Latest / We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits / 470. UnCharitable: Unthink Everything You Know About Change - Dan Pallotta

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470. UnCharitable: Unthink Everything You Know About Change - Dan Pallotta · We Are For Good Podcast - The Podcast for Nonprofits

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm John.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: And I'm Becky.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: And this is the we Are For Good podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: So welcome to the Good Community.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropists, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: So let's get started.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Becky, the day is here.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: The day is here and the conversation is here.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I will say this may be one of the most important conversations we have this season, and the man is in the house today.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: He is in the house and let me be clear we talk about impact uprising every day around.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: We Are For Good, but this is a conversation that the impact uprising is not just in the nonprofit sector.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: This is a conversation to fuel the national, the worldwide conversation about charity.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: And we have none other than Dan Pallada with us today.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: He is a second time guest on the podcast and you probably know him and I remember him.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: I remember the way I feel the first time I watched his TED talk.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: That really defined the conversation of so many of the things that keep us up at night from the overhead myth to just how we think in such a scarce way in the nonprofit sector.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: And we're here because Dan has finally released Uncharitable, which is this film that is really going to help shape the conversation, hopefully give us all the language, the tools to point to a better way to talk about our work.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: But if you don't know Dan, I want to encourage you to go back and listen to episode 115.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: He shared a little bit of his backstory, so we're going to jump in today with where we're at today.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: But Dan is this entrepreneur, he's author, he's a humanitarian activist and probably best known originally for these charitable events that have raised more than billions of dollars into the sector and the frameworks that he used to do that.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: But this impactful TED talk that really changed the way Becky and I thought about our work is now being translated into a movie, and it's.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: This documentary is out now, and we want to encourage you to go see it and to get people into the theater.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: It's directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal and it really exposes the dark side of philanthropy and introduces a radical new way of giving, and so, with sincere honor, it is so good to have you back in the house, dan.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the we Are For Good podcast.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: Thanks, John and Becky.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: It's wonderful to be back with you.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: Your enthusiasm and passion is infectious.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: You know we've heard a little bit about your story, but what's happened to bring this movie to market right now?
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Like talk to us about from the TED talk to this moment.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: What was that journey like and tell us about why, now more than ever, it's so important.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah Well, let's talk first about why, now more than ever, it's more important.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: You know, buckminster Fuller had this great vision that he articulated, in which he said it's now possible to create a world that works for everyone, with no one and nothing left out.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: It was very specific, right?
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: It's one thing to say a world that works for everyone there's a lot of wiggle room there but the added with no one and nothing left out.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: If we want a world that works for almost everyone, we don't really need the nonprofit sector.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: Business will get us there.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: You know it'll get us 85% of the way there.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: And, yeah, you'll have 15% poverty in every developed country, like we do in the US, and you'll have 15% illiteracy rates.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: And you know you'll have an unacceptable, you know marginal infant mortality rate.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: But you know 85% of the people will be doing all right.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: I don't think that's the world any of us wants, right?
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: I think the whole idea of philanthropy, love of humanity, is every man, every woman, everyone.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: And if you want that, then you need the nonprofit sector.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: Because after you get to that sort of point of you know the market economy lifts up 85% of all boats, the market economy gets stuck at that point.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: It doesn't have any more answers because there's nothing left to monetize.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: How do you monetize the prevention of a suicide in a person who may suffer from mental illness and may never be a productive member of society in the way that we traditionally think of that, yet none of us wants that person to commit suicide right or now, we should say, die of suicide.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: How do you monetize the love that a kid gets in Special Olympics, but we all want that kid to get that love in Special Olympics.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: How do you monetize the feeling of friendship and companionship that a shut-in elder gets from a nonprofit that provides someone to visit her or him?
