Susan G, Komen and Planned Parenthood - My Thoughts

A lot has happened this week concerning Susan G. Komen’s decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood and its subsequent reversal of that decision. I believe every post I saw on Facebook was negative towards SGK’s initial decision, and nearly everyone made a point to say they would no longer support SGK. After much thought, I figured I’d share my thoughts on the issue.

Let me start out first by saying I don’t really care one way or the other on this. If SGK wants to issue grants to PP, then that’s perfectly fine by me. It’s their choice to user their resources as they see fit. My personal feelings on abortion play no part in this. SGK’s mission leads me to believe they don’t let their views on abortion enter into decisions on where to spend their vital resources: “As the world’s largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists, we’re working together to save lives, empower people, ensure quality care for all and energize science to find the cures.” Cancer is their main concern, as you would think it should be.

I’d also like to say that my intent is not to sway anyone’s opinion on this. Each person has every right to withhold their support for any organization for any reason, just as each organization has every right to do what they feel is best for their organization and their mission.

When news broke that SGK had decided to pull funding for PP the reaction was swift and negative. Most everyone assumed the decision was a result of pressure from right-wing groups who are trying to defund PP, namely because PP performs abortions. SGK insists that their decision was not the result of political pressure, but instead was a decision based on their policy to not issue grants to organizations which are under investigation, which PP is. SGK also stated that they were reevaluating how they were spending their resources.

I, for one, have no reason not to believe them. However, I’m not surprised at how many people did not believe SGK. Here is an organization (SGK) that apparently everyone that commented had supported in the past – a statement I make based on the fact that most people said they would no longer support SGK.

My question to those that were threatening to pull their support of SGK is this: why did they support SGK to begin with? I’m making an assumption that the main reason they donated their time and money is because of breast cancer. After all, that is at the heart of SGK’s mission which I mentioned earlier. My guess is that the main reason people donated to SGK was not because they wanted their money to go to Planned Parenthood, otherwise I would think they would have donated directly to PP. That would seem to be the logical thing to do.

And yet, nearly every single person was ready to pull their support for a reason that was not the same reason they donated in the first place. Has SGK’s mission changed? No. They are still using the money they raise in the fight against cancer, through both “quality care” and to “energize science”, or research. So why should people stop supporting SGK? Let’s not forget that for most of those people who are upset the main reason they originally supported SGK was to help in the fight against cancer.

I did a little research and found that SGK spent nearly $255 million in program expenses in fiscal year 2010. Assuming SGK gave roughly $700,000 in grants to PP, which results in little more than 0.03% of their program spend. Is it really worth completely pulling support because you don’t agree with how they’re spending 0.03% of their money? Are the life-saving efforts that they spend the other 99.97% of their money on not worthy of being supported now?

Perhaps those upset are more concerned about how crippling the loss of $700,000 will be to Planned Parenthood. Well, let’s look at PP’s numbers. For their fiscal year ended June 30th, 2010, they had total revenue of $1.05 billion. The $700,000 that PP gets from SGK annually equates to roughly 0.0007% of their total revenue. Planned Parenthood’s net income was $18.5 million in 2010. Even if SGK didn’t give PP the $700,000 anymore, PP could technically cover that loss by tapping into one year’s net income for the next 26 years before they would have to make other cuts to cover the loss. Maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t seem like a huge hit for PP to take.

Which all leads back to my original point. People are willing to chop the head off because they feel a hair is out of place. They’re not willing to support all the wonderful things that SGK does because a minimal amount of money won’t be going to PP, when, if they were so concerned about the work PP is doing they could have donated to PP directly.

So, what does this mean for the future for SGK? Well, for one, I would think they now realize that they will forever need to give grants to Planned Parenthood or else risk losing millions in donations. And two, they must now understand how little faith their supporters have in their ability to make decisions with the money they receive. If at any time in the future Susan G. Komen would want to reevaluate and reprioritize where they spend their money they had best keep that money going to PP, even if it doesn’t fit with where they feel the money would best be spent. It’s really unfortunate that people don’t trust organizations such as SGK to do right by their donations, especially when those same people were previously so willing to give their donations to SGK with the understanding that SGK would do what it feels would be best for how that money is spent.

It’s amazing that people will go from being fully supportive to being completely unsupportive over 0.0007%. Even though 99.9993% of Planned Parenthood’s revenue is unaffected by this decision, it’s still enough for people to defund 99.97% of the work that Susan G. Komen does.

Again, everyone has every right to support any organization they want for any reason. These are just my thoughts and observations.