Every kid growing up wants to change the world. As we grow older this dream downsizes to “I just want to be financially successful,” as if we can’t have both. This seems to be the message that society is sending us. The term non-profit isn’t attractive to young entrepreneurs because it carries the stigma of financial instability. Personally, I think people deserve to be financially successful for doing good. The CEO of a charity deserves financial success; I think more so than say, the CEO of Coke. Perhaps if you could make a lot of money from charitable endeavors, more people would follow this career path and social issues would get solved.
In my sophomore year of college, I joined a Greek organization. Philanthropy began to play a big role in my undergraduate career. My sorority, Pi Beta Phi, is always raising money for charity. Every semester there are new philanthropic events to participate in and donate our time and money. But with every t-shirt purchase for a cause and shared Facebook post with a link to a donation page, it got me thinking of it all as a never-ending cycle. My sorority and ASU Greek life as a whole are always breaking new fundraising records. And this country has countless other charitable organizations working tirelessly just like us...Yet, we never seem to reach an end goal or eliminate an entire social issue. Poverty has stayed at 12% of the U.S. population for over 40 years, despite the immense generosity of Americans. Why is this?
It is because our society unknowingly prevents the growth of charitable organizations. We want every cent to go directly to the cause. As if money spent on an advertisement wouldn’t bring in more donations and allow more growth.
Our society also doesn’t give non-profits the right to high-risk, high-reward charitable endeavors. They aren’t allowed any failures. We all know that playing it safe isn’t a part of any successful business model, yet this is expected of charities. If they were allowed to grow into empires, on the same scale as Apple and Facebook, for example, maybe we could begin to solve these large-scale social issues.
“When a business gets big they call it an empire. We have empires for producing computers and empires for producing sports, I think we need some empires for eradicating breast cancer and hunger.” –Dan Pallotta
We need to rethink how we view charities so generations to come will go into the business of helping people. Only then can we start to solve these issues.
“Helping one another isn’t selfless it’s very good for the self.” -Dan Pallotta
