{"id":186447,"date":"2014-01-19T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/01\/19\/what-is-wrong-with-the-ted-talks-in-one-person\/"},"modified":"2014-01-19T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T02:00:00","slug":"what-is-wrong-with-the-ted-talks-in-one-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/01\/19\/what-is-wrong-with-the-ted-talks-in-one-person\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Wrong with the TED Talks in One Person"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 210px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"150\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oZlPJfSVw44\" width=\"200\"><\/iframe><br \/><i>My call in is at 41:05<\/i><\/div>\n<p>On Monday, I went to the Doctor, and on the way there, I was listening to the <a href=\"http:\/\/programs.wypr.org\/stationprogram\/midday\">Midday talk show<\/a> on WYPR, and they were interviewing Dan Pallotta, who gave a TED talk (no link, ever) about how we need to spend lots of money on high powered executives and self promotion, and not be so concerned about overhead costs.&nbsp; (<a href=\"http:\/\/programs.wypr.org\/podcast\/rethinking-nonprofits-mon-jan-13-12-1-pm\">Link to this show<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>I called into the show (you can hear me at 41:05), and made two points, both from experience:<sup>*<\/sup> That aggressive fundraising and growth as a strategy will take place <b>at the expense<\/b> of the core function of that organization, and that studies have shown that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/11\/20\/opinion\/20ariely.html\">very high levels of compensation actually decrease performance<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Pallotta spouted banalities about the use of &#8220;appropriate metrics&#8221; when discussing how a high growth focus won&#8217;t distract , and for the studies showing that excessive pay decreases performance, he pulls out the straw man about whether we should stop paying real estate agents after their 3<sup>rd<\/sup> sale.<\/p>\n<p>The reality is that his failed for-profit event promotion business died because it became excessive expensive, and the self aggrandizement of its CEO, Dan Pallotta.<\/p>\n<p>In it&#8217;s own way, this is TED Talks in a microcosm, it is all about comforting the comfortable.<\/p>\n<p>After all this, I <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dan_Pallotta\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wiki the motherf%$#er<\/a> and found this &#8220;clearly-written_by-his-publicist&#8221; article: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><b>Pallotta TeamWorks <\/b><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\">Pallotta built his for-profit company Pallotta TeamWorks. His company employed 400 full-time people in 16 U.S. offices and was raising $169 million annually by 2002. In total, the company raised $582 million from 1994 to 2002. The company charged a fixed production fee for its services. It did not do commission-based fundraising or get a \u201ctake\u201d off of the top. One hundred percent of all donations went to lock boxes under the charities\u2019 exclusive control. The charities then reimbursed the company for its expenses on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Pallotta TeamWorks fees, in a hindsight calculation, amounted to 4.01% of funds raised.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As is shown below, this is a bogus number.  It refers only to direct fees, and not the expenses of putting on the increasingly lavish events.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Palotta was criticized for the large amounts of money Pallotta TeamWorks was making each year and the $394,500 salary he was receiving, described as &#8220;stratospheric&#8221; for the aid world.[ His annual salary ranged from $150,000 in 1994 to approximately $425,000 in 2002. Palotta commented that &#8220;We allow people to make huge profits doing any number of things that will hurt the poor, but we want to crucify anyone who wants to make money helping them&#8221;.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">In 2002, the company moved into an innovative headquarters that it had  outfitted, The Apostrophe. For years Pallotta TeamWorks was located in  poor offices spaces in Hollywood. A new and completely empty 47,000  square-foot &#8217;tilt-up&#8217; warehouse was located in Atwater Village,  Los Angeles. \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\"> <\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Shut-down of Pallotta Teamworks<\/span><\/span> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\"><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026 <\/span>At the time the Breast Cancer 3-Day program was the company&#8217;s largest  fundraising event series. For five years the Avon Products Foundation  had been the beneficiary of the events, which netted $194 million in  unrestricted funds for the Foundation in just five years. In 2002 Avon  informed Pallotta TeamWorks that it would no longer be associated with  the company&#8217;s events. Pallotta TeamWorks began negotiating with another  charity to become the beneficiary of the events. During that period,  Avon announced a nationwide series of multi-day breast cancer  fundraising walks, each with a four-figure pledge minimum, in many of  the same cities in which the 3-Days had been conducted and, in many  cases, on very similar dates. As a result, the new charity with which  Pallotta TeamWorks had been negotiating, fearing that the events would  cannibalize one another, decided against partnering with Pallotta  TeamWorks on the 3-Days. A few days after the news, on August 23, 2002,  the company laid off its entire staff nationwide and closed the doors on  its new headquarters.