Marquette gets multimillion-dollar gift to boost natural family planning institute

Marquette University in Milwaukee received recently a $7.5 million gift to endow its Institute for Natural Family Planning within the College of Nursing. The Jesuit university revealed Feb. 27 the gift came from the Richard L. Boland Love for Life Foundation, Inc., also known as the Betty and Dick Boland Foundation.

For years, Elizabeth A. “Betty” Boland provided financial support for the Marquette institute, said Mary Schneider, director of the newly renamed Boland Institute for Natural Family Planning.

“Betty was a nurse and she was also involved with teaching NFP (natural family planning) — this was her passion,” said Schneider.

A few years after Boland’s death in 2022, the foundation wanted to do more. Schneider, Marquette University and the foundation began mapping out the future.

“The Boland Foundation called me and said, ‘You need to think big,'” Schneider told OSV News.

Marquette’s NFP institute opened in 1998 and was led by Richard Fehring. The Marquette Method — a fertility awareness-based method of family planning developed by Fehring and others — helps couples achieve or avoid pregnancy by using a fertility monitor to track a woman’s cycle. The institute conducts family planning research and trains health care professionals and couples in the method.

According to Marquette, the Marquette Method is 98 percent effective when used correctly, and more than 100 instructors teach the method, both in person and online, worldwide.

The Catholic Church believes that using artificial contraception or artificial assisted reproductive technology to avoid or achieve pregnancy is immoral, but supports the use of natural family planning methods such as the Marquette Method.

In his 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” St. Paul VI encouraged Catholic medical professionals to “strive to elucidate more thoroughly the conditions favorable to a proper regulation of births” and “by the study of natural rhythms succeed in determining a sufficiently secure basis for the chaste limitation of offspring.”

Schneider sees the NFP institute’s work as medical and spiritual. “We’re here to strengthen families and to save souls — that is our goal,” she said.

“This gift is a wonderful reflection of our collaboration between Marquette University and the global Catholic Church,” Marquette President Kimo Ah Yun said in a statement. “We are grateful to the Boland Foundation for ensuring our Natural Family Planning Institute continues its impactful work far into the future.”

Schneider is excited to use the gifted funds to invest in current projects and hire more employees.

“The most important asset is our staff and the ability to grow staff is huge,” she said. They also have a few projects in the works, including launching a Marquette Method app to help users track their fertility and communicate with their instructor. “We’ve been working on it for a while now, but it’s been hard because we’ve only had small amounts of money here and there,” she said.

Unlike some FemTech providers, they hope to make data security a top priority while continuing to research, said Schneider.

“We want to make sure that people’s information is secure, but also we need large data sets to answer research questions. So there’s a fine line we have to walk,” she said. “We want to make sure that what we’re putting out there is quality.”

After testing in the upcoming months, they hope to release the app by the end of the year.

The institute also is working to establish a Marquette Method presence in Uganda. Last year, the institute partnered with the Masaka Diocese, the Kampala Archdiocese ?and the Uganda Catholic Medical Bureau to launch a feasibility study with Ugandan couples.

“If the Marquette Method of NFP is accepted by the couple and is effective for couples, then it is feasible to work towards helping the Uganda Catholic healthcare systems establish the Marquette Method NFP teacher training programs into their nursing schools,” Schneider said.
“And after this, their vision is to also put it into medical schools in Uganda.”

The Boland foundation gift comes at a time when many are becoming more aware of negative complications that can come with artificial contraception.

“Now, young people are asking, ‘Do I want to put these drugs into my body? Because I’m not feeling so good, and I don’t like the side effects,'” Schneider said.

She sees young Catholic couples who are interested in NFP both because of the church’s teaching but also as part of a healthier lifestyle. Schneider is hopeful more people will learn about fertility awareness-based methods like the Marquette Method.

“I would love to see (NFP) become something that just rolls off the tongue of every health care provider, (where) they know it is effective and can help them understand the woman’s reproductive health care,” she said.

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