March 8, 2001 | Read Time: 2 minutes
By NICOLE WALLACE
Propelled by the Internet, a spontaneous fund-raising campaign raised more than $600,000 for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates.
In the January 26 issue of the Los Angeles Times, the columnist Patt Morrison wrote that she planned to celebrate Presidents’ Day by making a contribution to Planned Parenthood in honor of President George W. Bush, to protest his position against abortion. One of Mr. Bush’s first actions as president was to reinstate a rule that bars government aid from going to international family-planning services that provide abortions or abortion counseling, and Mr. Bush’s choice for Attorney General, John Ashcroft, has been an outspoken opponent of abortion rights.
Ms. Morrison’s idea resonated with readers, who started an e-mail chain that quickly spread across the country when they sent messages encouraging their friends and family members to consider making Presidents’ Day tributes of their own.
Between January 26 and the Presidents’ Day holiday, more than 15,000 donors contributed upwards of $500,000 to Planned Parenthood’s national headquarters in response to the grass-roots campaign. Approximately $350,000 came in through the organization’s Web site.
Planned Parenthood estimates that the drive resulted in more than 5,000 donations to its local affiliates totaling at least $100,000.
In the days after Ms. Morrison’s article appeared, the organization started to realize that the response was going to be bigger than it had originally thought and added information about the campaign to the donation page of its Web site. Planned Parenthood also offered donors the option of including a personal message to Mr. Bush that the organization would deliver to the White House.
Molly Smith Watson, Planned Parenthood’s director of development for direct-response marketing, believes that the organization, by reacting quickly and providing information on its site, was able to perpetuate the e-mail campaign’s momentum and give it credibility. “If we didn’t have the messages right there on the site,” she says, “I’m sure people wouldn’t have come to it in droves and told their friends to go to it.”
To get there: Go to http://www.plannedparenthood.org.
