The Komen Debacle: A Public Affairs Social Media Lesson for All

It doesn’t matter what side of the issue you’re on, we can all agree the decision by the Susan G. Komen Foundation (SGKF) to suspend its contributions to Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) garnered far more press than the Foundation ever intended.

There is a lesson in this for public affairs practitioners.

Let’s look at the facts first.

• SGKF provided PPFA affiliates with less than $1 million in total grants annually (representing less than 1% of PPFA fundraising each year).
• The SGKF board established a policy in October 2011 not to support any organization under federal, state or local investigation.
• SGKF opted to notify PPFA of its decision to cease contributions, but not to issue a press release about the decision.
• PPFA is the subject of a Congressional investigation headed by Rep. Cliff Stearns
• SGKF did not suspend its contributions to Penn State (the institution is under investigation by the Department of Education).
• Women are more likely to use social media networks to stay in touch with friends.

What didn’t have to be a big story dominated headlines for days–much to the chagrin of SGKF.  The total amount of contributions in question represented a relatively small percentage of either organizations’ total budget, but a decision by the board blew up because of social media.

As public affairs professionals, are you making decisions and communicating in a way that protects your company or organization from a similar crisis?

Let’s look at where SGKF went wrong.

Failure to establish real contribution guidelines. SGKF made its biggest mistake by calling an apple an orange.  Board members have reported that the decision was made not to support any organization under investigation, and yet within hours of the story breaking evidence to the contrary surfaced (e.g., Penn State).  If the board wanted to truly establish this contribution guideline, it would have been equally applied.

Lack of transparency. SGKF decided not to issue a press release about its decision. Did they think the story wouldn’t grow legs?  Not going public with the decision made it look like they had something to hide.  What if they had opened a public dialogue about the pressure they were getting to suspend funding by their anti-abortion donors?  What kind of solution could have been reached without this firestorm?  What if they had gone public with the decision right away and established the story from their perspective.  They did not get out in front of the story and missed the opportunity to present their case.  In the end, their explanation smelled more like an excuse.  When organizations make controversial decisions, they must be willing to discuss them and prepared to stand by them.

Failure to understand its primary constituent base–and their power. Ninety-nine percent of incidents of breast cancer affect women.  Women are far more likely to use social media to connect with their friends.  Within 24 hours of the story breaking, the SGKF Facebook page received 5,000 comments, it was the second most popular search term on Google and was the top trending story on Twitter.  Analysis of posts on the topic by PowellTate’s Polipulse showed that 75% were critical of SGKF’s decision.  In other words, SGKF didn’t know where their constituents stood on the issue and didn’t realize they would take action.

Clearly SGKF knew this would be a controversial decision and was not prepared to stand by it (as evidenced by the reversed decision), and by failing to understand the new rules of communication it did damage to its reputation that will be long-lasting.

Now the organization has opened itself up for more extensive examination by its donors and walk participants and is being linked to stories that in the past may have gone unnoticed.