Charity Case: How the Nonprofit Community Can Stand Up For Itself and Really Change the World

by Dan Pallotta

A blueprint for a national leadership movement to transform the way the public thinks about giving
Virtually everything our society has been taught about charity is backwards. We deny the social sector the ability to grow because of our short-sighted demand that it send every short-term dollar into direct services. Yet if the sector cannot grow, it can never match the scale of our great social problems. In the face of this dilemma, the sector has remained silent, defenseless, and disorganized. In Charity Case, Pallotta proposes a visionary a Charity Defense Council to re-educate the public and give charities the freedom they need to solve our most pressing social issues.
Grounded in Pallotta’s clear vision and deep social sector experience, Charity Case is a fascinating wake-up call for fixing the culture that thwarts our charities’ ability to change the world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Professional Development, Reference, Society, Social Justice, Economics

256 pages, Hardcover

First published July 20, 2012

About the author

Dan Pallotta (born 1961) is an American entrepreneur, author, and humanitarian activist.

Reviews

[Anu Khosla · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really important book. I won't say that he got every single thing correct, but nonetheless this is a book you have to read. If you've ever worked at a non-profit, read this. If you've ever donated money, read this. If you've ever refused to donate money out of claims of "inefficiency", then definitely read this.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Our society has bent to the belief that charitable organizations can be fairly evaluated by the percentage of donations that end up in the hands of the intended recipients. While seemingly valid as an approach Charity Case makes a compelling argument that this is both unreasonable and inaccurate.

We want charities to be run, "like a business" but we don't allow them the tools to do that which we ask. We don't want them to spend money on overhead so we force charities to eliminate appropriate advertising and fundraising activities (typical overhead expenses) that will grow the organizations and allow them to serve a greater population. Overhead is equated with waste and nothing could be further from the truth.

Charity Case suggests that typical overhead expenses are necessary to run an organization well. In charitable organizations spending needs to be accepted and done to educate the public about what they do and how they do it, hire qualified people to manage growth and broad efforts, raise additional funds through various means, (those breast cancer walk-a-thons don't happen by themselves) and expand so that a greater number of people can be served.

It opened my eyes not only to the problem, but to solutions.

[Rhoda Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short book taught me a lot about the nonprofit sector of our society and the challenges it faces. The author points out that it’s the only sector that begins with a negative name, thus apologizing for itself before it even starts. He says we think about charities in the context of suspicion and are using a criminal justice lens to view good, hard-working people trying to tackle difficult social problems. I didn’t totally grasp some of the legal language, but I like the idea of reframing the humanitarian sector as the “social profit” sector and hiring highly skilled people to lead these organizations with the potential to earn as much as CEOs in the for-profit sector if they are successfully meeting their goals in tackling problems like poverty, child abuse, etc.
I appreciate his goal of getting the public to adopt a new way of thinking about giving.

[Elizabeth]

As heard on the TED Radio Hour.

[CTEP]

This month I read Charity Case by Dan Pallotta. This book is in some ways part two of Uncharitable, which I read last month. Uncharitable is all about the problem: limitations on nonprofits imposed by themselves and society at large. Uncharitable is a largely negative work in the sense that it focuses on describing, exploring, and explaining a problem. Charity Case, on the other hand, is a positive work. Given the already established problem, Pallotta here explores what we can do about. He covers several different topics including legislative action, use of advertising, organization of resources, etc. and cites numerous examples in each situation of how we may advance humanitarian causes through different means.

Charity Case is a bit farther removed from my immediate experience as a CTEP because many of the changes he yearns for operate on a higher level than the plain experiencing of them, but still it's important to read both because together they make a stronger statement regarding the operation of nonprofits. One subject I've found myself particularly interested in is that of advertising. In Charity Case, Pallotta examines successful cases of advertising in the corporate world and questions how these ideas might be applied to our sector. He brings up, for example, the Got Milk campaign that completely turned milk sales around and gained larger success than anyone ever imagined. It was a special combination of creativity, resources, and more that led to this great success, but nonprofits often don't have access to such opportunity or otherwise don't prioritize it. Recently, I overheard a participant wrongly name Waite House as a different employment center over the phone. Waite House does a wonderful job of providing services, but we don't always do a good job of commanding attention for that work. I've come to adopt working to resolve this as goal of mine over the next year through some basic advertising work.I don't except to create a campaign making us wildly famous, but at the same time I don't want more participants to make the same slip up, and so I have already begun efforts to solidify just who we are to outsiders, designing documents, signs, and displays with our logo and colors displayed prominently.

