Unless you've been living under a rock, this week a big controversy happened when the Susan G. Komen Foundation said they would no longer give funding to Planned Parenthood so they could give screenings for breast cancer. The foundation claimed this was due to a new policy where they wouldn't help nonprofits that were under investigation. However, most people felt it was due to political and cultural pressure from anti-choice advocates angry that Planned Parenthood provides abortions.
In the backlash of this, and only in a couple of days, Planned Parenthood raised around 3 million dollars and the Komen Foundation backtracked and apologized. I'm guessing this isn't what the anti-choice people intended. They're probably wondering what happened.
For a moment, I'm going to give Komen the benefit of the doubt and assume they actually were just following their new policy of not giving to people under investigation. To be fair, it's not a bad policy. We all know there have been a rash of nonprofits that have been found to be nothing more than people's scams. There is nothing wrong with Komen using discretion about where they give their money.
However, discretion is the key word here. There is a difference between the Bernie Madoff Foundation for TaTas and Planned Parenthood. Right now, Planned Parenthood is the political target for a lot of people who want to be loud and get attention. Not sending them money is kind of like not giving your kid lunch money because the bullies are just going to take it away anyhow.
On the other hand, if the foundation was bending to political and social pressure by certain groups to sever ties with Planned Parenthood because PP gives abortions, it was a deeply idiotic move. For one thing, the number of abortions PP gives in no way equals the number of breast screenings. It makes about as much sense as shaving your head because some of your hair has split ends. It also sends the basic message that anti-choice people claim to not be making but so often are; women who have abortions are horrible people who deserve nothing but suffering in their lives. They just added a nice dose of cancer to that for good measure.
Most of all, it just simply backfired. In the last few days, PP received millions. Komen was told by quite a few people they would lose donations. People were angry. See, the thing is, while there are a lot of people out there who don't support the concept of abortion, and even more who really don't care one way or the other, a vast majority of them understood that the Komen money wasn't going towards abortions. It was going to screen for breast cancer.
They also know that Komen, also a non-profit, is funded by all those people who buy the pink stuff and do those races. A lot of people put a good deal of time and effort into funding Komen. Planned Parenthood is a very direct and clear way in which they can see this time and effort being put into practice.
The Susan G. Komen Foundation handled this whole thing very poorly. Their PR people should have thought it through and really considered the consequences. It really sucks that this happened, because SGK does raise a lot of money for breast cancer research. I personally know dozens of people involved in their fundraising and it's sad that their set up a situation where they got entangled with a political issue that has nothing to do with what this foundation stands for.
It was a big mistake and they clearly need to hire some people who have a firmer grasp on public reaction. Any organization that is dependent on public donation needs that. Otherwise, they'll soon disappear.
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