Opinion: Charities Need More Marketing and Less Puritanism

Excessive attention to how much charities pay their executives and spend on marketing and fundraising is an obstacle to organizations growing and achieving their missions, the author of a new book on nonprofit management writes in The Wall Street Journal.

Dan Pallotta says a donor community “obsessed with restrictions” on salaries and overhead costs—a mind-set he likens to the Puritanism of colonial settlers—puts charities at a severe disadvantage compared to businesses, which get far more public leeway to take risks, seek long-term results, and expand.

“We have two separate rule books: one for charity and one for the rest of the economic world,” writes Mr. Pallotta, who created the national AIDS Rides and Breast Cancer 3-Day fundraisers and recently published Charity Case: How the Nonprofit Community Can Stand Up for Itself and Really Change the World.

“[W]e are asking nonprofit groups to deal with social problems whose scale is beyond easy comprehension, while denying those groups the tools they need to build any meaningful scale themselves,” he says. “Something is wrong when Coca-Cola and Burger King have a potential for growth that we deny, on principle, to the Boys & Girls Clubs and the National Breast Cancer Coalition.”

Read a Chronicle of Philanthropy column by Mr. Pallotta on how charities can alter public perceptions about their spending.