This spring, I turned 30. And it’s true what they say: the younger you are, the more you think you know. I spent my 20s building Flying Kites, a small non-profit serving orphaned children and vulnerable families in Kenya. It took lots of energy and lots of traveling, and was a ton of fun. Cue a […]
Capitalism and charity. A seemingly paradoxical combination. But could running charities like businesses foster the innovation and problem-solving needed to address the most pressing issues of our time? In his talk at TED2013, The way we think about charity is dead wrong, Dan Pallotta argued that the way we think about charity is dead wrong. We […]
If you’re lucky enough to live without want, it’s a natural impulse to want to try and help others. But what’s the most effective way to give? This was the question philosopher Peter Singer asked in his 2013 TED Talk, given in Long Beach, California, and he shared some surprising thought experiments to help balance emotion […]
Michael Pritchard is very likely the only person to have stood on the TED stage and uttered the immortal phrase, “Let’s get a bit of that poo in there.” At TEDGlobal 2009 in Oxford, he demonstrated his then-new product, the Lifesaver bottle, which can be used to turn filthy, rabbit-dropping-infested water into sparklingly clean liquid […]
In 2005, Bjorn Lomborg bounced onto the TED stage in Monterey to challenge the assembled audience to think about “the biggest problems in the world.” Author of the book The Skeptical Environmentalist and the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, Lomborg promptly advised the somewhat startled audience to forget about global warming. If we really want to make an impact on the serious […]
Every day, most of us do something morally indefensible — we go about our lives without sending help to the 6.9 million children under the age of 5 who will die this year from poverty-related disease. In today’s talk, philosopher Peter Singer makes the case that ignoring these kids is as inhumane as ignoring a […]
How can we give in better and smarter ways? This week’s new episode of TED Radio Hour explores the effects of giving – of your money, your time and your love. As our consciousness of philanthropy is shifting towards crowdsourcing and justice-centered discourse, people begin to self-organize around the causes they are passionate about. This […]
In 1994, Dan Pallotta created the AIDS Rides — a series of long-distance fundraising cycling journeys that netted $108 million for HIV/AIDS research and services within the space of eight years. Later, his Breast Cancer 3-Day walks netted $194 million in an even shorter period of time. Both had their best years ever in 2002. […]
Dan Pallotta created two huge charity initiatives — AIDS Rides bicycle journeys and Breast Cancer 3-Day events. These initiatives raised $108 million for HIV/AIDS and $194 million for breast cancer. Both had their best years in 2002 … and then Pallotta’s nonprofit went out of business. In the final session of TED2013, Pallotta shares why […]