We have a visceral reaction to the idea that anyone would make very much money helping other people. Interesting that we don't have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money NOT helping other people.

Dan Pallotta is a U.S. nonprofit innovator and author known for criticizing what he calls the “overhead myth”—the tendency to judge charities harshly for spending on salaries, fundraising, and marketing. This remark reflects his broader argument, popularized in his talks and writing in the early 2010s, that society imposes moral constraints on nonprofit compensation and growth strategies that it does not impose on for-profit businesses. Pallotta uses this contrast to highlight a cultural discomfort with wealth earned in service of social good, even while large fortunes earned in purely commercial or extractive contexts often provoke less moral outrage.

The quote points to a perceived double standard: people often feel instinctive suspicion when someone profits from altruistic work, as if helping others should require self-denial. Pallotta argues that this reflex can be self-defeating, because it discourages talented leaders, investment, and scalable strategies in the nonprofit sector. By contrasting it with the relative acceptance of wealth made “not helping,” he reframes the moral question: if society tolerates high rewards in markets that may be neutral or harmful, why stigmatize high rewards tied to measurable social benefit? The implication is that changing this bias could unlock greater impact.