Dan Pallotta

Story

I’m a public figure in American philanthropy and a little-known figure in American music, and looking to change that!

My first band was with my mother and my sister Nancy. My mother would lead us around the kitchen table on the second-floor of our two-family house in Malden, Massachusetts banging pots and pans and we’d all sing, “McNamara’s Band” at the top of our lungs.

I’m gay and my husband and partner of twenty-two years and I have fifteen year-old… triplets. Yes, three of them. I’ve been writing songs for forty years, but took about a thirty-year break in the middle to create the AIDSRides, the Breast Cancer 3-Day walks, and the Out of the Darkness Suicide Prevention walks. We had 182,000 people take part in one of these epic, heroic journeys. They raised nearly $600 million in nine years—more money raised more quickly for those causes than any events in history, and were the subject of a Harvard Business School case study. In September of 2022, we had a documentary movie come out based on my book, “Uncharitable,” about the need to liberate the nonprofit sector to its true potential. It features Edward Norton, and the heads of TED, the Ford Foundation, the Nature Conservancy, Charity:Water and many other organizations. Stephen Gyllenhaal directed it. My TED talk on charity is the 16th most commented TED talk of all time. I’ve written five books, served on two school boards, and sang the national anthem at a Los Angeles Rams game, and did not forget the words!

My music and my commitment to making a difference in the world are inseparable. I try to write songs about the human condition, as experienced by all kinds of human beings across all manner of circumstance, and songs about the possibility of a world that could work for everyone.

My songs are folks songs. I play guitar. Sing. I released my first album in twenty years in 2022 – American Pictures. My next, Winnebago Dreams, will be released this year.

People have said nice things about me and my songs. Deepak Chopra said that “Dan is the embodiment of authenticity, integrity, courage and higher calling.” Clive Davis called me, “a gifted poet.” Steve Earle called my writing “groundbreaking.”

My Mom and my sis are still around, but the band’s been broken up for some time.

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