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The Susan G. Komen affiliate in Wichita is hoping to maintain business as usual in its fight against breast cancer, but the organization and some of its sponsors say it’s too soon to judge the local fallout from the parent organization’s recent controversy involving donations to Planned Parenthood.
The Mid-Kansas Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, based in Wichita, gives money to hospitals and community organizations across the state to educate people about breast cancer and provide screening and care for the uninsured. It does not give any money to Planned Parenthood, and Planned Parenthood has never asked Komen in Kansas for any money, both organizations say.
But that doesn’t mean the local organization will be left unscathed by the uproar over decisions made by Komen on the national level in the past two weeks.
“We’re hearing from people on both sides – people who are supporting us still and people who are not happy with headquarters with what happened last week and are no longer going to support us,” Lindsay Smith, executive director of the Mid-Kansas Komen affiliate, said this week.
Smith figures she has received about 50 e-mails and 10 phone calls since Komen’s national headquarters first announced that it would stop its affiliates from giving money to Planned Parenthood and then, amid an outpouring of protest, reinstated the grants.
“From a percentage standpoint we have probably had fewer of the e-mails than some affiliates have, and in some ways that makes me feel good,” Smith said. But she doesn’t know the opinions of people she hasn’t heard from, and only time will tell what they think, she said.
Those who say they are no longer supporting Komen actually fall into two camps – people who oppose grants to Planned Parenthood, and those who can’t forgive Komen’s initial denying of the grants, Smith said.
Most of the sponsors of the Komen Race for the Cure in Wichita said this week that they intend to continue their involvement in this year’s race, which is Sept. 29.
The Eagle has sponsored the Komen Race for the Cure in the past, said Kim Nussbaum, the newspaper’s publisher. This year will be no different.
“Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure is a great cause, and I’m confident they will move forward through this unfortunate controversy,” she said. “It is in everyone’s best interest that they do, therefore they can count on our support.”
Dillons and KWCH also are sponsors, and both said they plan to maintain their involvement.
“We’ll continue to offer our support, and we look forward to the race,” Dillons spokesman Sheila Lowrie said.
“Their mission hasn’t changed,” said Joan Barrett, president and general manager of Sunflower Broadcasting, which operates KWCH, adding that the needs that Komen meets remain. KWCH is committed to the race, Barrett said, especially since longtime KWCH anchor Kim Setty died earlier this year after having breast cancer.
Mike McLaughlin, communications director for Via Christi Health, another major sponsor, said it is too soon to say whether Via Christi will change anything about its sponsorship. “We have the opportunity” to revisit sponsorship of the Komen race before the event, he said.
Money designated for breast screenings
Even before the national furor, the local Komen organization received calls from people expressing concern that money given to Komen would be used to pay for abortions, Smith said. She told callers that no local money was going to Planned Parenthood and that any money given to Planned Parenthood by other Komen affiliates would have to be used for breast health.
“They can only spend it on breast screenings, and we have the right to audit” any entity receiving Komen grant money, Smith said.
In its current grant cycle, Komen Mid-Kansas is providing $390,000 to 13 programs in the state. The affiliate expects to give $500,000 in the next fiscal year, which begins April 1.
Seventy-five percent of money given to Komen on the Kansas level goes to breast-health programs in the state, Smith said. The rest goes to Komen headquarters, but all of that money and more comes back to the state in the form of money for research at the University of Kansas, she said.
Concerns also have been raised about Komen research money going to embryonic stem cell research, but that isn’t happening either, Smith said. One KU grant, for example, is being used to study the benefit of flax seed in breast cancer prevention, she said.
Nationally, Komen provides about $93 million a year to community organizations; 19 of 122 Komen affiliates gave grants totaling about $680,000 to local Planned Parenthood organizations last year for breast-cancer screenings.
Some abortion opponents have pointed out that Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms, and Peter Brownlie, president of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, acknowledged that. He said that the Planned Parenthood clinic in Wichita, for example, provides mostly contraception, and patients who come in for that routinely receive breast-cancer screenings. If it is found that they need a mammogram, they go somewhere else to receive it, he said.
“We’ve certainly heard a lot from supporters and from people we’ve never heard from before unhappy with Komen” for a decision that was ultimately reversed, Brownlie said. He said his organization had received hundreds of donations in the space of a week.
Criticism of Komen
Komen is also being criticized by people uncomfortable with the size of the foundation’s executive salaries, its lawsuits against smaller nonprofit groups, partnerships with companies whose products may increase breast cancer risk and relative lack of investment in research to prevent and treat the disease.
As many as 80 charities have received letters from Komen attorneys over the years asking them to refrain from using the Komen-trademarked pink ribbon or the catchphrase “for the cure.” For example, when Uniting Against Lung Cancer organized a 2010 event in which people flew kites to remember loved ones who died of the disease, it got a cease-and-desist letter from Komen because it called the event “Kites for the Cure.” The New York-based charity spent more than a year tussling with Komen lawyers before resolving the issue with the right to use the name.
Groups focused on women’s health have also taken issue with some of Komen’s corporate partnerships.
In 2010, Komen teamed with KFC in a promotion called “Buckets for the Cure,” which raised $4.2 million for the charity through sales of pink buckets of chicken. Critics questioned the wisdom of partnering with a fast-food company known for serving fried, high-calorie food; obesity and a high-fat diet have both been linked to an increased breast cancer risk.
Komen has been accused of paying its executives excessive salaries and spending too much on lavish events and too little on research. But experts on charity finance said that some of those criticisms miss the mark.
According to Chuck McLean, vice president for research at GuideStar, a nonprofit tracker in Williamsburg, Va., Komen’s tax filings indicate that it spent 77 percent of its income on programs in the year that ended March 31, 2011. Though some would consider this relatively low, it can be difficult to compare numbers between charities.
“The rules for classifying expenses are extremely vague,” said Peter Frumkin, director of the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service at the University of Texas in Austin. McLean calculated that it costs Komen about 11 cents to raise a dollar, a ratio that’s “very typical.”
Komen CEO Nancy Brinker’s 2010 compensation of $417,171 was in line with salaries of heads of other large philanthropies. Among charities that take in between $200 million and $500 million each year, the average chief executive salary is $430,000, according to CharityWatch.
Komen’s audited financial statements show that it spent $181 million on public health education and $75 million on research in the year ending March 31. In a news conference last week, Brinker said she wanted to boost the foundation’s financing of research.
Helped by Komen
Gayle Thomas heads up an organization in Wichita that goes to such places as churches, hair salons and food banks to reach black women who may not otherwise receive screenings for breast cancer. The grassroots effort, Witness Project of Kansas, got started with the local Komen affiliate’s help, Thomas said.
“I hope that women do not stop supporting Komen because they do give money in our community,” she said, adding that her main concern was not research but helping women who have breast cancer find out about it.
“I’m a small operation but I am 100 percent for women at risk whether they are Afro-American, English as a second language, incarcerated.”
She said that breast cancer is not as common in black women as in white women, and that because of that and other reasons, black women often don’t talk about breast cancer or get tested. The result is that when they do get breast cancer, it is caught later, and the women often die in their 40s or 50s.
She said she had received “quite a few e-mails” in the last couple of weeks.
“Most of mine have been concerned: ‘Is Komen going to be OK?’ ” she said.
“I hope they (Komen) can survive it. … They have to keep apologizing and doing what they’re doing.”
Contributing: Los Angeles Times, Washington Post
