- October 22, 2018
- Posted by: The Partners
- Category: Philanthropy Counts
Published August 14, 2013
What is the Scale of Your Dreams?
When you prohibit failure, you kill innovation.
Everyone is talking about Dan Pallotta. You can catch him on TED. Here’s what he says.
“The next time you’re looking at a charity, don’t ask about the rate of their overhead. Ask about the scale of their dreams.”
He also tells us that you do not want your organization’s epitaph to read, “We kept our organization’s overhead low.” You want it to read that you changed the world.
“When you prohibit failure, you kill innovation. If you kill innovation in fundraising, you won’t raise more revenue. If you can’t raise more revenue, you can’t grow. And if you can’t grow, you can’t possibly solve large social problems.”
He also comes on strong about the need to pay our nonprofit staff more.
“We have a negative reaction to the idea that anyone would make very much money [in a nonprofit] helping other people. Interesting that we don’t have a visceral reaction to the notion that people can make a lot of money not helping other people.”
He says we praise and pay homage to those who do extremely well financially in the corporate or finance world. We disdain and criticize those in the nonprofit world who make a decent salary.
If you wish to see the entire TED Talk, you can do so on YouTube here or click on photo.
—Jerry