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: You can't monetize that.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: Yet None of us wants that person to be alone, and so this is why I said in the TED Talk Philanthropy is the market for love, and I meant that seriously, not as like a hallmark card.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: It's the market for all those people for whom there is no other market coming, because you can monetize love.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: People want to feel love, people want to give love.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: They're willing to pay for that.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: In the same way they want to taste chocolate, in the same way they want to listen to music and other ephemeral experiences.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: We just need to excite demand for love at that level by unleashing the nonprofit sector, unleashing its voice, giving it voice.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: The same way Coca-Cola has voice, giving it capital so that it can amplify that voice, the same way Apple is able to amplify that voice and create a country, a community, a world of compassion as much as consumption.
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: How we got to this point, you know.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: I wrote uncharitable for Tufts University Press.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: It was done in 2008 and on the end of 2008, right around Christmas time, we released it and I had been going to Ted.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: I went to Ted in 2006 and 2007.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: I was there when Ken Robinson gave the most popular Ted talk of all time.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: I was there when Al Gore gave his Ted talk that had the bones of an inconvenient truth and then, not long after that, the he and Lawrence Bender made an inconvenient truth and I thought from the get-go, uncharitable is the same kind of message.
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: It would lend itself to a Ted talk, it would lend itself to a documentary movie.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: Martin Luther King said the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: I think he should have reversed that and said the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, but it is long.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Oh it it.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: So it took a long time and you know, the first thing was, well, just getting the book uncharitable out in the world.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: And then it took me four years to get up the nerve to ask Chris Anderson if I could do a Ted talk.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: And then that Expanded things more and that was 2013 and it wouldn't be another three or four years till Steven Gyllenhaal and I started talking about a movie and it took us six years to make.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: It probably would have taken us for, if not for, covid, and part of that is you keep running out of money, right, and you, you got to pause everything for two months while you go and hunt more money.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: We've raised so far a million eight to make and market uncharitable and and you continue to raise more.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so all from not from big, iconic institutional funders, it was all from entrepreneurial family offices and smart savvy, entrepreneurial, ambitious Small foundations.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Which is like the ethos of what we think grassroots fund fundraising can be when it's at its best is Small gifts banded together Having a massive impact.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: And I have to tell you I'm glad this movie is dropping when it is dropping.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: This film is so important.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: It is so of the now and this concept that love is a commodity, because think of love like the economies of scale of love.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: We all have that, we can all pour into that, and so I'm so proud that you have made this film and it is so important that non-profits that you go and see it and you take someone who doesn't work in the sector with you, because this is such a colossal issue.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: And I want to dive a little bit into this film, because the Stanford social innovation review said that your book really deserves to become the new, the non-profit sector, like sort of new manifesto.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: Talk to us about this manifesto, this adoption of Stepping in to what we know, stepping into our power, stepping into changing and Reforming this world that we want to live and work and give in.
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah well, first, just to be more specific, if people want to see the movie again it's called uncharitable go to uncharitable movie calm and you can see.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: Right now we're in 35 theaters in the United States, in Canada, and that box office success is really important to us.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: So we need people to go out and see the movie and and fill those theaters.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: If it's not Playing in a city near you, contact us on the website and you can work with us on, with our team, on a buyout of a movie theater.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: It's not as expensive as you think and then it will be streaming January 1st, if, if not sooner, and we're negotiating those, those streaming deals now.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: But it's really great to see it in a movie theater and see it with other people who work in the sector.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: Right, you're used to seeing bombastic superhero movies in the movie theater.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: How wonderful it is to see you and your issues and your cause up on that big screen.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Victor Hugo talked about and Nothing is as powerful not all the armies in the world as an idea whose time has come, and I think this is an idea whose time has come, and you know there are a few of us who've spent the last 20 years building the foundation of this Conversation, so that people at least know, whether they agree with it or not, that there's a conversation out there.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Now it's time to push the ball past the 50 yard line to the, to the 40, to the 30, to the 20, to the 10 and over the goal and change the way people think about this stuff forever, the same way we change the way they think about seatbelts and smoking and everything else.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: It's time.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: It's time the the it's killing people to live with these old ideas about charity, literally.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: So it's it's time that we modernize the way we think about, about change and how to achieve it quickly.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you're talking to an audience that is all about social impact and we know a lot of these issues are systemic and it feels under being part of the sector.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: This is one of those systemic issues for us, like it's so baked into the core of the conversation yeah, it is, it's a.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: It's a systemic issue and what's interesting is the nonprofit sector has a profound Inability to get pissed off.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: I story of my life.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, now look, if you take them, the, the, the micro issues, it'll get pissed off about AIDS.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: It'll get pissed off about, you know, racism.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: It'll get pissed off about income inequality, but it will not get pissed off about the economic prison in which it lives that prevents it from making real impact on AIDS and and racism and economic inequality.
