Written by Roxanna Ayers, CEO of Ethos Consulting Group.

On September 13th, I had the unique opportunity to partner with donor A.I. company Hatch to host a private screening of Dan Pallotta’s forthcoming documentary feature, Uncharitable. The documentary is based on Palotta’s infamous TED Talk and book of the same name, which most of us have encountered at some point, whether through our nonprofit career or studies at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. It ranks as one of the top-viewed TED Talks, with over five million views and counting, so it’s unsurprising that director Stephen Gyllenhaal decided to transform it into a film.
Every time I watch Pallotta’s TED Talk, and I’ve probably seen it 20 times, I’m inspired by the simple but groundbreaking idea he puts forth: overhead is actually good. This idea can feel like a seismic shift when we consider how society moralizes about how nonprofits spend their money. We’re all familiar with the argument that donors don’t want their dollars going to fund overhead expenses like marketing or salaries. In Uncharitable, Gyllenhaal provides a runway for Pallotta to bring home the full scope of repercussions nonprofits experience by the misguided idea that they should operate to keep overhead low.
The film confronts this in heartbreaking detail by revisiting the aftermath of some of the biggest scandals in the nonprofit sector, including the disastrous meltdown of the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) from its “lavish spending” in 2016. These accusations–now debunked–ignored the ratio of spending to revenue. While the WWP spent nearly three times the percentage of revenue on overhead compared to their peers, they also gave over six times more to veterans’ programs.