Outsourcing for Breast Cancer

          What does “outsourcing” really mean? According to the google dictionary, to outsource is to “obtain (goods or a service) from an outside or foreign supplier, esp. in place of an internal source”. Normally when we think of outsourcing, we think of big companies like Apple, Chase or Google outsourcing jobs like customer service or manufacturing, although whether the effect is positive or negative is up for discussion. Americans also think about “internal outsourcing”, as in farmers hiring illegal (foreign) immigrants to pick strawberries. However, “outsourcing” in a charity is not as common a thought. When you outsource jobs in a charity, you are not hiring people in India to run customer service; instead you are obtaining a good (money) from outside sources as an alternative of initially raising it yourself.

As a general rule, “outsourcing” has a negative connation. For non-profits, it’s a necessity. In his TED talk, The way we think about charity is dead wrong, Dan Pallotta offered an excellent example of the benefits of outsourcing for charities. Say you run a breast cancer charity, like Pallotta did, and you want to start fundraising so you can donate money to the American Cancer Society. You want to keep overhead low, so you’ve got to start small and decide to have a bake sale. To put on the bake sale you only spend 5% of the money you eventually raise for American Cancer Society, which is $71. What Pallotta did was attract sponsors, and come up with 350k as seed money. Within five years he had multiplied the 350k to $194 million, keeping his overhead at 40%. What do you think American Cancer Society would rather receive, $71 from a bake sale or $194 million from a breast cancer awareness walk? Because Pallotta “outsourced”, drawing money from various sponsors, he was able to generate a much amount to donate to whichever breast cancer foundation he chose. So the “true” cost of outsourcing for non-profit organizations is a larger impact on providing assistance for the needy.