Dan Pallotta: Changing our "charity" mindset

Ask a child, ask your partner, ask a person on the street – “what does philanthropy mean to you?”. The first 90 seconds of this YouTube video is good for a chuckle as people struggle to answer this question. But here’s the thing, the next four minutes of the video shows donors talking about how philanthropy is a way they change the world and save the world – how it’s their purpose in life.

But ask the average person on the street what the #1 concern they have with a charity's effectiveness is? Time after time they respond: Overhead. Donors couldn't affect social impact without the organizations that turn their money into action. These organizations are made up of people. These people matter. Don’t they? Shouldn’t they be seen as more than a necessary evil in the pursuit of great causes?

Often a charity’s own board and advisors plays a part in creating a culture of scarcity that aids in the glorification of 0% overhead. Just this fall my own CEO at CanadaHelps published in the Huffington Post on this very topic. But we need more partners speaking loudly and publicly if we are going to change opinions. 

Enter Dan Pallotta. He has written two ground-breaking books that address
this subject. Uncharitable and Charity Case have re-written the conversation on
this topic. Dan’s latest endeavour is to create the Charity Defense Council in support of the charitable sector. It’s inspiring, but what can
we do here in Canada?

I caught up with Dan last year, in town to give a private talk to the accounting giant KPMG in a huge room at the Royal York Hotel. This wasn’t the usual fundraising talk, what the heck could he be saying to an accounting firm about fundraising and the business of philanthropy?! His answer was powerful: “I’m here to ask for help changing the very basis of what we value when we talk about charity. Corporate Social Responsibility today is table-stakes now, ‘do a damn good job at an ethical price'. They’re doing that already, the accounting firms already serve the 10+ billion dollar charitable sector in Canada well. But they have the chance to influence the shift from CSR to CSO.” CSO?! 

A new paradigm for the charitable sector: Corporate Social Opportunity.

What if the accountants, lawyers and financial advisors who guide both charities
and donors could encourage a focus on opportunity and not overhead? What if we could change the conversation from using scarcity terms like “non-profit,” to having a sector that inspires investment for “social-profit” and encourages our partners to donate so that we can innovate and not just slap band-aids on the world’s problems? This is a whole new cultural battle, one we need to spark now.

Many of you know that last year I joined the team at CanadaHelps, leaving the donor-advised world of banking in a tall-tower to serve almost 16,000 small to medium-sized charities who are fundraising at the grassroots level of the philanthropic spectrum. It’s an honour to serve them but a frustration to see these courageous teams of volunteers, or one lone Executive Director fundraising for a noble cause but limited in their capacity by boards, donors and even volunteers who are trapped in a mindset of scarcity.

Without the help of the legal and financial ecosystem of accounting and
governance we’ll never be able to create a culture of innovation and investment.
We need to go beyond the ranks of our associations, this is about tectonic change in how we talk about "charity". And Dan is on the forefront of this conversation. This year he has been all over Canada speaking to financial firms, chambers of commerce and non-charity-world bodies of influence to seed this vital idea in their minds.

I just want to thank Dan for being one of these public voices and  a personal champion for the sector. Most of all, for introducing ideas and working on solutions to one of our biggest problems. 

And of course, if you haven't seen Dan's TED talk below ( the most-watched talk in the history of TED on the topic of philanthropy ) it is a must-watch. 

Thanks for reading, Paul.