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: It will conform until the.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: The sun goes down, the most radical activist cowers at the sign of, you know, charity watch and getting a and getting two stars instead of three stars, instead of rebelling against that oppression that prevents me from having the resources I need.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: You know, I had a guy ask a question the other night and he said well, what about the?
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: You know your betrayal of people on the AIDS rides and the and the lavish lifestyle that you lived with what lavish?
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: I don't recall living a lavish lifestyle.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: What I bought?
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: A home.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: I bought a $300,000 home and my dad flew out from Boston a construction worker and helped me remodel it for two months.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: Am I not entitled to a home?
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: Is a home lavish for people who work in the nonprofit sector?
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: And if that's the case, then what kind of people do you think we're going to?
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: Are we going to be able to attract the best people, who are capable of buying mansions and getting a great feeling of social impact by working for Apple or working for Elon Musk.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: So these ideas are broken.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: They're killing people.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: We need to change them.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: They're just.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: They're, as I said in Uncharitable and at Ted, they come from old, old, pure and religious ideas and we just haven't revisited them, we haven't changed them.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: Like so many other things.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: I am talking to you from Topps Field, massachusetts.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: Today we are, as the crow flies, maybe seven miles away from Salem Massachusetts, where the original Puritans landed on the air and in 1633.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: And you know this.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: I was speaking to an audience in the Netherlands yesterday, before yesterday, and it's your fault, because the Puritans were Dutch originally.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: Right, they came from there and, look, they grew up in a society where there was no electricity, no lights.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: You know, at night it was dark, dark, dark, and you heard the howling of wolves and the stars moving around and you had all of these fantasies of you know evil gods that were doing all of this and you better be good, and charity became the place where people had to be good, so you couldn't make any money there, because that was how you prevented yourself from getting into hell.
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: Well, we're more grown up now.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: We have electricity, we have lights, right?
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: It's time to let go of these terrified Puritan ideas about salvation.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: Charity is not about salvation.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: It's not about getting into heaven.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: It's about preventing women from dying of breast cancer and people and kids from being malnourished and people from being illiterate.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Those are logistical challenges.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: We can solve them.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: Let's get to it.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, I feel just the battle cry that's just beating inside my chest right now.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: Just feeling like this is the moment and I know you listener out there are feeling it too and we don't want to live in scarcity anymore.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: This sector is built on scarcity.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: We don't want to live in poverty, we don't want to be trapped, we don't want to have those sort of limitations, not just financially but on our mental health, on our time, on the way that we run passionately at things.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: And I think innovation and creativity you talk a lot about it, we talk a lot about it, but I think the most quoted attribute that we give to your last episode was when you were talking about Walt Disney walking around with a picture of a mouse in his pocket, in his binder.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: And the quote we use so often and we repeat is if you aren't, you know, if you're not crazy in how you're dreaming, if people are not laughing at you, then you are not dreaming big enough.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: And in the movie you share kind of a similar tangential idea and you're saying we have made it a liability to dream in the nonprofit sector.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: So my question to you, dan, is how did we get here and how has this been completely mischaracterized in our sector?
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: Really sort of who cares how we got here, right, but how we got here?
