Komen's Rise and Fall

When the time comes to write the history of the Rise and Fall of the Great Non-profits, at least one will have the honor of being both great and small.

The Susan G. Komen Foundation a.k.a. Race for the Cure has recently come under fire. It started last year when Komen cut funding from Planned Parenthood, another charity that serves women with support and medical assistance, including legal abortions. This was a problem for conservative religious leaders among the Komen elite, and so the organization made the mistake of removing millions of dollars of vital funding to the much smaller, but very popular organization that was already suffering from attacks from the religious right.

Think what you will about abortion, it remains that many people support a woman’s right to choose. Abortion is a right according to the Supreme Court and so it has been since the 1970s.  In any case, when Komen turned its back on Planned Parenthood, so did Komen supporters by the thousands turn their backs on Komen.

In 2013, Komen announced that it would cut back by half the number of cities holding a signature Komen Race for the Cure. This decision followed on a lot of bad press, such as that its CEO, Nancy Brinker, already wealthy, was making $684,000 annually. Not only that, but Komen funds, measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars taken in per year, are distributed in ways that are surprising. Such as that only 15% of the organization’s budget goes to medical research – the true race for the cure.

Someone said the Komen has reached its half-life, which is a shame because we don’t appear to be much closer to a cure for breast cancer than we were in 1982, when Komen started. Anyway, It may be time to switch emphasis from breast cancer to heart disease, now the prevalent killer of women.

Of course, another scenario would have Komen getting creative with its fundraising, perhaps by moving away from the now commonplace walkathon. The novelty’s worn off.