The History of the Guttmacher Institute

Now in its fourth decade, the Guttmacher Institute remains committed to the mission and goals that led to its creation.

The Guttmacher Institute was founded in 1968 as the Center for Family Planning Program Development. At the time, Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had begun to call the public's attention to the problem of unplanned and unwanted childbearing and its consequences for individual women and men, their children and their communities both at home and abroad. Concurrently, the United States Congress was taking its first steps toward the development of an international population assistance program, as well as a multifaceted, national program aimed at providing equitable access to modern methods of birth control in the United States. By integrating nonpartisan social science research, policy analysis and public education, the Center hoped to provide a factual basis for the development of sound governmental policies and for public consideration of the sensitive issues involved in the promotion of reproductive health and rights. This purpose and commitment continue today.

The Center was originally constituted as a semiautonomous division of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA). Its early development was nurtured by Alan F. Guttmacher, an eminent obstetrician-gynecologist, teacher and writer who was PPFA's president for more than a decade until his death in 1974. The Center was renamed in Dr. Guttmacher's memory, and the Guttmacher Institute became an independent, not-for-profit corporation in 1977.

The Guttmacher Institute maintains offices in New York and Washington. Its current staff of 65 comprises demographers, social scientists, public policy analysts, editors, writers, communications specialists, and financial and technical personnel. A few of its employees have been with the organization for almost all of its existence, and an affiliation that goes back 10 or 15 years is not unusual. The Institute's work is guided by a 40-member board made up of eminent professionals from a rich variety of disciplines as well as civic leaders from across the United States and around the world.

The Guttmacher Institute's annual budget of approximately $12 million is derived largely from private foundations and individual contributions, supplemented by occasional grants for specific projects from the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies. Some revenue is also derived from sales of its peer-reviewed journals (Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health and International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, formerly known as International Family Planning Perspectives), other periodicals (The Guttmacher Policy Review) and special reports.