Having settled on international family planning as the general area of activity I wanted to support, I then studied up on a number of different family planning organizations and eventually picked a handful to make contributions to. Between January 1992 and December 1995 I donated $64,000 to the seven organizations listed here.
| Pathfinder
International 9 Galen Street, Suite 217 Watertown, MA 02172-4501 telephone:617-924-7200 |
Founded in 1957, Pathfinder works to increase the number of individuals in developing countries who have access to, and voluntarily use, high quality family planning services. Pathfinder provides funding and technical support to locally administered projects in over 25 countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Pathfinder has a staff of about 175 worldwide, of which two out of three are non-Americans. They operate on about 25 million dollars a year, of which they spend less than 1% on fund-raising (which is why none of us had ever heard of them). |
| The Population
Council One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza New York, NY 10017 telephone:212-339-0500 |
The Population Council was founded in 1952 to apply science and technology to the solution of population problems in developing countries. The Council does many types of work: contraceptive development, demographic research, policy analysis, technical assistance to the other organizations, information dissemination, etc. What interests me most is the work being done by the Council's Center for Biomedical Research, which develops new contraceptive technology. The Center for Biomedical Research is responsible for the development of NORPLANT and it is currently working on a number of different projects including antifertility vaccines for men and women and subdermal implants for men. The Population Council has a staff of about 300 and an annual budget of about 38 million dollars, of which about 30% goes to the Center for Biomedical Research, and about 0.5% is spent on fund-raising. |
| PPFA-FPIA Planned Parenthood Federation of America Family Planning International Assistance 810 Seventh Avenue New York, NY 10019 telephone:212-541-7800 |
Family Planning International Assistance is the international division of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which is the national association of local Planned Parenthood affiliate organizations. PPFA created FPIA in 1971 at the request of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), but during the Reagan and Bush administrations their USAID funding was cut off. PPFA-FPIA provides leadership, technical assistance, and support to projects in developing nations to help ensure that individuals have the knowledge and means to make informed, private decisions about childbearing. PPFA-FPIA has a staff of about 50 and an annual budget of about 5 million dollars, with which they support about 40 projects in 25 countries. I don't have a separate statistic for FPIA, but PPFA and its affiliates spend about 5% of their budget on fund-raising. |
| IPPF/WHR International Planned Parenthood Federation Western Hemisphere Region 902 Broadway, 10th Floor New York, NY 10010-6089 telephone:212-995-8800 |
IPPF is the international association of local and national Planned Parenthood affiliate organizations, such as PPFA mentioned above. The Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF/WHR) is one of the six regional organizations that comprise IPPF. IPPF/WHR is a membership organization with 46 affiliates (e.g. PPFA), each of which is a private, autonomous organization. IPPF/WHR provides technical assistance and financial support to these affiliates and to other organizations in the Western Hemisphere that provide family planning education and services. IPPF/WHR affiliates operate 2,000 permanent clinics and 40,000 "service points". They are staffed by 3,000 professionals and 30,000 volunteers, and serve about 8 million clients. The IPPF/WHR office in New York employs about 60 people. The budget for the IPPF/WHR regional office in New York is about 15 million dollars a year, of which they spend about 2% on fund-raising. |
| EngenderHealth 440 Ninth Avenue New York, NY 10001 telephone:212-561-8000 |
EngenderHealth was founded in 1943 and has been working internationally for over 30 years to support and strengthen reproductive health services for women and men worldwide. Since its inception, its work has improved the health and lives of more than 100 million individuals in 90 countries. EngenderHealth used to be named AVSC, and was founded to help increase the availability of voluntary sterilization in the US. In 1972 AVSC began working internationally. AVSC's work focused on clinical contraceptive methods, including NORPLANT, IUD's, and voluntary sterilization (which is now the most widely used contraceptive method in the U.S. and the world). As of 2003, EngenderHealth had an annual budget of about 40 million dollars. |
| IPAS 303 E. Main Street P.O. Box 100 Carrboro, NC 27510 telephone:919-967-7052 |
IPAS is an international organization concerned with the problem of unsafe abortion. Complications from unsafe abortion account for about 200,000 deaths each year, 99% of which are in the developing world. IPAS has a small factory, and they promote safe respectful abortion care by manufacturing a simple medical instrument for Manual Vacuum Aspiration (MVA), and by introducing doctors and decision makers to the MVA technology and making it more prevalent worldwide. IPAS receives no USAID funding, and has a modest budget of about 2 million dollars a year. |
| PATH Program for Appropriate Technology in Health 4 Nickerson Street Seattle, WA 98109-1699 telephone:206-285-3500 |
Since 1976, PATH has managed more than 500 health and family planning projects in 85 developing countries. PATH has a staff of about 150 and an annual budget of about 17 million dollars. |
