Blog Post #1

This week we watched Dan Pallotta's Ted Talk on non-profits titled "The Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong". I found the talk to be very powerful and enlightening. As someone who is very passionate and supportive of the non-profit sector, I was almost ashamed that I'd never thought of some of his main points of view. The premise of his argument is that society’s view on the world of charity and non-profits is so warped that it is almost impossible for any non-profit to grow, profit, and ultimately succeed at a global or even national scale.  There were five main points in his discussion and as he would review them I would think to myself, "Wow, how obvious, why have I never come to that conclusion myself". I found especially interesting his point about salary. In a nutshell, he is talking about the way society views non-profits. His belief is that people are confusing immorality with making money. He goes onto say that society is more than happy to put a man on the cover of a magazine for selling violent video games to children, but God forbid we congratulate someone with a decent salary for raising a lot of money for cancer research. “We have a visceral reaction to the idea that anyone would make very much money helping other people. Interesting that we don't have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money NOT helping other people.” When it comes down to it, the fact of the matter is that no one with the talent or drive to help a non-profit succeed is going to want to work for a non-profit because their salary will not match the work that they put into the company. Thus, people with talent and drive will end up working for “for-prof” companies that will pay them what they deserve. Then, at the end of the day they can just donate money to the non-profs, if they feel compelled to do so. The reason this is important can be summed up in one of my favorite quotes from the talk. Pallotta says, “Philanthropy is the market for love. It is the market for all those people for whom there is no other market coming.” This really helped shed some more light on my place in social work. The field is so important to so many people. Not to sound cliché, even on a really small scale you are making a difference. And it seems so obvious to me that punishing non-profit organizations for paying their employees a reasonable amount is counterproductive. Yet, here we are having a discussion on the subject. When it’s all said and done the road is long and arduous but it is a fight that must be fought. 

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html?quote=2084

.
Observation: I saw a homeless man sitting outside of Plucker's watching the football games on the flat screen TV's inside. No one inside payed attention to the man.