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: We really did get here from these Puritan ideas that the human beings are evil, right, Puritans were taught by Jean Calvin, the 17th century, 16th century theologian, to hate themselves.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: They were taught that human beings are evil.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: They're evil in the eyes of God.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: Even unborn children, though they have not yet sinned, they are evil in the eyes of God.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: So if you're evil in the eyes of God, you've got to do something to prove to God that you're worthy to get into heaven.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: So the Puritans would do all kinds of charitable things, even if the person on the receiving end didn't need it, because it was all about the Puritans trying to get themselves over that bar and into heaven, proved that they were one of the elected.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: And you say, well, that was 400 years ago.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, human beings can live with bad ideas for long periods of time.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: No, I mean, think about, we went for decades, I mean centuries, in the world and then decades walking through the airports dragging the luggage, before it dawned on anyone we could put wheels on the suitcases right, Like not exactly new technologies.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: These were kind of the original technologies the wheel and the case, right, Because hundreds, thousands of years to figure out wheels on suitcases, and then we put the two wheels on the suitcases.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: Oh great, Now we live with that for 40, 50 years.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: And then someone goes whoa, whoa, we could put four wheels on the suitcase instead of two.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: We just get trapped into paradigms and live with them for a long time and we've been trapped in this Puritan paradigm.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: And then along came the overhead measure, and we're also addicted to simplicity, and the overhead measure was a very, very simplistic thumbs up, thumbs down.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: You got high overhead, thumbs down, you got low overhead, thumbs up, thinking somehow that low overhead had something to do with the good that you were doing in the world, when in fact it doesn't measure anything about the good that you're doing in the world.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: It just measures your accounting practice and how easily you raise money.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: So I think that's how we got here religion and simplicity.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: But here we are, and now we're conscious about it and you can't be blamed until you're conscious about it.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: You know you can't be blamed for dragging the suitcase when it just hasn't dawned on anybody that you could put wheels.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: But once the woman or the guy says wheels on suitcases, now it's your fault if you're still dragging the suitcases.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: And so in the nonprofit sector, we didn't know.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: We didn't realize that overhead was a bad measure.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: We didn't realize that having a different set of rules that discriminated against us versus the for-profit sector was a bad idea.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: But now we're starting to know.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: So we could be victims of it before, but now no, If we continue to be victims of it, it's our fault.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: Okay, it's our responsibility to teach donors.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: Nobody else is gonna teach them that overhead is a rotten, broken measure, that you wanna measure impact.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: Nobody's gonna teach them that forcing low salaries on people means you can only attract the people who will accept low salaries, that what you want is impact, not affordability.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: Right that preventing the nonprofit sector from advertising means it can't raise as many resources.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: We didn't know that.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: The average person doesn't know those things and if we don't teach them, they'll never learn.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: And sexy or not, heroic sounding or not, it is the service to which we have been called and we dare not refuse to provide it.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Goodness.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you always lead me to thinking about the power of media and how it could be unleashed for our sector, and I think you've been beating this drum for such a long time and I remember just the juxtaposition of it's like, it's almost like not a lever that's been available to us, or this block, this belief, that we couldn't use that as a lever.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: And I just think not only has media been fueling a lot of our beliefs and probably you know the country's understanding or perceptives of nonprofits, but we believe it could be a catalyst for changing and I know you must believe that too with using this film, like we talk about that.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: And how can we all lean into media in this moment?
