Wrong Thinking about Charity. Dan Pallotta hits the nail on the head with this provocative talk. Around 1994 I introduced a Marketing Plan to the board of directors of a nonprofit I worked with. It called for modest expense and would grow marketing revenue from $3 million to $20 million over five years. After my presentation, you’d have thought I’d just pissed on the table! First, the reaction to the “M” word, marketing—that’s what unethical corporations do, not us pure nonprofits… and so it went.
We came back, got permission, beat those projections and eventually grew marketing revenue to $90 million. The board (God bless ’em!) even granted the CEO permission for a few years to let our overhead ratio (the percent spent on fund raising and management) move from 25 percent up to 30 so we were able to grow more quickly.
Charity “watchdogs” give high ratings to groups that move used clothes and unwanted food or medicines from giant companies (read tax breaks) to the poor (whether or not they needed Pop Tarts). But slogging it out in sustainable development to actually help a family become self reliant was seen as less effective. Standards do help watch out for the charlatans but… Pallotta presents fresh alternatives.
More Writing Help. Because we all need to communicate more. I found helpful Kivi Leroux Miller’s: 14 Tips from Writing Faster. And the best writing advice you will receive all year, from Aerogramme Writers’ Studio, comes by zombies in the form of a tweet.
The Bio. Finally, from 99U, Behance, read The Resume is Dead, the Bio is King.
An idea without action is like a bow without an arrow. —Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you see something to shared with others on Nonprofit Helps, please pass it on: tom@thunderheadworks.com
No comments yet.