Pallotta TeamWorks@pallottateamworks
By asking people to do the most they could do instead of the least, Pallotta TeamWorks championed a new paradigm for citizen activism on important charitable causes and charitable event fundraising itself.
The company created multi-day event concepts that challenged participants to journey long distance for multiple days on end in the name of causes they cared about deeply, married this challenge to an equally daunting challenge to raise a mandatory minimum of four-figures (i.e., $1,200, $2,500, etc.) in order to participate, and marketed these offerings using consumer brand practices that had not previously been the custom of charitable events.
The company created the AIDSRides, the AIDS Vaccine Rides, the African AIDS Trek, the original Breast Cancer 3-Day walks, and the original Out of the Darkness suicide prevention overnight event. These events grossed $556 million in donor contributions and netted $305 million for charity after all expenses in nine years. More than 182,000 people walked or rode in one of the events. The company had approximately 400 full-time employees in sixteen offices around the nation at its peak in 2002. The company was the subject of a 2002 Harvard Business School case study. Pallotta TeamWorks' ideas and methods have been studied and adopted by dozens of other events, charities, and event production companies in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, which now collectively raise tens of millions of dollars each year for important causes.