Dan Pallotta

Dan Pallotta is a builder of movements. He is the founder of Pallotta TeamWorks, which invented the multi-day AIDSRides and Breast Cancer 3-Days and changed the fundamental paradigm for civic engagement in and fundraising for important social causes. It brought the practice of four-figure philanthropy within the reach of the average citizen who had never before raised money for charity. Over 182,000 people of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds participated in these inspiring, often grueling, long-distance events, which raised $582 million in nine years—more money raised more quickly for these causes than any private event operation in history. Three million people donated to the events.

To put this in perspective, the events raised more money than the American Express Charge Against Hunger ($21 million), Pepsi Refresh ($15 million), Hands Across America ($34 million), USA for Africa ($66 million), Product (RED) ($150 million), Kiva ($100 million), and American Idol Gives Back ($175 million) combined.

The company had 350 full-time employees in 16 US offices, was the winner of Brandweek's Best Cause-Related Event Award, and was the subject of a Harvard Business School case study. Its concepts and methods are employed today by dozens of charities in a variety of events throughout the world which raise over $100 million annually for important causes. Pallotta also created the "Out of the Darkness" suicide prevention events, which brought that issue out into the open and gave its closeted constituents the courage to put the cause on the map. The event concept has netted millions for the cause.

Pallotta changed the way civic engagement is marketed. He put the marketing of heroism on the same level as the gigantic consumer brands, and it worked.

Pallotta's career as the architect of these heroic journeys for humanity began as an undergraduate at Harvard in 1983 where he chaired the Hunger Action Committee and recruited 38 classmates to join him in bicycling 4,200 miles across America to raise money for Oxfam and to heighten awareness of the plight of the hungry.

Pallotta is the author of When Your Moment Comes: A Guide to Fulfilling Your Dreams and Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential, which The Stanford Social Innovation Review said "deserves to become the nonprofit sector's new manifesto," and has been reviewed and acclaimed by The New York Times, The Economist, and The Stanford Social Innovation Review, among others. He is also a featured weekly contributor to the Harvard Business Review online, where he writes about issues facing the nonprofit world as well as general business issues. He is currently working on a new book, tentatively titled I'm Overhead: A National Leadership Movement to Transform How the Public Thinks About Charity, which makes the case for the implementation of a national leadership organization to change the public perception of charity organizations.

Pallotta is the founder and Chief Humanity Officer of Advertising for Humanity, a full-service brand and inspiration agency for the humanitarian sector. He is also founder and president of the Charity Defense Council, a member of the board of Triangle, and a member of 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. 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, Tufts University, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Gates Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, and the Milken Institute, among others.

He has been written about in feature and cover stories in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Stanford Social Innovation Review, and has appeared on The Today Show, CNN, American Public Media's "Marketplace," and on numerous NPR stations, among others.

Pallotta was also, at 21, elected to the school board in Melrose, Massachusetts.