Dan Pallotta: November 2008 Archives

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Welcome to Uncharitable.net

Welcome to uncharitable.net, the official blog and discussion site for my new book. Ultimately, I wrote Uncharitable for the benefit of all of the suffering people in this world who look to charity and the nonprofit sector for  light, hope and solutions. I wrote it to fundamentally alter the way the public thinks about charity and causes in general. But first, I wrote it for all those people who toil in the nonprofit sector, day-in and day-out, under the yoke of oppressive and irrational economic restraints and a deprivation mentality that denies them the resources and operating freedom to engage their most daring dreams. I hope I wrote it for you. I wrote it for all the times you've had an amazing idea and were told, "the board will never go for it," or "it will raise our overhead too much," or, "nonprofits can't afford that kind of thing." I wrote it for every enthusiasm you've had that's been deflated by an excess of caution. I wrote it for every bright-eyed kid who wanted to work for a charity, but had to go into the corporate world because they couldn't afford the pauper's salary that was the most the charity would dare to pay them.  

This is a book for nonprofit staff and management, for visionary board members, for visionary donors, for volunteers, and everyone else who is tired of a set of rules that keeps us from our true potential to change the world on a massive scale - and I believe that is our true potential.

I also wrote Uncharitable for those who may not feel that the system is entirely dysfunctional; who think it works well, or recognize some dysfunction but feel it works fine overall, to demonstrate that perhaps there is a paradigm that would not just work well, but spectacularly. Perhaps there is a system that could allow us to meet not just our operating goals, but rise up to the scale of the great social problems that confront us, and meet the larger needs of the world.

I wrote Uncharitable because there was a need to codify, between the covers of one simple book, all of the arguments for the economic liberation of the sector, and all of the arguments against the hopelessly flawed "efficiency" measures by which it is judged. I wrote it to give people a tool that can persuade board members and major donors that there is another way, a more rational way, a more productive way, and, ultimately, a more visionary morality than the suffocating "ethic" of low overhead and high short-term "efficiency," which comes at the expense of real vision and real progress - which means it is really no ethic at all. I wrote it to provide the intellectual artillery to advocate, inside our own organizations, for all of the same economic liberties we give so freely -  and without question - to the for-profit sector.

I hope this site will become a rich gathering place for all those people inside and outside the sector who are serious about changing the world, and who realize that, in order to do that, we must first transcend the very system we have been using to create change in the first place.


I HOPE YOU'LL COMMENT FREQUENTLY ON OUR POSTS. SIMPLY CLICK THE COMMENTS BUTTON BELOW, THEN SIGN-UP FOR FREE WITH YOUR NAME AND E-MAIL, AND YOU'LL BE SET TO GO.