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, media advertising, billboards, social media, digital advertising, times Square, apple retail stores, big signs on the sides of tractor trailer trucks, all of the different places that you are indoctrinated in consumption, that you are indoctrinated into Bi-Coax-0, the new titanium iPhone.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: Someday maybe you can afford a Laura Piana jacket on Newbury Street in Boston, you know or an Armani belt, if not a suit, you know, we're just indoctrinated in these things and we are made to feel bad.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: If we don't have as nice a suit or dress as the other people at the cocktail party, as we don't have as nice a car when we pull up to the valet at the hotel for the charity gala dinner, we are made to feel bad about ourselves.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: So imagine a world where causes and generosity and compassion are able to compete in this rich media, where you see beautiful ads on the Super Bowl for Save the Children and then another beautiful ad for, you know, the Susan Coleman Breast Cancer Foundation, and then another gorgeous ad for Last Mile Health.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: And you walk down Newbury Street or you walk down Fifth Avenue and, yeah, there's the Polo Ralph Lauren store and there's the Armani store, but there's the Oxfam America store and there's the One Love Foundation store and there's the One Acre Fund store and begins to become a more balanced world of compassion and generosity.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: But we cannot do that if we can't invest money in it.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: Those things don't happen for free and free media.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: You know when you get free media at three o'clock in the morning or on the last page of the newspaper or the bottom you know.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: So no free media.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, no more free donated media.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: Coca-cola gets to pay for the best media and the best spot at the best time of day.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: We deserve that too.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: And look, here I'm gonna call out America's biggest foundations.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: There's a trillion dollars sitting at least more now in the corpus of America's foundations.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: Now, I'm not one of those people who necessarily says spend it all down, and that's sort of reckless.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: You know, like, start with a goal and then figure out what you need, and if the goal requires you to spend it down, then spend it down.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: But can we please have some imagination at America's foundations, like, could Ford and MacArthur and Packard the ones that have been leading the charge and Kresge and you know, and the other the other, annie Casey, all of the big ones?
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Could you all get together, 20 of you, and each of you agree?
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: You're gonna put five million dollars into a pot.
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: It's a rounding error on your giving, let alone your corpus 100 million dollars and you're gonna buy out 75% of the ads on the Super Bowl next year.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: That would change the consciousness the nation it would change everything, and it practically doesn't cost you anything to do it, except some courage and some imagination.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: And nobody is bringing any imagination to bear on this.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: Then everybody talks about well, what if we don't ask about overhead, what should we ask about?
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: All right, it's an important question.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: But guess what?
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: Answering that question?
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: That's the easy part.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: I can give you three great answers.
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: We can debate them, but there's an answer to that.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: The difficult thing is, once you get the answer, how are you gonna distribute it At scale to all of at least America on an annually updated basis?
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: You're gonna need some kind of an apparatus a Thousand times larger and I'm not kidding, a thousand times larger than charity navigator or the better business Bureau, wise giving alliance or candid.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: These are two, three, five, ten, fifteen million dollar organizations To do an in-depth analysis of the impact every big operating charity in America is having An updated on an annual basis is a labor-intensive initiative that would cost on order of a billion to two billion dollars, and we can't fathom that.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: We can't fathom a billion or two billion dollars a year for an evaluating entity.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: Apple's making a billion dollars every day and a half and we can't dream of that, and that's another place.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: America's foundations could come in and say we're gonna put up, you know we're gonna get a hundred foundations, we're gonna put up, whatever it is, you know, 50 million dollars a year so that there's this incredible iTunes for charity, robust apparatus that gives everybody confidence in giving.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: Instead, everybody's in there a little silos with their little initiatives that don't amount to much of anything.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: There's no vision happening and and America's foundations could lead that charge.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: I Want that to happen, and I don't just want it to happen.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: If we want to see that in the world, we have to be an active part of moving the needle forward and seeing Ourselves as a change agent.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: For that, I want to share something personal.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Julie, our incredible producer and head of media.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: She went and saw the film in New York City yesterday and one of the moments that Struck her and hurt her so deeply Was when Jason Russell was talking about how the media even twisted a narrative, and when you're not a part of a conversation at all, those things can cripple an organization, they can cripple a movement, they can cripple human beings.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: And so the ability to have a voice in this space and not just a 3 am Voicea prominent voice it allows us to shift the needle on everything, and I'm not just talking about funding, I'm talking about systemic issues, I'm talking about mindsets, I'm talking about the way that we activate and you said something a little bit ago and I want to make sure that nobody missed it, because you're dropping so many wisdom bombs here but you said you can't be blamed until you're conscious of it, and so if you're listening right now, you are conscious and you are the one, dan, that struck me the first time we talked and you said I'm overhead.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: And I felt that as somebody 20 years in the sector you know annual giving officer, major gift officer I am overhead, I am a human being with value.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: And so why is now the time for nonprofit professionals and the organizations to step into their bravery, to talk about Opportunities, to talk about harm, to talk about their needs?
