Imagine seeing a full page ad in the paper explaining why charities
should spend more money on overhead, and another the next day explaining
why charities should be able to lure talent away from gigantic consumer
brands with the same lucrative pay packages. A leading expert on
non-profits argues that charities will never be able to change the world
if they’re not permitted to play at the same level as big business. And
the public will never allow it unless the charitable sector starts
educating them about missed opportunities.
Dan Pallotta’s provocative new book, CHARITY CASE: How the
Nonprofit Community Can Stand Up for Itself and Really Change the World
(Jossey-Bass; e-book available: September 10, 2012) is a blueprint
for a national leadership movement that will fundamentally alter the way
the public thinks about charity. In his previous groundbreaking book, Uncharitable,
Pallotta explained how the way we’ve been taught to think about charity
is upside-down. We let the for-profit sector use the tools of capitalism
while denying non-profits those same tools. No wonder then, that the
nonprofit sector can’t move the needle on humanity’s huge social
problems. The response Pallotta received to Uncharitable was
unanimous: “How do we change this?”
CHARITY CASE is Pallotta’s answer. In the book Pallotta argues
that the humanitarian sector needs its own civil rights movement, and
lays out a plan for a new “Charity Defense Council” to lead it.
Attacking the problem on five fronts, the council will:
-
Establish an Anti-Defamation League to proactively inform the
media and make sure the community is being accurately represented;
-
Launch an aggressive paid public media campaign to cure the
public of its hallucinations about how social change gets made;
-
Enact a National Civil Rights Act for Charity and Social Enterprise
to give the sector a statutory code custom-designed to help it change
the world;
-
Establish a Legal Defense Fund to protect and fight for the
civil and constitutional rights of the humanitarian community;
-
Organize the Sector on Behalf of Its Own Issues because, while
it organizes people for all manner of other causes, the sector has
never organized itself to address the systemic issues that
fundamentally undermine it.
Grounded in Pallotta's clear vision and deep social sector experience, Charity
Case is a passionate wake-up call for all of us--whether we work in
the philanthropic sector, contribute time or money to critical causes,
or simply believe in the urgent need for more progress on social
challenges--to help fix the culture that thwarts our charities' ability
to make change happen.
Check out Dan Pallotta's YouTube Channel here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/DanPallottaChannel/videos
