Our generation does not want its epitaph to read, ‘We kept charity overhead low.’ We want it to read that we changed the world.

Dan Pallotta is a prominent critic of the nonprofit sector’s fixation on “overhead” ratios as the primary measure of a charity’s worth. The line is associated with his public arguments—especially his widely viewed TED talk—urging donors and watchdogs to stop penalizing nonprofits for spending on staff, marketing, and infrastructure. In that setting, Pallotta contrasts a narrow, accounting-driven idea of virtue (“low overhead”) with the larger moral purpose of philanthropy: achieving measurable social change. The quote functions as a generational and cultural challenge, reframing what legacy and success should mean for people who give, work in, or lead charitable organizations.

The quote argues that moral ambition should be judged by outcomes rather than by austerity. “Keeping overhead low” symbolizes a culture of suspicion toward investment in capacity—paying talent, building systems, or communicating at scale—because such spending can look impure on paper. Pallotta suggests this mindset produces small, fragile organizations that cannot address large problems. By invoking an “epitaph,” he shifts the frame from short-term optics to long-term legacy: the point of charity is not to appear efficient but to be effective. The line is a rhetorical call to accept reasonable costs as the price of achieving world-changing impact.