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.
Just a couple questions--what are they saying that they are doing differently, now? (Um, not much.) And is it enough? (I have my doubts.) What has transpired in the past few days has been a symphony of spin coming from SGK regarding why the partnership with Planned Parenthood was ending, starting from the originally stated policy of not partnering with institutions that were under investigation, which sounded pretty dodgy once it turned out that many of the institutions they dealt with were under some kind of investigation, to some confusing story about wanting to benefit direct providers of services and yadda yadda yadda-- grant excellence (?). And now the non-reversal-reversal, "We're sorry that our political decision to sandbag Planned Parenthood looked as political as it did--hopefully we will we do much better at not looking all political about it when we do something like it in the future."
Not yet known--the futures of the people who decided this was a good plan. The board of SGK needs a nice round of resignations for the sake of good will, I should think. Particularly Karen Handel, who seems to be an especially nasty bit of work.
Also, as for the reputation of SGK, this event has brought to light some criticisms about their methods that weren't very widely heard before. If they think the fallout is nearly over due to this latest bit of glurge, I would say, "Not hardly."
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