"Karen Handel was only the visible problem with Komen, they need to re think their expenditures, and how they have commercialized breast cancer to raise funds for their over inflated administration. Additionally I smell incestuous leadership as I have now heard that Brinker's board is filled with family members and others that she can control. If this is not founders syndrome at it's most heinous, I am not sure what is. Brinker should step down and they need to cleanse the board as well. If this organization truly serves it mission, it must be above reproach. I am sure that Susan herself would want it that way...." Facebook 

The problem with the  Susan G. Komen non profit is that it has tangled itself up in politics, which is a negative thing to do when you are supposed to be non partisan, and serving women's interests regardless of their political, moral and spiritual beliefs. You are serving them by researching and hoping to find a cure for the disease that they have in common. That is what you say and that is why you take their money.

The problem with Komen is that it is being run on a business model, not a non profit service model. Many things have come out during these last few days that point to that. The danger with the business model is the protection of its reach and influence and its profit. The unreasonable in the non profit world is the normal in the business world. You need good business practices to protect the integrity of a non profit. You need good accounting and fiduciary capacity, you need to be accountable and have excellent practices for how your non profit achieves its mission. You must follow all the practices with respect to government reporting, hiring and firing and in an important twist, there must be transparency.

For all of Komen's issues, there did seem to be a layer of transparency. As one donor proclaimed, "if they had been paying attention, they would have stopped donating long ago".  That is just it, it was all out there if you wanted to find it. All of the reporting of how the money that was donated was spent, how the protection of the word "cure" took on unbelievable character, ( that of a giant protecting it's realm) and how their board was structured. No one was bothering to exam all of that because they were well marketed to, well convinced that the cause was being served and no one suspected the lobbying efforts of its team included squashing innovative cancer research as it might have gone against major pharmaceutical  donors interests.

Komen was more of a business than a non profit. They took the model too far. It was being run like a family business. You have your relatives give you a hand. You bring in your son if you are Nancy Brinker. You take a huge salary long with great travel benefits as the figure head of the organization. This is how you make your living, even though you have your own money. You invite all your friends that you get a long with to run the company with you, it is apparently a mostly Texas board with all sorts of like minded political thinkers. You have lobbyist and legal council that protect your interests to an extreme degree, also protecting some donor interests at the same time. The big donor interests.

This kind of situation takes place not just at Komen, but at churches, schools, and other non profits. I call it incestuous leadership and founders syndrome. Incestuous is when you surround yourself with family, friends and others who you can control. As long as you are delivering on your mission, no one seems to care or notice. It is a very bad practice to surround yourself with yes man, ask any fallen dictator.

 As for my very favorite phrase, founder's syndrome, this can be much more complicated and excessive, the two are a very bad mix. You dream up a great concept, plan, idea, etc. Just like an inventor you seek to patent your invention so that no one can steal it. You protect it in it's infancy, and lets face it, you have a measure of success, you keep building it. Somehow the more success you have and the more grateful adoring donors, it becomes harder to see the forest through the trees. In business, you have the right to build and own your own company, that lives and dies with your direction. In a non profit,not so much. You built, they came and used it, others including the users donated to help build it and keep it going. If you make a bad decision, all those people being served suffer, it is not just a financial loss and you shutter up the business, it is a loss for all those you served and that depend on whatever your mission was. Yes, it can be over come, but often at great loss and risk to the very people you were hoping to serve. The mission of a non profit is much more sacred than the mission of a business for profit.

 I once worked with a woman who was one of two founders of a non profit. The work that the this non profit did was important and as it evolved it was having positive impact on the community and it was serving many people. I learned in an odd way that the person who originally was also a founder, was "bumped out" by the woman I knew as the founder. This woman was completely out of the picture and the history of the organization by the time I was under contract. I observed the woman at the helm. I noticed some leadership failures and then I noticed some real, stark character flaws. She said something to me one day that completely changed my mind about continuing to help her with the organization. She was gone not too long after that. Part due to my observations and recommendations to the board. There had been many problems but no one of her "yes" people on the board seemed to take action. Then when she brought on what she presumed would be another "yes" person, who was very wealthy and connected, she found someone strong enough to work against her and acutally put her out. Yes. Put her out, and while the organization struggled, it was brief and it survived and excelled. 