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: Tell us, well, I don't know if you've read the power of now by Eckhart Tolle.
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: It's one of my favorite books.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: Why now?
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: Because now is all you ever got.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no such thing as tomorrow or yesterday.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: It's always now, it's now, right now.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's give it five seconds.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's now again.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Now, right now it's always now, you know.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: But here I want one thing, you know I, I would like to speak directly to you who are listening right now.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: Yes, you, not the other person, not all the people you do you want them to put on your gravestone?
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: I Kept charity overhead low.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: Is that what you want?
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, think about that really.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: I mean because this is your life, this is your life, this is your potential.
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: This is everything you're gonna do and everything you're not gonna do forever.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: What do you want it to be?
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: Do you want it to be that you ended hunger?
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: Do you want it to be that you contributed to a dramatic reduction in suicide, or do you want it to be that you conformed?
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: You don't want it to be that you conform.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: So get your courage up and start actively, actively changing things in your ecosystem and the world around you, and get others to do that with you and All of us.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: You know, all of us have to start.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: Speak truth to power.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: Guess where the power is?
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: It's those foundations.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: All of us need to speak up to those foundations.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: Get your act together, use some imagination, pull some of your money together, coordinate on some big visions.
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: Look it, I don't care what you think about his politics.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: Look at what Elon Musk is doing.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: Look at what that one human being is doing with imagination, intelligence and courage.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: Look at what Steve Jobs did and what Apple is doing in his aftermath.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: These people are dreaming big, big, big, big, big, big dreams.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: What makes you think you don't have the right to do the same thing?
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: What caused you to think that you don't deserve to dream as big as those people?
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: Stop it.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: Stop it.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: This is the only chance you get.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: This is it.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: This is life.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: This is not a dress rehearsal.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: This is it I.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Mean Dan, we're here like just so amped because what you're saying is not only true but we believe it, like.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: I mean that's the impact uprising to us, like we.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: We know that it's imperative that we pour into this.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: How do we change people's minds, like, how do we take this conversation outside of the sector, outside of these hotel conference rooms, when we talk about stuff and Get it into the narratives with our donors, with these big foundations, with the general public?
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: First of all, I want to say that what you guys are doing with this podcast and others like you is so important because we need a new media, a new trade media for the nonprofit sector.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: The existing trade media is so stuck in these old ideas and every time I think they have changed.
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: They don't, they're just and even they hire young people.
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: They somehow find young people who are like wedded to old ideas.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: So we need new media, new trade media for the nonprofit sector, and I think that how use the movie.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: It's like people will come out of the movie and it's like how do we change things?
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: I just told you, I just told you now go show this movie to everybody.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: We spent all this time and effort and money making it.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: It was not easy to make.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: We made it for you.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: Show it to everyone your mother, your father, your uncle, your sister, your executive director, your development director, your entire board, your entire staff and then show it to them again if they didn't get it.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: This is the tool, this is the thing.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: How are you going to change people's minds with a curriculum?
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Right, it's not some one thing you're going to say.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: There's no silver bullet sentence.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: It's going to change the way your board thinks.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: It's going to be pummeling them over and over and over again with a curriculum.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: The same way your algebra teacher pummeled you with algebra, algebra, algebra, algebra, algebra, algebra, algebra two, algebra two, algebra two, trigonometry, trigonometry.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: Right, we somehow think that people's minds are going to change with a sentence.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: No, no, you've got to indoctrinate them, and there are lots of tools out there From me.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: You've got Uncharitable the book.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: You've got the skinny little book, the Everyday Philanthropist.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: You've got the TED Talk.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: You've got the bold training for nonprofit boards and staff.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: You've got the movie.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: Now You've got all the tools.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: You need to go, change minds.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: Start using them Now.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: When people come out of the movie theater, they're going what do I do?
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: What can I do?
