With Public Support in Peril, Planned Parenthood Attracts Private Gifts

Indiana’s Planned Parenthood affiliate didn’t have to issue a single solicitation to raise more than $100,000 in less than a month.

Instead it has received spontaneous donations from people in 46 states and from as far away as Belgium after the state’s lawmakers voted to pull all of the group’s state funds, or $1.4-million.

The national Planned Parenthood headquarters and its state affiliates are seeing a rise in giving as the organization finds itself in an ideological and politically charged fund-raising battle that has worn on for decades.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which represents some 80 local affiliates, reported a 500-percent increase in the number of online gifts it received during the eight weeks it was front and center in a dispute among members of Congress and the Obama administration that came close to causing a government shutdown.

Since then, online gifts in May have slowed somewhat, but more are arriving than in May 2010.

Meanwhile, as more states follow Indiana’s lead in seeking to eliminate or restrict government money for Planned Parenthood, some of the 3,000 local affiliates of the National Right to Life Committee, the nation’s largest antiabortion group, are also reporting a rise in contributions, though they declined to provide precise amounts.

“If abortion is in the news, we see an increase,” said David Gittrich, development director of Wichita Kansans for Life. “We saw a fairly significant bump at the end of last year, and since then we have had a slight increase.”

No Match for State Funds

While increased donations are heartening to many Planned Parenthood officials, they said that most are small, one-time gifts that don’t come close to replacing government funds.

“The loss of public dollars far outweighs any uptick in contributions,” said David Nova, a vice president at Planned Parenthood Health Systems, in Roanoke, Va.

Since Congress has agreed to preserve $360-million in federal aid for Planned Parenthood, the action for now has shifted away from the federal government to the states.

In addition to Indiana, at least seven other states have or are considering ending government support to the organization.

In Kansas, the second state legislature after Indiana to eliminate state subsidies to the charity so far this year, contributions rose by 9 percent from the beginning of the year through April 15 and included a $10,000 gift from a man in New York City, said Leigh Klein, director of development at the Planned Parenthood affiliate in Overland Park.

“I called to thank him, and he said that we really needed the money.”

In Texas, lawmakers have proposed eliminating some $20-million in annual payments to Planned Parenthood, which operates 83 clinics across the state.

The Austin Planned Parenthood affiliate last month held a fund-raising event called “Cocktails for a Cause” for young donors who paid $40 apiece to attend and raised $63,000, well over its goal of $45,000.

• In Wisconsin, where lawmakers are pushing hard for state funds to be denied to any organization that provides abortion services, Planned Parenthood officials said the number of new donors from January through April of this year increased by 200 percent over the same period last year.
• In North Carolina, the amount of money contributed to Planned Parenthood grew by 23 percent from January through April, after legislators proposed cutting some $430,000 in payments to the charity’s nine facilities in that state.
• At Planned Parenthood Health Systems, in Roanoke, donations rose 40 percent from January through April. The affiliate covers most of North Carolina as well as South Carolina, West Virginia, and half of Virginia, a state where lawmakers are seeking tough new restrictions on which health-care facilities can perform abortions.

Filling a Gap

Contributions have increased slightly in response to a proposal that has now been passed by the Tennessee legislature to withdraw $1.1-million in state funds from Planned Parenthood facilities.

But those donations don’t come close to equaling the state funds, which accounted for 30 percent of the Memphis affiliate’s budget and a tenth of the Nashville affiliate’s budget.

Said Jeff Teague, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee, in Nashville: “It would be optimistic to say that donations will fill the gap.”