After coming under fire for their decision to withdraw future funding to Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Breast Cancer Screening program, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation apologized today and vowed to revise its policy and continue allowing Planned Parenthood’s eligibility for future support.
Criticism mounted for several days calling Komen’s decision politically motivated and not in the best interest of the more than 170,000 lower-income women Planned Parenthood’s cancer screenings benefit yearly.
The much ballyhooed position caused three top officials to resign from the charity in protest, and 26 U.S. Senators wrote to the group beseeching them to reverse the decision, in addition to a very public outcry denouncing the charity. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a long supporter of both Planned Parenthood and Susan G. Koman for the Cure, entered the fray and announced that he would personally commit $250,000 to Planned Parenthood in the form of a matching grant.
Komen founder Nancy G. Brinker formally claimed that the public response to the decision was favorable and seemed determined to push forward, but backtracked today in this statement:
We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.
The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.
Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.
Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.
It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women. We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics – anyone’s politics.
Starting this afternoon, we will have calls with our network and key supporters to refocus our attention on our mission and get back to doing our work. We ask for the public’s understanding and patience as we gather our Komen affiliates from around the country to determine how to move forward in the best interests of the women and people we serve.
We extend our deepest thanks for the outpouring of support we have received from so many in the past few days and we sincerely hope that these changes will be welcomed by those who have expressed their concern.
Sounds a lot like someone’s PR team stepped in and made an impression about the future outlook of their image as well as their bottom line.