I am not saying that Nancy Brinker is a terrible woman. I think she is a smart business person who has done some good things with her drive and ambition for the cause. It might be time for her to step down or step back and let someone else lead her organzation into a new era.

If there is still a mission and I think there is, that might be necessary. Changing from awareness to more research, including looking at environmental factors might be the most sane way out of the mission debacle. The other important strategy is to abandon politicial influence of either party, and focus strictly on the mission, which is science. Any lobbying should be done with that thought in mind. Nancy Brinker' s son needs a new job, outside of the Komen organization. All of the current board members need to retire to perhaps rolls in an auxiliary for the organization or out of the organization. 

The mission needs to peel away some of it rapid commercialism and pare down to a more streamlined entity both administratively and ideologically. That is the only key to their survival.

I bow to the fact that these are apparently all powerful, wealthy conservative Republicans we are talking about and they would no more do what I suggest, especially as their perceived successes, but how this all ends up remains to be seen and I always suggest a pro active approach. The first thing they have done right is get rid of Karen Handel. The crisp statement by Nancy Brinker told me she sees the writing on the wall and is now waking up to major damage control. For whatever it is worth, that was a good step, although I would have done it when I reversed the decision regarding the funding of Planned Parenthood. Karen, uneducated and an idealogue just wore out her intellectual welcome, but like Palin and Bachmann, someone in their conservative nest will feather with them again.

My last words are to the donors of this organization. Don't be too hard on yourself. If you thought you were doing something good, perhaps you were if only for yourself. That is okay. Now that you know the ropes a bit better, remember to carefully investigate anything involving financial commitment before you buy into the entity. Try to be less emotional about any giving you might do. Know who gets your money and what they plan on doing with it. That includes any transaction where heart strings get attached.

Be suspect of gross commercialization. Always expect to be thanked for your donation, whether inkind or in cash. The nature of a  non profit is how it gets its money to do its mission. There are plenty out there that do steller work, above board and people sincerely depend on. Don't get suckered by someone waving a pink ribbon. Pink ribbons do not cure cancer and cancer is the issue. 

" Komen has led lobbying efforts against common-sense healthcare bills for years--even those that would help women.

In 2009, activists trained their ire on Komen because it retained Hadassah Lieberman--just as her husband turned against the public option in the healthcare reform fight. They cited her own ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

Komen has had a long history of lobbying for the wrong things--a shoddy Patients' Bill of Rights, among others -- and has stood in the way of research into environmental causes of cancer.

This history is well documented. Back in 2002, AlterNet ran a story from Southern Exposure by Mary Ann Swissler that remains one of the most comprehensive exposés of the nonprofit giant's extensive insider Beltway lobbying and corporate ties--ties that run much deeper than sponsorships by yogurt and soda corporations.

From the article:

It's no accident the Komen side favors the Republicans. A July 12, 2001 agreement between the President and five companies to run a Medicare prescription discount card program for Medicare patients, included a company called Caremark Rx where Nancy Brinker was on the board of directors, according to financial records. Another vendor, Merck-Medco, is one of the many drug companies found in the Komen investment portfolio. (Nancy Brinker resigned all board seats, including Komen, when she was appointed). If approved, the discount cards would provide up to a 10 percent discount on brand-name drugs.

The story shows the link between the Brinkers, their circles and legislation they lobbied for which left poor women and the environment frequently in the lurch, and aided GOP politicians and big corporations. Swissler profiles a small group of activists outmaneuvered by Komen and its huge, feel-good races:

The races, they say, merely focus women on finding a medical cure for breast cancer, and away from environmental conditions causing it, the problems of the uninsured, and political influence of corporations over the average patient." From Alternet

by Sara Seltzer

http://www.alternet.org/story/154030/busting_through_the_media_firestorm%3A_6_essential_facts_about_the_komen_controversy/?page=entire

 

"The board of directors (not to be confused with Komen's multitudinous advisory boards) currently has nine members. There's Nancy Brinker, who founded Susan G. Komen in the name of her sister, who died of breast cancer. Brinker is a major mover and shaker in Dallas GOP circles, and a former major bundler, a.k.a. "Pioneer," for George W. Bush. Also on the board is Brinker's son Eric. Then there's Dallas socialite/philanthropist/GOP donor/oil baroness/Junior Leaguer Linda Custard, who chairs the board of the elite Hockaday prep school (once attended by G.W. Bush's daughters), and serves as a trustee for Southern Methodist University (eventual home to the G.W. Bush Library). Connie O'Neill has a similar portfolio; she notably serves on the school district finance committee of the uber tony Highland Park (the most enthusiastically conservative zip code in the country), as well as the Crystal Charity ball, which is ne plus ultra in the world of rich Texas Republicans (and where O'Neill was coincidentally named one of Dallas' ten best dressed women). Also in the rich Republicans camp is corporate real estate law firm founder (and Silicon Valley VC) Linda Law, who's a Republican National Committee Regent, meaning a $250,000+ donor. 