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: We don't need you to change the way the whole world thinks about charity.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: So stop thinking at that level.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: You're going to get all this adrenaline right.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Here's what we need you to do Change the way your world thinks about charity.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: Use the movie, okay.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: Now your world, your ecosystem, your family it starts with you.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: And then there's your C-suite, your senior team at your organization.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: I guarantee you, 75% of that C-suite thinks in very old ways about these things.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: We think it's the board members right, or the donors.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: No, it's an inside job, it's right inside the house, okay.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: So get your senior team on board.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: Then the rest of your staff right, because they all think like your program staff.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't like the fundraising staff, because when a new fundraiser gets hired, they think that's 150 grand that could have gone into my program and now it's going into this wasteful fundraising.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: Well, no, it isn't.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: The fundraising is going to multiply the amount of money available for programs.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: So get your program staff to go Now.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: At the same time, get your entire board to go.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: Then look at your major donors Get them to go.
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: Your retail donors Get them to go.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: New staff come on.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Use the movie as an onboarding tool.
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: New board member comes on.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: Use the movie as an onboarding tool.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: Now you've got an ecosystem, a family that is thinking in lockstep.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: They're all excited, they all have adrenaline.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: They're all thinking in the same way.
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: Now you've got permission to begin to do things in a brand new way and the whole system is inoculated against ridiculous media criticism or inaccurate media criticism.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: Your whole system is inoculated against the tendency to think small.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: It's thinking big.
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: So that's what you can do.
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: You go see the movie.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: Don't try to change the world, the world big.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: Try to change your world, using the movie as a tool.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: It's like because people will see the movie and go that's great.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: Geez, I should get my board members a book.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: No, get them to watch the same movie that just changed your mind.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: This is so timely.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: I want to share this because this happened to me in the last 12 hours.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: Everyone knows about my love of Reddit and I follow a lot of philanthropic charity sort of things on Reddit and I think we can all agree that debating people on the internet is probably never a good idea.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: But I did it last night because somebody posted Kiva's 2019, 990.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: And there was a lot of debate around what the execs were making and I just want to tell you that, yes, I got in there.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, I put a contrary opinion, but this time I was able to say there's a film that talks about this scarcity mentality and the way that you're perpetuating and harming your favorite charity with these words and Kiva may not be your favorite charity, it was a little personal to me They've had, we've had Kiva on the show.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: They're such good people.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: I'm a donor to the organization and there is in no world where charities should be shamed for paying executives $200,000 when they are multi, multi-plying these microfinance loans for people who would never otherwise have it.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: So what I'm saying is you have a tool now.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: When you see that in the wild, you don't have to spar, you can just point and say hey friend, I work in this sector, I'm a part of this harm and maybe here's a film where you can go wake up and not just wake up, but like, come and lock arms with me and everyone else in this and come be a part of a bigger movement.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: So thank you, Dan, for saving me from debating people on the internet with the simplest of phrases of now we have a film and now we have a way that we can talk about this.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: That's so important because I've watched people after they hear me give a talk and they're so excited and they're so well intended and the next day they try and go and tell their board members what I said and they can't Because I do it 9 million times a year.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: So it's what I do for a living.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: They do something else for a living, so they can't remember what I said, they trip over their words and it ends up being worse and they feel down because the board member ended up winning the argument.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: So that's the reason for the movie it will do the talking for you.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: So you took exactly the right lesson away from it, becky.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: It will do the talking for you.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: You don't have to debate, you don't have to remember all the points, you don't have to have an intellectual arsenal Over time.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: You want to develop one right, and you will.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: But let the movie do the talking for you.
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: It's experts in the field, it's music, it's power, it's emotion, it's stories, it's decades of experience that have gone into that movie and that are articulated there.
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: Let the movie do it for you.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: I love it and our responsibility too is to dream freaking big, which is what you come into our house and tell us, because pairing those two together like gives people something to attach to.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: I know, on the film you said we're dreaming creatures and I just love that so much and it makes me think of how we round out this podcast every time is we center story, the power of philanthropy, the small moments, the big moments, just moments that like shape us as humans as we see kind of philanthropy play out.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: I wonder if you'd take us back to one in your life, dan.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: It's a moment of philanthropy.
