I wanted to draw your attention to a newswire I wrote last week about Planned Parenthood’s incredibly savvy and effective use of a political moment. The Sunlight Foundation measured the returns on investment (ROI) of groups deploying “outside money” into political races and found that Planned Parenthood related groups spent only about $15 million but had a phenomenal 98 percent success rate in the races in which they were involved. You can compare this to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, which spent nearly $105 million but wound up with a 1.29 percent success rate.
 
All of the groups analyzed for ROI in this examination were involved in multiple races. With regards to Planned Parenthood, the discussion of how a natural constituency was reached, how the language of the opposition was used and the ways in which the efforts were targeted is truly inspiring and it provides us all with a sense of what we can do as a sector with a huge diversity of constituents.
 
I have been speaking a lot lately and my message is that this next era is ours for the taking. Our ability to reach and mobilize coalitions of interested parties is based on our ability to establish mutual aims with them. Once that is done as a matter of general practice we will be powerful beyond measure!
 
Some of you will have read this two weeks ago but here, again, is my article, “Use It or Lose It,” on the subject of this sector’s inherent but underdeveloped advantage in moving mountains.