Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA)
Ted Kohnen

With the busiest fundraising month quickly approaching, I remember spending last December glued to my computer during the last four days in December, constantly refreshing our donation report pages. We were concerned that Katrina-related donations might diminish December fundraising. The response to Katrina had been phenomenal: $230,000 in online donations in September alone. But December 2005 remained strong. In fact, PPFA saw an 18% increase in dollars raised in December 2005 compared with December 2004.

PPFA expects December 2006 to be just as busy as last December if not more so. Online donations in March 2006, when PPFA kicked off its "Stand with the States" campaign to fight statewide abortion bans, increased 74% compared to online donations in March 2005. The increase, we suspect, was due to the gravity of the situation in South Dakota that resonated with PPFA's supporters nationwide.

There are natural disasters and there are political hurricanes, and reproductive rights will remain a hotly contested issue. The South Dakota ban scared reproductive rights supporters and was the biggest challenge to Roe v. Wade in a long time. The trickle-down effect from South Dakota will continue to fuel participation in advocacy campaigns and online donations in 2006.

To close out this year's fundraising, PPFA will launch in early December a series of appeals written and signed by film and television actress Felicity Huffman and husband actor William H. Macy, and actress Julianne Moore.

Celebrity online fundraising appeals have been very successful for PPFA. On Mother's Day, PPFA launched an email fundraising campaign with actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her mother actress Blythe Danner, which ended up being the third most success online fundraising appeal PPFA had done in the past several years. Actually, that's pretty impressive, since the most successful fundraising campaign was Hurricane Katrina and the second most successful was this year's "Stand with the States."

Planned Parenthood Online was launched in January 2005 as a collaborative venture between the national office (PPFA) and 48 of our 117 affiliates. The national office is in constant contact with these affiliates to ensure that our donors and supporters are not bombarded with emails from the national, state, and local offices on a particular issue. For example, PPFA coordinated with the state and local affiliates on the California ballot initiative to send out one message in one voice. Online advocacy and messaging tools help the national office by enabling affiliates to opt-out or locally tailor a message from the national office rather than create the content from scratch.

In 2007, Planned Parenthood Online will double the number of participating affiliates to more than 90 affiliates to leverage the power of a collaborative web presence and collaborative fundraising.