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: I mean.
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: The thing that philanthropically brought me to tears consistently would be at the end of the day of any AIDS ride or the end of the day of any breast cancer three day, where, no-transcript, everybody who had finished their day, would begin to go to the entrance to camp to cheer on the last riders or the last walkers.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: They didn't have to.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: They had written all day, they had walked all day, they were hungry, they could just go eat, they could just go do their thing.
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: But they went to the entrance to camp and it was always the same seven or eight or ten people, and typically always the same person who was the last person in.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: Maybe they had a disability, or maybe they were older, or maybe they just weren't in as great a shape, and the thunderous, uproarious applause of thousands of people Acknowledging this civic hero who had never been acknowledged for anything in their lives.
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: That's love, that's beauty, that's the kind of world we want to live in.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: And I think that is why this moment is so important and I hope everyone listening, I hope you feel it and I hope you feel emboldened to be a part of it with your voice, with your story, with your lived experience.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: We want to go to the line and cheer the next guy that's coming through on, because it's going to take a lot of us to turn this aircraft carrier, but the more of us that get on, the faster we can turn it.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: And so, dan, we end all of our podcasts, as you know, with a one good thing, and if you could distill this moment in time to a piece of advice, a life hack, something you want to leave with the audience, what would be your one good thing today?
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: Well, I just it would be.
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: I think nonprofits are in an economic prison of no, you can't do that In the for-profit sector.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: Rome's free.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: In a world of yes, you can do whatever you want.
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: And I would just say you don't belong in prison.
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: You do not deserve to be in prison.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: You deserve to be out in the wild, free, with your biggest ideas for a better world, making them come true, celebrating that in all your glory as a human being.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Dan's standing after the race cheering us on to finish out strong.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: So okay, uncharitablemoviecom Dan, point us to other ways to get involved in this movement, to get active right now.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Just kind of round us out how can people connect with you?
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, uncharitablemoviecom.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: Go there If it's in a theater near you.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: They're selling out.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: I'm in Boston and my mom wants to see it and it was sold out in my own house.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's so lovely.
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: I got to figure out a way to get tickets to my own movie, so go see it in your town.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: If it's not in your town, contact us and take responsibility for being the leader that brings it to your community.
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: Share about it on social media, have discussion groups afterwards, invite others to come to the next showings.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: Be ready when it's streaming late this year, early January to spread the word.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: Use your social media.
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: Even if you only have 72 followers, get all 72 of those people to go see the movie.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: I want to end by and I'm going to try not to cry, even though I've cried twice already.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: I want to thank you for making this film.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: I was hired at a nonprofit, at $24,000, at a science museum a beautiful one and that's all they could afford.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: And there are so many of us that want to stay in this work.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: We believe so deeply in it and to think that we have massive value and that our creativity could be unleashed.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: I feel like this is a love letter to each of us.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Thank you for your boldness.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: I think you're leading the way with it, and I just want you to know that I, for one, am behind you and I believe community is everything, and I believe in this community that we can change it and we can be a part of this vibrant revolution, of the way that we're going to impact and rearchitect social impact.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: So thank you, dan.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: Me too.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: I believe in the nonprofit sector big time.
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: If its potential is unleashed, I really believe in it.
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: And thanks for what you guys are doing and keep it up and keep spreading the word, and thank you for having me.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for being here.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Friends, and you probably hear it in our voices, but we love connecting you with the most innovative people to help you achieve more for your mission than ever before.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: We'd love for you to come join our good community.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: It's free and you can think of it as the after party to each podcast episode.
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: Sign up today at weareforgoodcom.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: Backslash hello.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: And one more thing if you love what you heard today, would you mind leaving us a podcast rating interview?
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: It means the world to us and your support helps more people find this community.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much, friends.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Can't wait for our next conversation.