I definitely recommend reading this work just as much as Uncharitable. I know that many CTEPs intend to stay in the field for a long while, and its in the interest of all of us who want to do so to inform ourselves about what that means. That means not only understanding the limitations we may face for that choice, but also the approaches to working on those limitations. CTEPs work on both direct service and capacity building because you can't build capacity without someone to execute it, but neither can you work on the front lines without support. Support doesn't simply mean making new classes, new curricula, and new tools for direct service, however. It also means exploring new and better ways of doing things and approaching problems. It means building capacity for the capacity builders so to speak, and that's something that all of us who intend on sticking around should be thinking about.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who works in the social profit sector and constantly hears comparisons to the regular business sector (a la 'Why don't you do it this way?' by people who have no idea how social profit works and doesn't understand why we don't do it that way), Charity Case was a breath of fresh air. Pallotta does a basic overview of the problems of the social profit sector, dissects these problems, supports his statements with facts and research, and proposes solutions to those problems based on strategies that have already worked for other groups (such as the GLADD and the Anti Defamation League for the LGBT+ and Jewish communities, respectively) or for the regular business sector. I have already recommended it to several coworkers and have forwarded them information about the Charity Defense Council, a social profit that Pallotta founded both in response to and as an example of the statements and suggestions in his book. Charity Case should be required reading for anyone working in the social profit sector, anyone who wants to work in the social profit sector, and anyone interested in donating to social profit organizations. I can only hope that the sector-wide behavioral interventions proposed do actually become widespread and well-supported, because we - every single charity and every single person who has ever depended on a charity for information or assistance - need them.

[Babs Bradhurst · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not familiar with Pallotta's other work, so I read this book as a stand-alone piece. I was really excited about it, and pretty let down in the end.
The author makes some great points about the problems facing the humanitarian sector. But I don't agree with his solution. He suggests one national organization with several arms to combat multiple facets of problems. I disagree with this approach. Very large organizations attempting to represent a very large swath of people can never represent them entirely. There are large national organizations that should be representing my particular interests, but they don't (and I don't contribute to them) because they too often miss the mark.
This reads like a "please donate to my cause" book rather than a solutions book. The swell of grassroots movement has proven successful, and this book would have been significantly more successful if the author had focused on what YOU and YOUR ORGANIZATION can do to help the cause. Even in his chapter on "what you can do" every solution offered centered around getting involved with his organization.
I gave this book the third star because there were some good ideas in the book, but surprisingly most of them came from OTHER people, which he presents in Chapter 5.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Years ago, I read Dan Pallotta's book, Uncharitable. If you want to understand what's holding back the nonprofit sector, read that book.

Charity Case is the follow-up. Pallotta makes an impassioned and logical argument for how to make strong improvements in the nonprofit sector that makes understanding the issues accessible to those outside the sector. To some, his arguments may seem controversial. But he quickly disarms many well intentioned but misguided notions. (Especially related to politicians and policy).

If you are an aspiring nonprofit professional (social sector, etc), I encourage reading Pallotta's books. They will help you understand certain systemic challenges and how to move the sector forward.

[Zachary Matheson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I was expecting something more like Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential, the author's first book that I didn't know existed until now. Nevertheless, this book was sufficient to convince me that overhead and fundraising to program ratios are not good ways to measure the quality or effectiveness of a charity. Aside from that, I skimmed a lot of stuff that wasn't relevant to me since I don't work in the non-profit sector, but I imagine this would be an interesting and exciting book for people who do.

[Marcelo Ber · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not to useful for readers living abroad of the US (like me). Useful anyway, specially the first 2/3 chapters

[Raine McLeod · Rating 3 out of 5]

This actually changed my perspective on compensation for executives at non-profits. I'm only disappointed that it was specifically about the American NPO and not entirely applicable to Canada.

[Scott Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pallotta’s passion comes through in this manifesto, and yet it’s a dry read. His language is too elevated for the general audiences that need to hear and understand his message.

[Jim Huggler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking! Every board member needs to read this book.