But wait, there are a few Democrats, including former Nine West executive Brenda Lauderback, who made some modest donations to Obama but is also notable for the number of boards she serves on (Bloomberg Businessweek links her to 51 board members in five different organizations across six different industries). Fellow Obama donor, oncologist Dr. LaSalle D. Leffall Jr., is co-chair of the board, and the only medical professional on it. A bigger Dem donor is lobbyist John D. Raffaelli, whose firm Capital Counsel LLC helps both GOP and Dem causes; he was also the counsel for tax and international trade to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.). Finally there's the only board member without any track record of political donation: breast cancer survivor, longtime Komen foot soldier, and VP at a hospital consulting service, Elyse Gellerman, whose job is to represent the Komen affiliates.

But my point isn't about who's a Republican and who's a Democrat. The point is that Komen is a giant grant-making operation (nearly $2 billion since 1982) that purports to represent all of womanhood and it's being run as if it were still a small family foundation. Brinker and son, Custard, and O'Neill all run in the same circles, sit on the same boards, send their kids to the same elite schools. Komen's board makes a nod to race (both Lauderback and Leffal are African-American), a nod to medicine, and a nod to someone with pull in DNC circles, but the core is a group of rich, Texan, conservative friends.

There should be more racial and economic and regional diversity, to be sure. But Komen should, and must now if it wants to regain trust, bring on board members who will challenge the way Komen has done business. Like downplaying environmental factors that would be problematic for corporate sponsors. Like being less than honest with runners and ribbon-buyers about how little of the money raised in those events actually goes to research or treatment.

Dig deep enough into Komen's financial statements, and you'll find that of the 24 percent they spend on research, only 15 percent goes to explore how to prevent the disease.

Board members don't run the day-to-day operations, but they should be (and were) consulted on controversial decisions and they do step in when an organization is in crisis. It's not likely, but the board's best move would be to reform itself. Enlist people like Ehrenreich, tech-goddess Xeni Jardin (who's been chronicling her fight with breast cancer), and Dr. Susan Love, a leading researcher who's been critical of Komen's lack of effort toward prevention. Andrea Mitchell wouldn't hurt either. If you can't or won't put them on the board, make sure you somehow capture their POVs. 

New energy might, for example, persuade the board that it's time to change the balance between money spent on treatment (7%), screening (15%), research (24%), and "education" (34%). Two decades ago, it was of utmost importance to get women to get over the fear and the shame and into the doctor's office, to go public with scars and wigs and hot flashes. But mission accomplished, Komen. Now it's time to put more weight into stopping the disease before it starts. Dig deep enough into Komen's financial statements, and you'll find that of the 24 percent they spend on research, only 15 percent goes to explore how toprevent the disease. Pharmaceutical companies probably do a pretty good job of finding new and better chemo drugs; a nonprofit should put more of its clout into research without a near-term financial payoff.

New insight might also help the board to grok that if they want to maintain a fig leaf of impartiality in the abortion debate and they bring on Jane Abraham—head of the Susan B. Anthony List; the most powerful pro-life funding group around—to their "advocacy alliance" board, they'd better enlist someone like Stephanie Schriock of pro-choice group Emily's List as a countermeasure. And a board more savvy to opinions outside of Highland Park might persuade Brinker she should sit back on her Neiman Marcus/Chili's fortune and not pay herself$417,000 a year plus board-approved first-class travel from the donations of jogging bald ladies and their family members. 

And for god's sake, get a better crisis communications team. Or at least a head of communications that has more than 154 followers on Twitter." From Mother Jones

by Clara Jeffrey 

  

 http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/komen-board-bias-planned-parenthood

Copyright 2012 by SheilaTGTG55