Dan Pallotta is the founder of Pallotta TeamWorks, which created the multi-day, four-figure pledge minimum charitable fundraising event category.
The company invented the AIDSRides, the AIDS Vaccine Rides, the African AIDS Trek, the original Breast Cancer 3-Day walks, and the original Out of the Darkness suicide prevention overnight event. These events grossed $556 million in donor contributions and netted $305 million for charity after all expenses in nine years – more money, raised more quickly for these causes than any known private event operation in history. The company also drew its share of vocal critics who took issue with the for-profit company’s marriage of compassion and capitalism at a time before notions like “venture philanthropy” and “creative capitalism” were in vogue.
More than 182,000 people walked or rode in one of Pallotta TeamWorks’ events. The company was the subject of a 2002 Harvard Business School case study. Pallotta TeamWorks’ ideas and methods have been been adopted by dozens of other events, charities, and event production companies in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, which now raise tens of millions of dollars each year for important causes.
By asking people to do the most they could do instead of the least, Pallotta TeamWorks championed a new paradigm for citizen activism on important charitable causes and charitable event fundraising itself. The company created multi-day event concepts that challenged participants to journey long distances for multiple days on end in the name of causes they cared about deeply, married this challenge to an equally daunting challenge to raise a mandatory minimum of four-figures (i.e., $1,200, $2,500, etc.) in order to participate, and marketed these offerings using consumer brand practices that had not previously been the custom of charitable events.
The company had approximately 350 full-time employees in sixteen offices around the nation at its peak in 2002 before its untimely demise that year, the details of which appear in the case study at the end of Uncharitable. That year alone, the company’s events raised $161 million and netted $81.9 million for a variety of causes. This was more than the giving of the General Motors and Coca-Cola Foundations combined, and more than half the annual giving of the Rockefeller Foundation.
Dan graduated from Harvard University in 1983 and was Chair of the Harvard Hunger Action Committee. His own journey in creating these life-changing mega-fundraising events began there, where he created Ride for Life – a transcontinental bike ride in which he and 38 of his classmates rode 4,256 miles from Seattle to Boston to raise money and awareness for Oxfam-America.
Dan was one of the youngest members ever elected to the School Committee in Melrose, Massachusetts. In addition to Uncharitable, Dan is the author of When Your Moment Comes (Jodere, 2001). He has been awarded the Creative Vision Award by the Liberty Hill Foundation (1998), the International Citizen of the Year Award by Albany State University (2008) and the Humanitarian of the Year Award by Triangle (2006).
Dan lives in Los Angeles with his partner and their three children.
About the Author
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TEAMWORKS WEBSITE, WHERE
YOU CAN VIEW INSPIRING VIDEO
FOOTAGE AND DETAILED
FINANCIAL RESULTS.
DAN PALLOTTA IS PRESIDENT OF SPRINGBOARD, A LEADING COMMUNICATIONS AND BRAND DESIGN FIRM FOR THE SOCIAL BENEFIT AND NON-PROFIT SECTORS.