems of the world. Pallotta invented the multi-day AIDSRides and Breast Cancer 3-Days Walks, fundraisers that have gone on for so long now that we forget there was a time they didn’t exist. In the nine years his for-profit company ran these events, $581 million was raised, netting $305 million for those causes. Then critics began yelling about his company’s 40% administrative costs and participating charities reacted; they stopped working with his company and he had to close it down. The negative reaction to the administrative expenses despite the wild success of the fundraising events shocked Pallotta: What is it that would make nonprofit leaders, their boards and the public attack the success of raising $305 million over nine years to fight AIDS and breast cancer? His search for an answer formed the basis of his paradigm-busting book, Uncharitable: How Restraints On Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential (http://www.uncharitable.net/). Pallotta is now Founder and Chief Humanity Officer of Advertising for Humanity (http://advertisingforhumanity.com/), and he's the founder and president of the Charity Defense Council. He also blogs for the Harvard Business Review. Don't miss this candid, thought-provoking interview.
