Uncharitable · Aperio book club

By Bri Hopkins

Last month, Aperio and a group of nonprofit leaders and fundraising professionals gathered to discuss Uncharitable: How Restraints On Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential, by Dan Pallotta. With overwhelmingly positive reviews and concepts that will make you question the fundamental canons about philanthropy, Uncharitable goes where no other nonprofit book has dared to before. This book also laid the foundation for Dan’s popular Ted Talk in 2013, The Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong.    

Uncharitable examines biases in our economic system that deny the nonprofit sector crucial tools that limit its ability to thrive and grow.  Tools and practices like risk-reward incentives, profit, appropriate compensation, and freedom to use donated dollars as needed for growth are denied to non-profits but used and encouraged without restraint throughout the for-profit sector.  

These biases leave nonprofits at a considerable disadvantage on countless levels limiting their abilities to help fight for their causes. Pallotta explores the role of capitalism within the world of charity, pointing out how charity is blamed for our societal shortcomings, yet not allowed to use all the available tools to rectify them. He explains this irrational system, with its Puritan roots, and suggests how we can best change it. Dan suggests that by declaring independence from these antiquated and inherently flawed ideas we can finally make extensive progress on the most urgent social issues of our time.  

Sounds simple enough but how does one enact such a large social change?  

Change starts at the grassroots level. To see a shift in how society views the sector, Pallotta recommends these shifts:

1. Reframe how we talk about nonprofit work

Our book club participants agreed, it is time to shift the internal and external language used to talk about nonprofit work. Replace conversations of “keeping overhead low” with “let’s support capacity-building” throughout an organization. Create mission-focused metrics to measure outcomes instead of dollars spent. Internal changes such as these will encourage innovation and instill a growth mindset for staff and volunteers.   

2. Engage our boards in capacity-building

Once a nonprofit refreshes the language around their resources, it lays the groundwork to shift the mindset of the board. The role of a nonprofit board is to ensure the success of a nonprofit in carrying out its mission to the community not just this fiscal year, but for many years to come. The best way to ensure this success is by investing in strategic capacity building. Capacity building can be anything from investing in a communication strategy, volunteer recruitment, leadership development, and more. While these efforts do not directly affect the execution of the mission short-term, in the long term, it will increase the sustainability and effectiveness of the organization.  

3. Have honest conversations with donors  

With the paradigm shift of COVID-19, foundations and donors are removing the restrictions on their donations to allow financial resources to be used “where it is needed most”. This is a direct result of nonprofit fundraisers having direct conversations with their donors about the everyday needs and expenses of organizations to fulfill their missions. Imagine the possibilities and growth nonprofits could experience in serving their communities with this as a best practice?  

Uncharitable is a must-read. The book combines important, provocative, and timely insights about equal economic rights for charity, opening each reader's eyes to the fact that they were so unequal to begin with.