Nonprofit Leadership Podcast · Dr. Rob Harter

Are You Dreaming Big Enough for Your Organization?

·42 min·2 clips

The question is not how we re-imagine philanthropy; it's what problem do I want to solve and by when?

1. The Nonprofit Leadership Podcast episode 'Are You Dreaming Big Enough for Your Organization?' tests whether nonprofits set goals large enough to solve problems like hunger and homelessness, using Dan Pallotta's critique of overhead limits and risk avoidance. 2. Host Dr. Rob Harder interviews Dan Pallotta, creator of the California AIDS Rides and breast cancer three-day events, author of 'Uncharitable,' and the speaker of a 2013 TED Talk with over 5 million views. 3. Pallotta's thesis is that fundraising is 'a byproduct of coming up with a new heroism technique,' and that nonprofits fail to inspire donors because they avoid declaring impossible goals with deadlines. 4. He traces his outlook to the Apollo program and to the Hunger Project, which set a goal of eradicating starvation by 2000, and to a 69-day, 39-person bike ride across America that preceded the AIDS rides. 5. The first California AIDS Ride aimed for 500 cyclists riding San Francisco to Los Angeles with a $2,000 minimum pledge, and Pallotta says it netted a million dollars and was never focus-grouped because 'if we had focus grouped it, we would never have done it.' 6. He points to Billy Shore's No Kid Hungry goal of ending child hunger in America by 2030 and to Social Current's pilot of three cities as rare examples of deadline-driven ambition, and argues that missing a goal can still 'honor your word' if leaders say what they learned and set a new goal. 7. He describes the Audacious Project, conceived with TED's Chris Anderson and Richard Branson, whose first gathering raised about $170-180 million in three days from roughly 10 billionaires, and says funders responded to 'the audacity of the idea' rather than organizational pedigree. 8. Pallotta says his documentary 'Uncharitable' and his books and 'bold training' are tools to change how donors see charity, and he notes that L'Oreal spends a billion dollars a year building demand for cosmetics while the sector spends nothing building demand for philanthropy. 9. He reports that the Ford Foundation, MacArthur and Open Society doubled their overhead ratios, and that USC grew from 250 to over 500 major gift officers and doubled its endowment in five years, which he says explains why higher education 'is eating the lunch' of health and human services. 10. Nonprofit executives, board members, and major donors weighing overhead and risk will find this most useful.

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