You Should Be Able to Get Rich in Charity. That's about all you need to know about Dan Pallotta's recent post at his HBR Blog. Dan says we're not really using the incentive of money to solve the world's problems:
There should be no limit to the amount of money a person can earn making the world a better place, so long as the money is commensurate with the value they produce.
I mostly agree with Dan. We should pay effective people in nonprofits salaries that are at least in the competitive ballpark with the for-profit world. The best people are well worth paying for, and we urgently need the best people.
But he's missing a couple of important things:
- There are other form of richness than having lots of money. In fact, most other forms of richness are better, deeper, stronger, and more lasting than money ever will be. People in nonprofits tend to know this better than people in the business world.
The soulish compensation of changing the world really kicks butt over monetary compensation. I've worked at companies that are all about money, and it sucks. Bringing that kind of culture into the nonprofit world would be a tragedy.
- Setting out to get rich isn't a good way to succeed. This is true not only in the nonprofit world, but everywhere. The best of most sure way to be a great success is to serve very well. If you know whom you're serving and how, and you're very good at it, you will do well in any setting. You might even get rich. If your goal is to get rich, you'll have a tendency to short-cut the stuff you really need to do to succeed.
The last thing we need in nonprofits is small-minded get-rich types. We need great servants, rich or not.
I wish nonprofits paid their best people a lot more. I also wish they'd get better at letting go their incompetent people.
But a focus on getting rich won't get us where we need to go.
