Daily Challenges
As the director, secretary, receptionist, bookkeeper, and gopher for the Elliot Institute I have been involved in many projects, big and small. In addition to the major research and writing tasks, there are literally hundreds of smaller tasks in which I have been involved. Indeed, these smaller tasks seem to monopolize most of my time.
I have written fourteen articles for syndication to pro-life and religious publications. These have not been as widely reprinted as I had hoped, but they have been favorably received by editors and readers when they do appear. This gives me hope that as publishers see a rising interest in readers for information on post-abortion problems, they will begin printing these articles more frequently.
Considerable time is also spent on fund raising efforts, of course. I have sent grant proposals to 32 foundations, organizations, or individuals. In a total of eight mailings, fundraising letters have been sent to 836 individuals whose names and addresses were donated to us by other pro-life groups or obtained through past contacts they made with the Elliot Institute. You are probably one of these people. Another large mailing included a request to speak at local churches which was sent to 80 Springfield pastors. This mailing resulted in only one invitation to speak to a congregation.
In addition to my one local presentation, I was invited to be a keynote speaker at two state right-to-life conventions, a January 22 memorial service, a university audience, and a crisis pregnancy center banquet.
A look at my computer files indicates that I have written more than 200 letters this last year regarding post-abortion research. I would estimate that about half of these are in response to people requesting information, and the other half are correspondences which I initiated.
A Week in the Office
If I were to average all of my activities into a single week, I would guess that on average, I spend at least one day per week in correspondences. Another day or so is spent on grant writing, fundraising, and bookkeeping chores. Another half day, or more, is consumed with reading the latest materials which are being published relevant to our pro-life work. Another day is spent on special projects.
This last month the special project was in response to a request to develop a research/counseling questionnaire for use at problem pregnancy centers, and eventually perhaps in abortion clinics themselves. (This questionnaire will be used to gather statistical evidence of how many women are choosing abortions as a result of pressure from others, or against their own moral beliefs, or other predisposing high risk factors. This project has the potential of turning into a completely new data set for analysis.) The month before the special project was writing a review and recommendations for model legislation dealing with informed consent regulations for abortion clinics. This month, the special project is this newsletter. Even this project has been interrupted three times by pro-lifers from Nevada, Virginia, and Illinois who are in urgent need of information to support informed consent legislation which I sent out as quickly as possible. Such special projects keep coming up all year long, and all are deserving and need attention.
Unfortunately, this leaves only about a day per week, if I’m lucky, to work on the data set I already have. This is why the work is progressing so slowly. I had anticipated a good solid year on this project, but that was based on a full time research schedule, not 20% time.
— David C. Reardon
Originally published in The Post-Abortion Review 1(1) Winter 1993. Copyright 1993 Elliot Institute
