In a recent TED talk, Dan Pallotta discusses how our aversion to high overhead makes it difficult for nonprofits to fulfill their missions. He argues that because we judge the success of nonprofits by how little money they spend, we place imitations on how organizations can recruit talent, spread the word about their work, scale their impact, and ultimately solve the social issues they were created to address.
What do you think? Should nonprofits have more room to raise money and spend money on overhead? Do you think salaries and other forms of compensation would improve?
Along the same lines as the Pallotta talk, check out this 1-minute, 40-second video, “If We Want Our Funding to Change the World…” at http://youtu.be/z_w3v6TxJZQ. My organization, Donors Forum, released it last week as part of a project called “Real Talk About Real Costs.”
If you want to receive occasional updates on the project, and be part of the movement to promote “real talk,” you can sign up for occasional emails athttp://eepurl.com/wH2nT
And also check out this page http://donorsforum.typepad.com/realcosts/2013/01/suggested-reading.html, which has lots of resources on measuring impact, nonprofit overhead, nonprofit finances, and effective grantseeking and grantmaking.
Please help spread this message by forwarding this to your networks — thanks!