The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) hosted philanthropist Dan Pallotta in the River Building on Nov. 16. Pallotta, who is famous for his TED2013 Talk that has been viewed over 3.6 million times, has given 250 talks on the topic of not-for-profit organizations.
Opening for Pallotta were several community members active in the community of non-profit work. CUSA president Fahd Alhattab, Michael Cacho from Hatch, Sarah MacNeil from the Student Philanthropy Council, and Cathy Edwards from 1125@Carleton all addressed the crowd.
According to Pallotta, society is looking at not-for-profits the wrong way, which is inhibiting them from being successful.
“People seem to think that it is up to government to solve these problems. Government isn’t solving these problems and it isn’t like government has the right of first refusal to solve the great societal problems that we face,” Pallotta said during his talk.
Pallotta also said he believes it is up to people to initiate change before government officials.
“Stop treating money like a sin in the non-profit sector,” Pallotta said. “Stop preventing the sector from using money in any means, shape, or form to incentivize more value above and beyond what the goodness of a person’s heart will do.”
Pallotta has also written two books on the non-profit sector.
Alhattab said he thought having Pallotta come to Carleton was beneficial for students.
“The value we received was much more than what we had to pay. We had a lot of different individuals come on board who wanted to push to help Dan come, so we are so happy to see this event,” Alhattab said.
Fourth-year commerce student Binayak Kanungo and said he thought the talk was very informative.
“This event has been really good at helping me reframe things, the whole idea of low overhead and high overhead has been something I’ve thought about in the past,” Kanungo said. “This is really good though to understand how that works and how I will see charities in the future.”
Alhattab said he thinks philanthrophy is a big part of what makes Carleton such a vibrant campus.
“[Philanthropy] is the heart and soul of a lot of our clubs here on campus,”Alhattab said. A lot of our students are all about philanthropy, they raise money fundraising, and I think it’s not just philanthropy that CUSA values but social impact on our students.”
“The student association is here to serve its students and provide them pursuit of personal goals, and that pursuit happens through events like this,” he said.
