I Am Going to Regret This: on Komen and Planned Parenthood

[rowyn]

To start:

(A) I like Planned Parenthood. During my college-student years, I obtained birth control pills through them, and because they had a policy that required annual exams to get birth control pills, I actually had regular health screenings and tests for . It was pretty much the only medical care I received during my years uninsured. Their services were cheap and professional.

(B) I like Susan G. Komen for the Cure. I do not have fond personal memories of them as I do PP, and I think they spend too much money on "education" (as opposed to screening, treatment or research programs). But a large part of breast cancer prevention is convincing women to do self-exams and get mammograms, and breast cancer is a big killer of women that is mostly preventable if caught in a timely fashion. So I can't say the education is wasted.

Given that I like both charities and think they do good work, you'd think I might have mixed feelings about Komen's recent de-funding and re-funding of grants to Planned Parenthood.

As it happens, though, all I can think is that this is one darn silly inconsequential kerfluffle.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure has total assets of almost $500,000,000. Its total expenses, including grants, were over $400,000,000.

I can't readily find current financial information for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, but their 2008 balance sheet showed $1,078,000,000 in total assets.

Komen's last grant to PP was $680,000. That figure represents about:

• 0.14% of Komen's total assets 2011 *


• 0.06% of Planned Parenthoods total assets 2008

* Yes, I'd rather compare this to expenses and revenue for a more apples-and-apples effect, but I can't find expenses for PPFA at all, so assets it is.

The point is, the amount of money at stake here is tiny for either charity. PPFA is not going to shut down without money from Komen. Komen is not going to be providing Funds for Abortions if they grant money to PPFA for breast-care services**. Komen can still do plenty of good whether or not it grants less than half a percent of its revenues to PP. It is Just Not That Big a Deal. It is not proof that one side or the other is Losing the Abortion Debate. It is such a tiny amount that it doesn't even get a footnote on either's financial statement.

** Yes, PP provides breast exams and related services. Most of their services are health-care related, and not connected to either contraception (about a third of their services) or abortion (3%). For a lot of low-income, uninsured women -- just like me sixteen years ago -- PP is their main health care provider, sad as that is.

The only good thing that came out of any of this is that a bunch of people who are passionately for or against abortion gave a lot of money that they probably wouldn't've thought to donate otherwise to two perfectly good causes. -.-

Comments

[level-head.livejournal.com]

This is actually very common. I'm on the board of one charity which pursues grants with larger ones and gives grants to smaller ones. My involvement is both program committee (approving grants) and assistance with writing grants. Separately, I write lots of grant proposals -- six this year so far, totalling about $45 million. One more to do this weekend.

What's happening here is areas of specialization. Many foundations that want to do a particular kind of good (or bad, and there are some like that), don't have the detailed knowledge and staff to do that. So they fund organizations that specialize in those areas.

There is some loss through layers of overhead (though my work in the medical foundation is as a volunteer board member and donor; there are only two paid people but 26 members of the board). The benefit is getting money in the hands of people who know how best to make it do the desired job.

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[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I think that's awesome of you to volunteer your time as such! And given we're only four weeks into the year, that is indeed a lot of grant proposals.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Let me correct an impression, though: I volunteer time for the medical foundation, but I also get paid for writing grants. Those things are connected: a grant-writing company whose proposals were critiqued by me at the medical foundation asked if I'd like to do work for them for other clients. I ultimately accepted -- and now head up their scientific research grantwriting. I was the sole writer on three of the grants this year (I'd forgotten about one!), and part of a team on the four. Three were scientific/medical research (one neurology and two opthalmology), one healthcare (for a hospital), one women's health, one community information services (with one more due Monday), and one new charter school for mostly-minority kids.

In each case, these are seeking money from organizations (government or private) who want to accomplish something in particular. Their job is to find (and fund) the organizations who specialize in that thing. The federal and state governments are big sources of this. For example, a lot of university and other research is funded by the National Institutes of Health.
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/oer.htm

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[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I see! I did not know there was such a thing as grantwriting as a profession, but it does seem reasonable.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

It's a bit like writing business plans. Many people wing it, but there are lots of folks who do that work professionally.

Grants are the same -- but in many cases, have strict formats and arcane rules that are hard for folks to navigate.

An example: A research grant proposal to one of the National Institutes of Health agencies will be rejected if it uses Times New Roman font, but can use Georgia (which looks very much like TNR). Some grants require headers and footers; the NIH will reject one if it has headers and footers, as their system adds these after submission.

What you say, and how much space you have to say it, are strictly governed. And many researchers are decidedly better at science than writing.

It is relatively rare that writer-types are also science folks enough to speak that language comfortably. I've been fortunate enough to have a foot in both camps, and every day I try to get better. Not only that, I get to meet and work with some wonderful folks.

One side "benefit" so to speak is having my nose rubbed in the many government and foundational funding practices. Some of my clients consider me an expert on scientific research and financial modeling related to Obamacare (even they call it that) -- but they have no idea that I opposed it, and still do. (The system needs fixing, but this makes it worse.) The clients, though, are funded by it and its predecessor programs, so they have no choice but to really like it. There are actually mixed feelings, which various medical professionals are careful about expressing.

A couple of days ago, a person asserted that "most of Bush's $15 billion in aid to Africa was spent on abstinence-only programs." Because of my work researching and writing grants for related programs, I happened to know that the number was closer to $1b out of the $15b, an arcane tidbit that I would not likely have known otherwise.

I get involved in everything from gang prevention to disease prevention to cutting-edge research to special education to domestic violence prevention to building new city parks. It's very interesting -- and my $5m city park proposal (I was the lead writer) has just advanced to the finals, beating out a few hundred competitors so far. We'll know in March or so whether it is approved -- only about 4% are.

For most research grants, the approval rate is about 25%. It's very competitive work -- and, sadly, rather politicized in some respects. But I do what I can to keep politics out of it.

My clients are all over the map, politically, and we generally don't talk about it. When we do, I'm content to simply listen, with the occasional nudge toward different information.

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[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Nifty! That's definitely something you should stick in your blog as something interesting for folks to know about you.

I... have no idea why they would reject a grant proposal for using Times New Roman. That just seems terribly arbitrary.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I might do that.

From the SF424 Guide, accessible here:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/424/index.htm#inst

Font

Use an Arial, Helvetica, Palatino Linotype, or Georgia typeface, a black font color, and a font size of 11 points or larger. (A Symbol font may be used to insert Greek letters or special characters; the font size requirement still applies.)

Type density, including characters and spaces, must be no more than 15 characters per inch.

Type may be no more than six lines per inch.

There's such a dramatic difference between Arial and Georgia that you wonder how these two were both allowed. I tend to use Georgia, as it's much friendlier to read. You'll see NIH reviewers complaining online about yet another proposal in minimum-size Arial, an uninviting gray wall of text. Georgia, bumped up a point size, with a bit of air and some diagrams, makes the document more approachable.

But other reviewers have been seen noting that they are turned off by "anything non-standard."

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[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Testing!

This is Arial.
This is Helvetica.
This is Palatino.
This is Georgia.

Arial and Helvetica seem to be sans serif, Palatino and Georgia seem to be serif, but apart from that I couldn't tell them apart at a glance!

[level-head.livejournal.com]

It's crucial how much space they take up, because the space you're given is never enough. And reviewers hated looking at Arial Narrow, a very tedious font to read.

As I am vision-impaired, pirate patch and all, I appreciate a readable font.

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[level-head.livejournal.com]

Two things occurred to me:

1. You need to add Sparta to your list.
2. I need an updated eye-con.

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