The Gumption Trust: A Final Accounting

This page is a little postscript to the Gumption Memo, to let you know how the story ends.

Overview

Back in early 1992 I inherited the estate of my aunt, established the Gumption Trust, and sent out the first Gumption Trust donations. In December 1995 I made the final round of Gumption Trust donations and gave away the last of the Gumption Trust money. This page offers a quick overview explaining where the Gumption Trust's money came from, where it went, and what it helped accomplish.

Money -- where it came from and where it went

$49,350	my aunt Lois Arden King's estate
$9,400	from Robert Lee Skinner's estate, via Elizabeth Skinner
$24,300	income from Gumption Trust investments
$83,050	total funds

$64,000	donations to seven international family planning orgs (for more info, see the page Family Planning Organizations)
$4,000	donations to two local Planned Parenthood clinics
$6,200	misc. donations to about 30 other causes
$1,100	books and compact fluorescent lightbulbs given away
$6,100	Gumption Memo expenses (e.g. printing & postage)
$1,650	"research" overhead (e.g. phone calls, books, travel)
$83,050	total expenditures

Results -- what the money helped accomplish

Between 1992 and 1995 the Gumption Trust money was spent by a bunch of different organizations on a bunch of different tasks, and it's difficult to say just what was done with it, but here's a partial list of all the things I estimate were accomplished:

• purchased a one year supply of contraceptives for about 3,000 couples (e.g. 50,000 condoms, 15,000 cycles of oral contraceptives, and 500 IUDs), AND
• covered the costs involved in running the clinics that distribute these contraceptives (e.g. paying staff, renting space, transporting contraceptives, printing literature, etc.), AND
• prevented the need for perhaps 1,000 abortions, AND
• contributed to saving the lives of maybe 5 women, by preventing fatal reproductive health related problems (e.g. unsafe abortions), AND
• contributed to saving maybe 25 women from being handicapped by unsafe abortions (e.g. accidental sterilization), AND
• prevented maybe 1,000 cases of illness and injury from pregnancy complications, AND
• reduced, by 5,000 or 10,000, the absolute size of the world population in 2050, AND
• reduced, by perhaps 200 or 300, the number of children who will die in the remainder of my lifetime for lack of sufficient food or clean water, AND
• reduced, by perhaps 500,000 tons, the amount of topsoil that will be lost in my lifetime,
• and on and on and on...

You can copy freely from this site. This work has been dedicated to the Public Domain by the author, Brian Douglas Skinner.