THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I do believe it is important to research charities before you contribute any money, and I have not looked at SKG or this rating site before, but it appears they rank very well.

It looks like mgl misunderstood some of the terminology.

from Charity Navigator’s glossary

Program Expenses:
This measure reflects what percent of its total budget a charity spends on the programs and services it exists to deliver. Dividing a charity’s program expenses by its total functional expenses yields this percentage.

80.5% of SKG’s expenses go to funding their causes.

Overall they scored 66.2 of a possible 70 points
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4509

Among breast cancer charities, it receives the highest rating from this site.

OK, I get it. Yes, I misinterpreted “expenses” to mean monies that do not go to programs ans services.

Thanks, Brian, for clearing that up.

I still think that the PP de-funding is political and I don’t like the idea of a charity CEO making half a mil a year, but I suppose that it is such a large charity that that is not out of line and probably a heck of a lot less than CEO of for-profit corporations with similar revenues.

Politics may be part of it. Business may be part of it, too. Companies as well as non-profits like charities have been targeted by “advocacy groups” when they do things that a group finds distasteful. Boycotts obviously are a part of those groups’ arsenals. Perhaps Komen was feeling some heat from such groups and did their cost/benefit on sticking with PP or dumping them. Of course, even if it were a business decision of some kind, I suspect that, based on some of their high level employees, that Komen would have been more willing to cave to any pressure.

Then again, maybe it is all politics. I don’t agree with their decision but it’s not my charity. If it is political, I’d respect them a lot more if they would just come out and say that they no longer wish to support an organization like PP. While I’m quite in favor of abortion rights, I’m not so dogmatic that I can’t separate the overwhelmingly good work Komen does in its field.

Of course, “program expenses” can mean different things.  Komen spends about twice as much on publicity, education and outreach as on grants for research.

Oh, and one of its grantees is affiliated with Penn State, which I think is also under investigation but somehow not being defunded.

I don’t know if it is political, it very well could be. A quick google search shows there were four places in my town (population 100,000) that do free mammograms, with PP (to my knowledge) being the only one that performs abortions.

This is just my opinion, but it seems like the fuss raised over this is equally politically motivated as there are many places a poor woman can get a mammogram. The whole issue centers around one question: What is the unborn? If the unborn is a human being, then it seems inconsistent for an organization like SKG (who is in the business of saving lives) to be partnership with PP, and they should have seen this earlier and never been in partnership with them. On the flip side, if abortion is not any morally different than getting your appendix removed, then PP is being politically bullied for no good reason.

It seems like the question has been lost in this mini-fracas going on in the news.

From reading more about this, Komen at least has a facially valid reason for not renewing these grants. PP obviously isn’t the one doing breast cancer screening, PP is sending people to other clinics and paying for it. Komen says they want to fund activities directly whenever feasible, not by pass-through grants. And it appears they’re not completely cutting off PP. According to the article linked below, they did renew grants for 3 of the 19 clinics they were previously supporting.

In any event, it sounds like both Komen and PP are benefiting financially from all this publicity, at least in the short-term. Donations are way up for both.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/02/politics/planned-parenthood-bloomberg/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

This is better reporting than the CNN article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/komen-gives-new-explanation-for-cutting-funds-to-planned-parenthood/2012/02/02/gIQAkTnklQ_story.html

When someone has a new reason for their decision after a firestorm from the first reason, I don’t give it much credence. 

Breast cancer screening is not a mammogram, it’s an exam and teaching self-exams.  PP was doing it for a cost of about $4/screen (free to the consumer). 

I have no idea what Komen means when it says that donations are up 100%.  From what?

Komen had said the decision was the result of newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations under investigation — affecting Planned Parenthood because of an inquiry by a Republican congressman.

On Thursday, Komen President Elizabeth Thompson told reporters that the funding decision was unrelated to the investigation into whether Planned Parenthood was illegally using federal funds to pay for abortions.

Komen founder Nancy Brinker said the organization wants to support groups that directly provide breast health services, such as mammograms. She noted that Planned Parenthood was providing only mammogram referrals.

“When someone has a new reason for their decision after a firestorm from the first reason, I don’t give it much credence.”

In this case, it is a complete contradiction. Either someone in the media got the first reason (or the second) wrong or Komen is lying through their teeth.

If Komen actually said both things, then that is a double WTF and I will never support them again.

As I have said many times, I hate liars…

MGL, this is what I believe is the Rosetta Stone article from which the widely reported reasoning behind the initial Komen justification was disseminated. 
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/02/top-susan-g-komen-official-resigned-over-planned-parenthood-cave-in/252405/
It’s pretty probative (which doesn’t make it true, but it’s not just regurgitating what someone else reported and it gives pretty lengthy quotes).

I have no bias against Komen.  I’ve supported them for years, certainly more than I give Planned Parenthood, and a close relative who had breast cancer surgery just a few weeks ago said that her main information on how to proceed once she was diagnosed came from a thorough review of information on their website.  This saddens me.

I’d suggest that the head-snapping reaction to the Komen decision was due to it being so transparently political and justified in such an insultingly flimsy way.

Decision reversed:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/cancer-group-backs-down-on-cutting-off-planned-parenthood/?hp

Evidentally, they are getting out of the kitchen, if you catch my drift.

Sounds like two energy companies colluding to force blackouts, and the city has to pay triple rates from the other provider.

After all is said and done, everything is back to where it was, and Bloomberg has donated 250,000$ that he wasn’t planning on donating to begin with.

Diabolically clever!

To P.P. lawyers: that was a joke.

Somehow I think that the, “donations are up 100%” was another bald-faced lie. Clearly they changed their mind for economic reasons i will definitely not support Komen anymore.

Now they’re back to their original explanation:

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation.

From an article in The Atlantic:

But three sources with direct knowledge of the Komen decision-making process told me that the rule was adopted in order to create an excuse to cut off Planned Parenthood. (Komen gives out grants to roughly 2,000 organizations, and the new “no investigations” rule applies to only one so far.) The decision to create a rule that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood, according to these sources, was driven by the organization’s new senior vice president for public policy, Karen Handel, a former gubernatorial candidate from Georgia who is staunchly anti-abortion and who has said that since she is “pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood.”

This is a public relations disaster for Komen, and one that is well-deserved, IMO…

Maybe they should have been more up front about why they were cutting off of PP, but I guess I’m sort of confused how exactly it is a public relations disaster. Cutting PP off made a large segment of the population angry, and a large segment of the population cheer.

If they were more up front and honest, would that really make people more happy? I think the outrage levels would be about the same.

D’oh! Just caught on the news about the waffling. Now no one is happy.

Interesting how their net assets have doubled over the last 5 years.

Charity business is good.

http://ww5.komen.org/uploadedFiles/SGKFTC_FY10AnnualReport.pdf

I stopped supporting SGK the second I found out they were suing 20ish other cancer organization “for the cure.” I am pro-life, but that has nothing to do with my lack of support.  Why this issue drew more media than the litigation issues is interesting.

17, right the PR disaster is all the lying and waffling. They have no credibility now. I don’t know if that is going to hurt them financially or not so maybe “disaster” is not the right word. 

19, right, that really pissed me off too when I read about it. They seemed to be a heavy handed organization which, IMO, does not behoove a charity.