Char­i­ties should embrace for-profit busi­ness mod­els in order to drive fundrais­ing, or so says Dan Pal­lotta, author of Unchar­i­ta­ble and founder of the now-defunct Pal­lotta Team­Works com­pany; a for-profit organ­i­sa­tion that pro­duced many suc­cess­ful fundrais­ing events for nonprofits.

In his col­umn The Sin of Doing Good Deeds, The New York Times op-ed colum­nist Nicholas Kristof said:

There’s a broad recog­ni­tion in much of the aid com­mu­nity that a major rethink is nec­es­sary, that groups would be more effec­tive if they bor­rowed more tools from the busi­ness world, and that there is too much “gotcha” scrutiny on over­head rather than on what they actu­ally accom­plish. It’s notable that lead­ers of Oxfam and Save the Chil­dren have pub­licly endorsed the book, and it’s cer­tainly becom­ing more socially accept­able to note that busi­nesses can also play a pow­er­ful role in fight­ing poverty.

I can think of no good rea­son why this shouldn’t be so, and no other way char­i­ties can attract top busi­ness school tal­ent. As Pol­lotta said, mak­ing a dif­fer­ence and mak­ing money shouldn’t be mutu­ally exclusive.