[Jenna Shields · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the ideas in this book, but found it to be a little too abstract for me personally. I needed more tangible takeaways to apply to an individual non-profit, not just improvements for the non-profit industry as a whole.

I’d recommend anyone watch the TedTalk “The Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong” by Dan Pallotta, which covers all the big ideas in this book. I simply thought I’d get more tangible takeaways by reading the book, not just a long explanation of the problematic ways common belief systems keeps non-profits constrained.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is full of great research, ideas, and optimism about the nonprofit sector. Americans restrict the humanitarian sector's ability to enact real impact on the people it serves. In Charity Case, Dan Pallotta lays out how and why they do this and what we can do to change it.

This book is more geared towards those who work in the nonprofit sector. While I have only read the description of his first book, Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine their Potential, and listened to the TED talk that summarizes that book's ideas, I think Uncharitable would be more applicable to the regular donor. While Charity Case is informative, it is also repetitive and detailed. In the later chapters, it gets bogged down by technical legal and economic terms that might be alienating to a reader not versed in nonprofit and for-profit management. But overall, I found Uncharitable energizing and hopeful about educating the American public on how to best regulate and invest in the humanitarian sector to create real change.

[Polo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh, good but kind of a rant w/narrow scope of view to solve problems. Heckles nonprofits more than inspires them to change. Seems very white man's burden (except businessman's burden) toward the nonprofit industry instead of getting in the trenches and helping to lead the charge to change one another. While the idea of a charity defense league (a group to throw around pro-nonprofit ads and lawsuits and fight against those who unfairly smear nonprofits) has some merits, I'm always skeptical of "let's force people to change their minds with money and ad spend and political armwrestling!" approach, especially vs. the "let's change ourselves and make our cause so remarkable they can't help joining." We can do both, certainly, but the latter camp sounds more like the folks I'd like to spend time with.

The TED talk is excellent, however: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta...

[Lance Eaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pallotta's book is essential for anyone working in the nonprofit sector. He turns long-held beliefs and prejudices about how nonprofits should function and turns them on their heads. For a sneak preview, definitely check out his Ted Talk on charity work. Essentially, he explores issues the dreaded term, "overhead" and why there is a framing battle that nonprofits are losing (emphasizing that by using the term "nonprofit" and the ways that is understood). Pallotta points out that we lock nonprofits into situations in which they become limited to scale and make the impact that we hope they want to. However, Pallotta also shows a variety of ways that the system can be fixed.

[Tito Jankowski]

I've never read a book about charities, even though I helped start one or two. This gave me a lot of good insights, and I found myself gritting my teeth at the continual stories about charities being attacked because they didn't have the resources or funds to defend themselves. The book was really targeted towards a specific action that Pallotta wanted to take - create a 3rd party charity defense fund and organization. As someone new to the field, I found these arguments a bit repetitive, but overall it was encouraging that he had a clear proposal for the future.

[Ozzie Gooen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The entire book seems to rest on one main argument: that the charity sector "needs" one shared marketing organization to educate the public. Dan makes a decent case, but I felt like the title made it seem more comprehensive. This is one fairly specific section of the entire span of all necessary activities to make the field efficient. It is a good one, but it's quite simple, and much of the book seems to be made as an argument to the few people who could make that happen.

[Poppy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Palotta provides an overview of his theory on the behaviors and beliefs that run deep with our society regarding nonprofits keeping humanitarian causes from being effective in alleviating the suffering of the less advantaged. This book lays out his vision for changing the way nonprofits in the U.S. function and the way they perceived by the public. His ideas are fresh and insightful.

[Shirley]

Dan Pallota makes the case for treating nonprofits as socially beneficial businesses, focusing on the effectiveness of results delivered, rather than on the overhead to service delivery cost ratios within the organization.

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was so crazy about Uncharitable that I don't think there was any way this book could have met the incredibly high expectations I had for it. Still an important work and worth the read, however.

[David Meyers · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I think that the points that Pallotta makes are important and need to be addressed for the nonprofit sector to be successful, the solutions presented did not draw me in.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

First half was very interesting, but it goes a little too deep into legal and legislation matters and I started to lose interest.

[Sameer Mawani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good book - interesting to open your eyes and see how great a charity can do if it operated like a business.