Tag Archives: Dan Palotta

I saw Dan Palotta’s keynote at the 2013 Nten conference last week in Minneapolis. Palotta describes how, since 1970, the social sector hasn’t moved the needle on our biggest social problems. He believes that this is because nonprofit leaders aren’t thinking big about being willing to invest in their cause. They feel constrained by the artificial construct of the ratio of overhead to program spending. Palotta reminded nonprofits that their goal isn’t to keep overhead low, it’s to solve our great social problems. Palotta goes on to say that this common practice of using administrative overhead as criteria for determining worthiness is reinforced by the rating organizations Charity Navigator and Charity Watch, who do not report the impact the nonprofit has, but instead, this short-sighted metric.