Dan Pallotta is a builder of movements. He invented the multi- day charitable event industry. He created the Breast Cancer 3-Day walks and the multi-day AIDS Rides, which raised in excess of half a billion dollars in nine years and were the subject of a Harvard Business School case study. The model and methods he created are now employed by dozens of charities and have raised in excess of $1.5 billion more for important causes from pediatric leukemia to AIDS to suicide prevention and many others.
He is the author of “Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential,” the best-selling title in the history of Tufts University Press. The Stanford Social Innovation Review said that the book, “deserves to become the nonprofit sector ’s new manifesto.” His newest book is, “Charity Case: How the Nonprofit Community Can Stand Up for Itself and Really Change the World.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has described it as “An Apollo program for American philanthropy and the nonprofit sector”. Dan is a featured weekly contributor to the Harvard Business Review online.
He is the founder and President of the Charity Defense Council, a national leadership movement dedicated to transforming the way the donating public thinks about charity and change.
His iconic TED 2013 Talk has been viewed more than 3.6 million times (Note to organizers: please check TED.com at the time of your Event for up-to-date figure). It is one of the 100 most-viewed
TED Talks of all time and the 15th most-commented TED Talk of all time.
In the last five years, Dan has given over 250 talks on philanthropy and innovation in 34 states and seven countries. He is a William J. Clinton Distinguished Lecturer, and has spoken at Stanford, Wharton, Harvard Business School, Harvard’s Hauser Center for Nonprofits, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Brown, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Council on Foundations, the Gates Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, and the Milken Institute, among others. He is a member of the Invisible Children Advisory Board, and the Reason Project Advisory Board. He is a recipient of the Liberty Hill Foundation Creative Vision award, the Triangle Humanitarian of the Year award, the Albany State University International Citizen of the Year award, and the Seven Fund’s Morality of Profit Essay Prize.
Dan has been written about in feature and cover stories in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and has appeared on The Today Show, CNN, CNBC, American Public Media’s Marketplace, and on numerous NPR stations, among others.