In their 2016 Form 990 return, the Planned Parenthood Federation had assets totaling more than $446 million—almost half a billion dollars. We looked at a cross section of thirty-four independent U.S. Planned Parenthood organizations, including the Federation, and calculated combined total assets of $1,726,804,908 (yes, $1.7 billion) at the end of 2016. In most cases, this reflected large increases across-the-board in donations during the 2016 election cycle. This was not even the full complement of Planned Parenthood organizations—just a cross section.
The Federation’s endowment funds were valued at almost $88 million in 2013 and had grown to over $157 million in their 2016 financial report—an incredible rate of growth. Keep in mind that the Federation does not supply direct services to the public. That is done by the various Planned Parenthood organizations throughout the country, each with its respective revenue and budgets. The Planned Parenthood Federation is a coordinating and advocacy body.
Even this is not the complete picture. Planned Parenthood has international organizations that are directly related to its Federation in the United States. It has forged relationships with UNESCO and UNFPA, the former referring twenty times to Planned Parenthood as a source for sex education and abortion in its revised “Comprehensive Sexuality Standards” (February 2018). It is also in partnership with more than one hundred organizations across Africa and Latin America.
In its 2016 IRS report, International Planned Parenthood Foundation/Western Hemisphere Region stated that it worked with fifty partner organizations in forty countries. It described “averting two million unintended pregnancies” and working with partners to facilitate nineteen country-level policy changes.
At CSW62 (Commission on the Status of Women, 2018), African country delegates described how sexual reproductive health services now received more funding in Africa than those providing for fresh water, education, or economic development. That’s a shocking statistic, but it got hardly any play in the U.S. media. Funding for sexual reproductive health services has increased 1,923 percent between 1993 and 2012. They are experiencing pushback from traditionalist countries such as Burkina Faso, which described how they resented having funding for humanitarian purposes tied to whether they would create abortion clinics. The work of Planned Parenthood Global and other similar organizations was described by them as ideological colonization. This Western institution has swept into Africa, looking to decrease the African population rather than offer life-supporting services and education. Imperialism is alive and well on the left.
Among all of these organizations, Planned Parenthood controls vast amounts of wealth. Of course, they cannot simply use these resources to buy elections. That would be illegal. That’s where Grassroots Campaigns Inc. comes in.
Grassroots Campaigns Inc.
One of the most influential groups you’ve probably never heard of is a for-profit organization founded in 2003 “with the goal of building support for progressive candidates, parties and causes through engaging everyday people in political action.” As a for-profit entity, they have no restrictions on political activity. They count as one of their clients Planned Parenthood’s 501(c)(3) charity.
They credit themselves with some of America’s biggest political success stories. After its first year, Grassroots Campaigns had staff in more than forty cities canvassing on behalf of the Democratic National Committee. According to its website:
In October of 2004, Grassroots Campaigns joined forces with MoveOn.org in order to identify and activate Democratic voters. During this campaign, we recruited a volunteer force of almost 50,000 people and worked in 17 of the most highly contested swing states. Following the election, we helped launch a nation-wide project called Operation Democracy through which we organized grassroots activists to end Republican control of Congress. Operation Democracy laid the groundwork for the 2006 Call for Change Campaign in which we ran massive volunteer phone banks that turned out infrequent Democratic voters in over 50 congressional districts. Our hard work paid off that November when we successfully took back Congress.
For 2008, the organization’s website claims credit for helping organize 7,480 house parties where volunteers made 2.14 million calls and recruited over 90,000 volunteers for Obama in swing states. Additionally, they report registering more than 230,000 new voters in thirteen battleground states, an effort that they say helped to win many states and turned North Carolina Blue for the first time since Jimmy Carter’s election in 1976.
With each election cycle, the claims grow bigger. In 2012, they targeted the western swing states of Nevada and Colorado and ran get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts in ten states. In 2014 they knocked on more than 200,000 doors in states with key Senate races with a commitment to “mobilizing the grassroots base of the progressive movement.”
This is an explicitly political organization.
So what service do they provide to 501(c)(3) charities? According to the 990 forms of three major nonprofits, Grassroots Campaigns has earned more than $69 million over the six-year period for which data is available, from just three charities: Planned Parenthood, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Nature Conservancy. Not just the advocacy arm of these organizations, but the charity arm. A visit to the Grassroots Campaigns website shows a much longer client list. On the clients page, we see some familiar names:
Current and Former Clients of Grassroots Campaigns Inc.
America Votes
American Civil Liberties Union
Amnesty International USA
CA League of Conservation Voters
Center for American Progress
Colorado State Democratic Party
College Matters
Common Cause
Conservation Law Foundation
D.C. Public Schools
DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee]
Democratic National Committee
Doctors Without Borders
Equality California
Equality Maine
Everytown for Gun Safety
Freedom to Marry
League of Conservation Voters
Media Matters
MoveOn.org Political Action
Nevada State Democratic Party
Obama for America
Oxfam America
Pennsylvania Coordinated Campaign
People for the American Way
Plan International USA
Planned Parenthood of NYC
Repower America
Respect ABQ Women
Sierra Club
Southern Poverty Law Center
Media Fund
Nature Conservancy
UNICEF
VoteVets.org Political Action
WA State Coordinated Campaign
WETA
What kind of work do these nonprofits need from a political canvassing organization? Some of it is consulting. It’s unclear what consulting a for-profit political canvassing organization provides to 501(c)(3) charities. But much of the work Grassroots Campaigns is paid to do is what they’re calling fund-raising. It involves hiring entry-level staff to knock on doors or man tables at public events asking people to donate to the nonprofit.
If Grassroots Campaigns fund-raisers are working for Planned Parenthood, they show up at the door in a Planned Parenthood T-shirt asking you to donate to Planned Parenthood. You might naturally assume that the money you contribute will be used to do the work of the organization to which you donated—funding abortions, for example. You would be wrong about that. Because at the end of the day, Grassroots Campaigns is paid significantly more money than it raises for its nonprofit clients.