Has Overhead Gone Over Our Head? (Class 2)

Sept 23/2016

Much the same as our first class, our second class began with another guest speaker; Sharon Charter of the Hamilton Community Foundation. Sharon gave us more perspective from the eyes of a grant giving body and gave us an introduction to some of the charities and non-profits in Hamilton. Additionally, we received our first exposure to some of the programs that non-profits ran, and some of the impacts that these programs had. We also first learned about the problem of overhead within the non-profit sector. Many funders (corporate, grant giving, and private) prefer to have their money used to directly impact the people that charities serve, and some put limits on how large overhead costs can be for organizations that they will fund. This can serve as a real problem, since many organizations need to incur overhead costs in order to expand, as well as attract, train, and retain the highest quality professionals for the job. While I won’t get into the specifics of it, it’s certainly worth looking into if you plan on working in or for the non-profit sector. Our Professor recommended an excellent Ted video with Dan Pallotta entitled “The way we think about charity is dead wrong” which I recommend watching for more information.