Dan Pallotta
Daniel M. Pallotta is an American entrepreneur, author, and humanitarian activist. He is best known for his involvement in multi-day charitable events with the long-distance Breast Cancer 3-Day walks, AIDS Rides bicycle journeys, and Out of the Darkness suicide prevention night walks. Over nine years, 182,000 people participated in these events and raised $582 million. They were the subject of a Harvard Business School case study. He is the author of Uncharitable – How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential. He is also the author of Charity Case: How the Nonprofit Community Can Stand Up for Itself and Really Change the World, and When Your Moment Comes – a Guide to Fulfilling Your Dreams. He is the president of Advertising for Humanity and president and founder of the Charity Defense Council. He is a featured contributor to Harvard Business Review online.
Early life and education
Pallotta was born in Malden, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, the oldest of four children. He attended Harvard University and graduated cum laude in 1983.At the age of 19, Pallotta placed second in a field of twelve candidates and became the second youngest member ever elected to the school board in his hometown of Melrose, Massachusetts. Also that year, Pallotta became chair of the Harvard Hunger Action Committee, an undergraduate student organization that raised money for Oxfam America by hosting symbolic fasts that raised approximately $2,000 each twice annually. He was studying development economics at the time and became frustrated at the gap between the scale of the problem of world hunger compared to his committee's fundraising totals.
During the summer before Pallotta's senior year at Harvard he heard about two cyclists crossing America to raise money for cancer research. It inspired him to create a cross-country bike ride for world hunger. He and his co-chair, Mark Takano recruited 39 students to make the journey. During the summer of 1983 they traveled 4,256 miles along a primarily northern route over the course of weeks from Seattle to Boston. They crossed the continental divide at 9,658 feet at Togwotee Pass in the Absaroka Range of the United States, between the towns of Dubois and Moran Junction, Wyoming. The event raised approximately $80,000 for Oxfam-America. Pallotta appeared on television and radio during the course of the ride, including an in-studio appearance with Bryant Gumbel on the Today show.
Los Angeles
In 1985 Pallotta moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a singer and songwriter. He was auditioned by Clive Davis and had a single recorded by Edgar Winter and sang the national anthem at Anaheim Stadium for the Los Angeles Rams. During his time in Los Angeles he also met David Mixner, a leading civil rights activist, and went to work on Mixner's Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, envisioned as a 5,000-person march across America to promote nuclear disarmament. He also met and worked with Irving Warner, author of Bantam Books' The Art of Fundraising, who mentored him in the field of major gift fundraising.In 1992, after a serious bout of Hepatitis A which he believed was HIV at the time, Pallotta decided to seek counseling and entered a 12-step program known as SLAA to deal with addictive behavioral patterns that he felt were undermining his potential. His first book, When Your Moment Comes, details these years in Pallotta's life.
Events
AIDS rides
In 1991, building on the 'power of the journey' as a metaphor, he conceived of a 600-mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which combined his marketing, fundraising, mobilizing and motivating skills. Three years later, the movie Alive motivated him to realize his idea. He brought his plan for the event to the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center, which was looking for a new signature event. The Center put up an initial investment of $50,000 in risk capital, which was enough for the effort to survive until a sponsorship was secured from Tanqueray for an additional $110,000. 478 people participated in the first California AIDS Ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, netting $1,013,000 – much more than expected.From 1995 to 1996 Pallotta expanded the AIDS Rides to include San Francisco, Boston, New York, Chicago, the Twin Cities, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Raleigh, North Carolina.
In nine years the AIDS Rides netted, after all expenses, $108 million.
Breast Cancer 3-Days
In 1998 Pallotta conceived the idea of a three-day, 75-mile walk for breast cancer. After scouting the route with three other staff, it was decided that 75 miles was too long, and the event was shortened to 60 miles and called the “Breast Cancer 3-Day.” In 1997 Pallotta brought the idea to Joanne Mazurki, the head of the Avon Cosmetics company's Breast Cancer Crusade. She brought it to Jim Preston, Avon's CEO, who signed off on the launch of the first event, which would take place in 1998 and travel from Santa Barbara to Malibu. The event was four times as successful as the first AIDS Ride, netting $4.2 million. With capital from Avon, the events were expanded to four cities in 1999, seven cities in 2000, nine cities in 2001 and thirteen cities in 2002. In five years the events netted $194 million in unrestricted dollars for the breast cancer community.Out of the Darkness suicide prevention events
In 1999, after studying the issue of suicide, Pallotta realized that mortality rates from suicide approached those of breast cancer in the United States, and that suicide attempts dwarfed breast cancer diagnoses. He created an event called “Out of the Darkness” — a 26-mile walk through the night designed to bring the issue of suicide into the light. The event netted $1.3 million in its first year.Big Ride Across America
In 1997, Pallotta TeamWorks produced the largest cross-country bike ride in American history for the American Lung Association. 730 cyclists rode for six weeks from Seattle to Washington, D.C.AIDS Vaccine Rides
In 1999, Pallotta made a personal guarantee in order to borrow $1.1 million to launch the AIDS Vaccine Rides which would provide unrestricted dollars for maverick research at the UCLA AIDS Institute, the Aaron Diamond center and the Emory Vaccine Center. In three years, the AIDS Vaccine Rides, conducted in Alaska, Montana, and across the Canada–US border from Montreal to Vermont, netted $8 million. The funds have allowed the UCLA AIDS Institute to access tens of millions of dollars in additional grants that have led to breakthroughs in potential microbial preventions for the transmission of HIV.Harvard Business School case study
In 2000, Harvard Business School did a case study on social enterprise on Pallotta's company, Pallotta TeamWorks, which continues to be taught.Pallotta TeamWorks
Pallotta built his for-profit charitable company Pallotta TeamWorks in 1994. His company employed 400 full-time people in 16 U.S. offices and was raising $169 million annually by 2002. In total, the company raised $582 million from 1994 to 2002. The company charged a fixed production fee for its services. It did not do commission-based fundraising or get a "take" off of the top. One hundred percent of all donations went to lock boxes under the charities' exclusive control. The charities then reimbursed the company for its expenses on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Pallotta TeamWorks fees, in a hindsight calculation, amounted to 4.01% of funds raised.Pallotta was criticized for the large amounts of money Pallotta TeamWorks was making each year and the $394,500 salary he was receiving, described as "stratospheric" for the aid world. His annual salary ranged from $150,000 in 1994 to approximately $425,000 in 2002. Palotta commented that "We allow people to make huge profits doing any number of things that will hurt the poor, but we want to crucify anyone who wants to make money helping them".
In 2002, the company moved into new headquarters, The Apostrophe, in a 47,000 square-foot "tilt-up" warehouse located in Atwater Village, Los Angeles. A new and completely empty The company had a budget of $2 million. Clive Wilkinson & Associates were contracted to create the new headquarters. The design used raw exposed lumber, shipping containers, and tents. The building now houses the Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts.