I read the other day an article titled " Not all are equal onlus "published on the website of the daily, the Blog of Roberto Serra. I felt the need to answer to make a difference, not between good and bad non-profit organization, but the myth that nonprofit organizations must necessarily spend less.

Below is the article and my response.

Here is the article
Not all are equal onlus Roberto Serra
It is difficult to rationalize the meaning of things in the "present", it usually takes value in perspective, looking like "the past".

Attending a job fair for non-profit organization, five years ago I happened to be invited to follow a lecture. They talked some officials who had been particularly successful in fund raising, that is, in fundraising and in particular by bringing up their lenders.

Terms of use are almost common now, and pronunciation in English as usual activity confers an aura of efficiency and these need to close the mouths of those who, like me, wary of labels in a foreign language.

I found myself facing a large audience of officials ... (sorry) managers, who all knew more or less and, in their turn, they perceived a kind of hierarchy based on the predetermined dell'onlus importance of membership and its budget . People exhibited a positive and energetic hyperactivity that can well understand, was the brand itself or, rather, the mask of their profession.

Interventions as they are happening, it was obvious the admiration of the audience felt towards lecturers. Everyone was tense listening to interventions that I found rather boring. All were participants in the success of the other praising this or that strategy, and breaking into sincere and heartfelt applause.

It was toward the end of a woman who climbed on stage and Brianza accent light eyes, compostissima in his executive suit, the hair on a flawless mimicry nonexistent. The rapporteur, unlike their predecessors, began with the establishment of a number of problems encountered in the course of employment, a crisis of vocations, and lamented the difficulty in obtaining human material already formed and valid.

Intervention seemed uninteresting. Then finally came the rapporteur to the point: autocelebrò communicating their results to the figures obtained with the highest rates of growth and future projections. Then revealed the secret of his success in the electric atmosphere of approval, the rapporteur told that it was important not to stop in front of moralistic attitudes or evaluations, and reeled off the path of his experience. Printouts of patients consulting a hospital he saw how many patients in the terminal stage were almost alone and she had caught a major economic success going to convince them to leave their substance to the non-profit organization when it was time.

While pouring the applause of his colleagues, I wondered how it can spend your life with a woman capable of such reasoning.

Here's my answer
It 's really a strange country as ours. No one disputes Nintendo to spend about 40 million in television advertising to sell games and other (Nintendo is the top spender children in Italy), but if the total of 250,000 non-profit organization existing now spends a total of about 4 million, people say "Look how they waste money." The marketing relationship between nonprofit and profit is 1 to 3000, (while in terms of GDP is 1 to 30 ...) but if someone dares to ask for money to SAVE children (and not just let them play ... how does Nintendo) the scandalous and shameful is always someone who "dare" to ask and bother ... In 1997, AIDS killed 1.1 million people in the world, in 2007, despite the invention of protease inhibitors 2.3 million have died ... really not a great result . In Italy in 1997, 11,400 women died of breast cancer, and 10,900 in 2007 ... really not much progress.
The choice is ours: we want to live in a world where my wife, my sister or my daughter always has to live with the fear of being attached to the breast, or maybe we can put in place, every possible effort to try to cure this disease, or poverty in Naples, or school dropout in southern Italy, or the pollution of aquifers in Bolzano, etc.?

My name is Valerio Melandri and teach Techniques of Fundraising at the University of Bologna, as well as directing the only Master in Fundraising existing in Italy, at the Faculty of Economics of Forlì. We teach you what to do fundraising, "the gentle art of teaching others the joy of giving."

Cer to nobody's perfect, and even many "fundraiser" make mistakes, but I will definerei more the result of a "naive arrogance" that a "wicked marketing operation." I'd like to talk with her. I am convinced that it would be a good discussion. Can I send in my last tribute book "Freedom of fundraising"?, If I send a mailing address I would be very pleased. Thank you!