Dennis Poplin, Vice President

Dennis brings to Spitfire more than two decades of experience as an organizer, educator and a communicator. As the director of Spitfire's training and capacity building projects, Dennis has led training efforts for scores of foundations and nonprofits – local and national – to build these clients' organizational strategic communications capacity.

Each year, Dennis heads Spitfire's Executive Training Program which is designed to help nonprofit leaders develop the skills and strategies needed to lead highly-communicating organizations. He produces Spitfire's Grantmaker communications training program created to help foundation staff integrate strategic communications into their funding strategies, improve their personal communications skills, and help them assess and guide grantee communications efforts to increase impact. Dennis also works with foundations including the Hewlett Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the California Endowment, Gates Foundation and Open Society Foundation, among others, to develop tailored capacity-building programs for their grantees. For each of these efforts, Dennis showcases his unique ability to assess a client's specific needs and develop a training agenda that is customized for those needs, both in content and in skill level. Dennis recently expanded Spitfire's training offerings to include a series of webinar sessions focused on specific communications issues.

Dennis moved to Washington, D.C., from his local San Antonio, Texas, Planned Parenthood affiliate to work for the national office in 1998. As former assistant director of field operations at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Dennis was instrumental in the development and execution of all major organizing and public policy projects, campaigns and programs. He was responsible for the development and management of PPFA's grassroots field programs, including: Republicans for Choice (35 chapters in 20 states); Vox: Voices for Planned Parenthood (180 campus chapters); offline organizing and direct action; grasstops and CEO outreach; meetings and conferences; coalition efforts; and internal and external organizing communications.

His most exciting accomplishment was overseeing logistics and nationwide PPFA mobilization for the April 25, 2004, March for Women's Lives, which brought more than one million pro-choice supporters to the National Mall. Another fun activity was coordinating pro-choice visibility events during the recent federal judicial and U.S. Supreme Court nominations process at the Supreme Court, White House, U.S. Senate and other Washington, D.C., locations. These events were covered by major media outlets, including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

Prior to Planned Parenthood, Dennis was a community-based organizer working on LGBT, youth empowerment, HIV/AIDS, and arts and cultural diversity issues.

While dedicating the last 12 years to reproductive justice, Dennis spent the year before joining Spitfire as a consultant to other progressive LGBT and death penalty abolition organizations.