<\/span>  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, they got dumped by their charities (more below), and they tried to set up competing events to keep their gravy train rolling. <\/p>\n<p>But we can look at the Internet, where nothing goes away, and see what was being said of Pallotta Teamworks at the time:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Published on Tuesday, August 27, 2002 in the Washington Post <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/headlines.shtml?\/headlines02\/0827-08.htm\"><b><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><span style=\"color: blue;\">Expenses Eat Profits Of District AIDSRide<\/span><\/span><\/b><\/a><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">by Carol Morello <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\"><b>Expenses ate up at least 86 percent of the $3.6 million raised in June  for the annual D.C. AIDSRide organized by Pallotta TeamWorks<\/b>, a rate  that is expected to increase when the tally is complete, the benefiting  charities said yesterday. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">If the riders had not raised more money than required, the event might  have lost money. Per-rider expenses averaged $400 more than the $2,400  each rider needed to raise to participate. But the event turned a  $500,000 profit only because riders raised an average of more than  $3,200, according to preliminary estimates made by the two charities  that co-sponsored the ride. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;Disappointed doesn&#8217;t even begin to describe how we feel,&#8221; said  Cornelius Baker, head of Whitman-Walker Clinic, one of two charities  benefiting from the ride. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">When the audit is completed in the fall, <b>the return may be less than 14 cents on the dollar<\/b>. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\"> <\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Critics of Pallotta events said the return on the D.C. ride was indicative of problems that have beset the company this summer. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;The returns are abysmal,&#8221; said Wayne Turner, an AIDS activist with the  D.C. chapter of Act Up. &#8220;People are beginning to wake up to the fact  these AIDS rides are not about raising money at all. <b>They&#8217;re about  building Dan Pallotta&#8217;s empire, which is now crumbling<\/b>.&#8221; <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">This year, Pallotta TeamWorks was to have run 23 charitable events  across the United States and in Africa and Europe. Pallotta&#8217;s fee for  each AIDS ride runs from $225,000 &#8212; the amount for the District ride &#8212;  to $450,000. Locally, it also has organized the Avon Breast Cancer  walk, held in May, and a night walk this month from Fairfax County to  the District to raise awareness of suicide prevention. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Pallotta had been one of the country&#8217;s most successful promoters of  charitable events. But criticism grew as the company expanded and began  aggressively promoting itself. Its events are characterized by emotional  opening and closing ceremonies, slick marketing and creature comforts  for participants, including cucumber eye masks and massages. Expenses  run into the millions, though net proceeds are often high, too. But  recently, many riders and walkers have complained that the events&#8217;  purity has been clouded by excessive promotion. At walks and rides  attended by survivors and relatives of people with breast cancer and  AIDS, vans were set up marketing the company&#8217;s other events and selling  books by founder Dan Pallotta. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Pallotta, though, has lost numerous clients this year. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">This spring, Avon Products announced that it would no longer use the  company to produce its three-day breast cancer walks and would launch  its own walkathons. After seven years of collaboration, Food &amp;  Friends decided to hold its own bike event next year. The huge Heartland  AIDSRide across the Midwest also is being dropped. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So he is a f%$#ing serial narcissist who put on lavish charity events for the purpose of his own self-aggrandizement, and so his business imploded.<\/p>\n<p>His response is to go on TED and suggest that the way to improve our charities is to throw more money at those overpaid narcissistic sociopaths who are our looting class.<\/p>\n<p>Just beautiful. <\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"> My background: <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"> I audited my university (UMass Amherst) as a part of a student government committee. <\/span> <\/li>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"> I founded a not-for-profit, and successfully took it thorugh the 501(c)3 process. <\/span> <\/li>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"> My experience was that a laser-like focus  on aggressive growth and increased prestige is achieved <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">at the expense of<\/span> quality services. <\/span> <\/li>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"> That, as numerous behavioral economics studies have shown (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/11\/20\/opinion\/20ariely.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dan Ariely<\/a>, for one), very high levels of compensation are associated with <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">DECREASED<\/span> performance.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My call in is at 41:05 On Monday, I went to the Doctor, and on the way there, I was listening to the Midday talk show on WYPR, and they were interviewing Dan Pallotta, who gave a TED talk (no link, ever) about how we need to spend lots of money on high powered executives &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1056,969,1051,1064],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charity","category-evil","category-hypocrisy","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186447"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}