{"id":98,"date":"2012-09-14T11:00:35","date_gmt":"2012-09-14T19:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/?p=98"},"modified":"2025-10-23T22:36:59","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T02:36:59","slug":"charity-is-not-perfume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"Charity Is Not Perfume"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just finished reading the Essay by Dan Palotta in the Wall Street Journal entitled Why Can\u2019t We Sell Charity Like We Sell Perfume?<\/a>. The gist of the article is clear by the title. While I could argue each one of his specific points, the bottom line is that I think the article fails to recognize the unique dynamics of the three major sectors; private; nonprofit; and public (government) and just as importantly people\u2019s expectations of them.<\/p>\n

I think what the author is really asking is \u201cWhy doesn\u2019t the nonprofit sector operate\/behave more like the private sector?\u201d The answer is that the currency each of these two sectors values is entirely different.<\/p>\n

The Nonprofit currency \u2013 is the trusted source relationship
\nThe For profit currency \u2013 is the bottom line<\/p>\n

So when after 9\/11, when the Red Cross made a completely logical BUSINESS decision to take some of its 9\/11 donations and put them aside for the next crisis \u2014 it caused a scandal resulting in the removal of the ED and a reshuffling of its board.
\nWHY? Because the people donating didn\u2019t value the bottom line business decision but rather THE TRUST they put into the Red Cross to use everything they gave for the 9\/11 crisis \u2014 even if it wasn\u2019t needed for that crisis.
\nThe nonprofit sector is designed to satisfy the more ethical, spiritual, moral, selfless side of our lives and the trust we have in our fellow people.
\nThe private sector satisfies our more tangible and selfish needs\u00a0 for creature comforts to make our lives easier, more comfortable and subjectively satisfying.<\/p>\n

Given the different objectives of the two sectors, it is reasonable to understand why they\u2019d work differently. That doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t adapt certain strategies between sectors, but you have to first appreciate the different dynamics of the two to do this effectively. Otherwise you stumble into the Red Cross conundrum.<\/p>\n

The author could have written another article asking why the government doesn\u2019t operate as a business. The answer would be that the government\u2019s responsibility is to protect\/fulfill the needs of ALL ITS CITIZENS while a business is committed to meeting the far narrower desires of its consumers and bottom line requirements of its investors. In a perfect world the private sector and government should work complimentarily and not exactly like each other (just as the private and nonprofit sector do) \u2013 one is the engine of the economy and the other regulates and protects all our interests so the engine doesn\u2019t overheat and explode in our collective faces.<\/p>\n


\nJonathan Peizer<\/strong><\/a> is the Principal of Internaut Consulting supporting<\/strong><\/a> foundations, nonprofits, governments and socially responsible private sector initiatives.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just finished reading the Essay by Dan Palotta in the Wall Street Journal entitled Why Can\u2019t We Sell Charity Like We Sell Perfume?. The gist of the article is clear by the title. While I could argue each one of his specific points, the bottom line is that I think the article fails to <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[10,58,55],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-blog-2","tag-nonprofit","tag-philanthropy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.internautconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/philantherapy-2.jpg?fit=765%2C205&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9GDC1-1A","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3785,"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/3785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internautconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}