Call it the power of investigative comedy. Or, as the Chicago-based Society of Women Engineers refers to it, “the John Oliver bounce.”
On Sunday night, Oliver, the host of the popular HBO news satire show “Last Week Tonight,” presented tax filings in a roast of the Miss America Organization’s contention that it is “the world’s largest provider of scholarships for women.”
Oliver’s conclusion was that the beauty pageant group spends far less on cash scholarships to women than its claim of $45 million.
While expounding on that, Oliver mentioned the names of other organizations that provide scholarships for women, including the Society of Women Engineers, and flashed the organization’s website for about four seconds.
Guess what happened?
In two days, the organization received about $25,000 in donations, which amounts to 15 percent of what the engineering group expects from individual giving each year, SWE spokeswoman Kelly Janowski said. All of it is going to the group’s scholarship fund, added Peter Finn, deputy executive director of the not-for-profit international organization of about 27,000 members.
“This has been huge for us,” Finn added. “It’s tremendous.”
Beyond the donations, the number of views to SWE’s scholarship page jumped to 2,561 this week, up from about 1,250 last week, Finn said. And, social media traffic — individuals who link to the SWE site from Facebook and Twitter — increased to 2,450 between Sunday and Tuesday. That number was 124 for the same time last week.
“Monday morning was very, very active,” Finn said Tuesday afternoon, “and it continues today.”
Oliver’s staff contacted SWE last week looking for background information, Janowski said, and she learned Saturday night that the organization had been included in the show’s script.
“We were all watching with bated breath on Sunday night,” Janowski added. “We’re very excited with how it has played out.”
Founded in 1950, SWE reports that it awarded $721,000 in financial aid in the fiscal year that ended June 30, and $3 million in scholarships to “women pursuing engineering careers” in the past six years.
Twitter @tgregoryreports
