US fundraiser and author Dan Pallotta is working to set up a global leadership movement to implement the ideas contained in his book Uncharitable, which challenge the perversity of the rules that govern the non-profit sector around the world.

Pallotta told an audience of fundraisers at the Institute of Fundraising’s National Convention this morning that he wanted to collaborate with other organisations and thought leaders to launch an ‘international charity defence league’.

This organisation would represent and promote the non-profit sector worldwide by providing “a charity anti-defamation league in the media, legislative initiatives, and public awareness advertising campaigns” to educate the public about the futility of focusing on metrics such as spending on overheads.

Pallotta said he envisaged full-page newspapers ads featuring an image of a lowly-paid charity chief executive who is absolutely committed to her job and works 90 hours a week, with the strapline “I’m an overhead”.

And he floated the concept of online discussion groups to further the cause.

“We need to return to our wildest dreams,” he said. “We didn’t come into this work because we had a passion for a lack of profit.”

Pallotta told Civil Society that he hoped to have the Defence League up and running by the end of this year, and planned to write another book outlining the steps that needed to be taken to spread the messages more widely into the public psyche.

“Several publishers have asked me to write another book, so I think the next one will be shorter, a kind of constitution for how this might happen,” he said.

In Pallotta’s plenary he reiterated the ideas contained in Uncharitable – effectively that the existing economic paradigm that forbids charities from pursuing profits creates institutional and psychological barriers that prevent them from achieving transformational social change.

Pallotta's first UK conference appearance was last year, when he was a keynote speaker at Charity Finance Live.