Big Bet: How an Unlikely Group of Visionaries Forged a New Path for Philanthropy

A paradigm-busting true story of how a bold bet on “multiplication philanthropy” transformed a struggling Phoenix charity into one of the largest St. Vincent de Paul councils in the world—and could revolutionize how America gives.

What if the rules governing how charities raise and spend money are not just wrong, but actively harmful to the people they’re meant to help?

The Big Bet tells the remarkable true story of how an unlikely alliance of visionaries dared to find out. When the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, one of Arizona’s largest foundations, heard the ideas of iconoclast thinker Dan Pallotta at a 2011 conference luncheon, it sparked a revolution. Pallotta’s argument was simple but explosive: Nonprofits, shackled by an irrational obsession with low overhead, are chronically underinvesting in their own capacity to do good.

Inspired, Piper Trust made an extraordinary wager on the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Phoenix—a beloved but financially fragile organization serving the city’s poor and homeless. What followed was a high-stakes experiment in what Pallotta calls “multiplication philanthropy”: the idea that rational investment in growth can multiply a charity’s impact beyond anything piecemeal giving can achieve.

Within a few years, SVdP Phoenix became one of the largest St. Vincent de Paul councils in the world, feeding, clothing, housing, and healing tens of thousands who had nowhere else to turn.

The Big Bet is a gripping narrative of faith, risk, and transformation—and an urgent call for donors, foundations, and nonprofit leaders to rethink everything they thought they knew about how charity works.