After the Alaska earthquake of 1965, after people’s houses had slid into the ocean, power was off and the water lines were broken. The ARC came with trucks to sell blankets to people, and charged them for helping to recover personal belongings from their ruined homes. This left a very bitter taste for Alaskans, many of whom still will not donate to the ARC. I didn’t until 9/11, and even then specified the fund it was to go to. We donated to the hurricane relief through them, as well, so maybe I’m over it.
The administrative costs, for sure. I know people who work in non-profit (though not for the ARC), and I don’t like the idea of my funds going to pay people to play on the Internet all day. I actually don’t donate money to ANY middleman non-profit because I can see how badly most of them are mismanaged. I hadn’t heard about the paying-for-rescue-supplies thing, but that’s just icing on the cake. Lousy capitalist philanthropists.
I still donate blood through them, but that’s because you can’t use blood to pay people to go on convention-vacations in Mexico. Yet.
I’m having trouble finding a specific cite on this, but I’ve read audits of noprofits, and auditors regularly ask for evidence that nonprofits spent restricted funds in the appropriate fashion. Google “Designated Gift” or “restricted gift” to see many different nonprofits explain their policies on such gifts.
Something really rubs me the wrong way when a non profit that is supposed to be helping people deal with disasters, both big and small, doesn’t seem to have any problem with that kind of salary. Look at the other reports on the give.org site, and most of the others don’t make anywhere near that kind of coin. The most I’ve seen so far is aprox 190,000. Not to say that a CEO shouldn’t make good money, but almost half a million dollars just seems wrong in this case.
If one goes by the other charities, that’s almost 300,000.00 that could have gone to people in need, instead of someone who obviously doesn’t need it.
As to 9/11, read the book After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era for an interesting look at how the Red Cross reacted to the event, and how the board screwed over former CEO Bernardine Healy when she wanted to segregate funds just for the 9/11 victims.
The parts of the book which cover that don’t paint a pretty picture of the Red Cross.
I’m a little tired of defending the organization for which I’ve volunteered these last couple of years, mostly because it doesn’t really matter: People who dislike ARC will continue to do so no matter what.
Blood services? People within ARC think the policies are stupid but we’re hamstrung by FDA requirements and a permanent Federal injunction, a result of the 20+ year old HIV/AIDS/tainted blood scandal. Write your congressmen and get the law changed if you don’t like it.
Selling coffee/donuts/cigarettes? ARC was ordered to do so then. Now? All assistance is free. All. No exceptions.
High CEO salaries? Pales in comparison to the private sector. Considering the responsibilities the organization is charged with by Congress, half a million is getting off cheap.
The fact of the matter is that the Red Cross was chartered by Congress to do this, and we’re good at it. As of this morning’s sitrep ARC has opened 487 shelters and evacuation centers housing 142,121 people and has served 3,359,703 meals and 3,931,128 snacks. No one else has those numbers. If you want to give to the Sally Anns or Noah’s Wish have at it - no skin off my nose - but not donating for spurious, outdated reasons is ignorant.
Pay in the not-for-profit sector is lower than in the private sector as it is. It stings a bit that one’s money is paying for a CEO, but the truth is, these companies need CEOs. If they don’t pay them a decent wage, they won’t get decent staff. Would you rather (hypothetically) the Red Cross CEO to be someone with little experience and education or one who has lots of experience and education? Because if you want the experienced one who will do a good job, you need to pay for it.
Why would a person with 20 years experience take a job with the Red Cross if their wage would be equivalent to what they were on 10 years ago?
I have no feelings for the Red Cross one way or the other. But does anyone else in the world do what they do on such a large scale? It may not be fair to compare their adminstrative costs to those of other charities, because so few work on the scale they work on. It may be a matter of accepting some ineffeciency in exchange for the incredible amount of good they do, and not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Again, I’m just speculating, as I know nothing of the organization.
I’m wondering: is 8-10% unusual overhead for charities? What do some of the other national (I’d imagine small local ones can do better) charities have as their overhead figure?
If it’s the same ballpark; it’s hard to hold that against them.
It sounds like the WWII donut story was not really ARC’s fault. What seems most disturbing now is Chefguy’s account of charging for disaster services in Alaska. Can we get a cite on that?
If it’s true, I can totally understand not donating to the Red Cross, and I might not donate to them in the future either.
I’ve got to say you’re painting with a broad brush here. I’ve worked for three non-profits in the last six years, and two were excellent organizations where the people truly accomplished a lot. One was not so good. I don’t think it’s non-profits as a class that don’t get anything done; I think it varies from organization to organization (just as with for-profits incidentally; case in point: I’m always amazed at how often my friends working for Electronic Arts get to go to some movie or other on company time & the company dime).
This explains a lot. My ex-husband has an irrational hatred of the Red Cross, also based on the “charging for donuts and coffee” thing from when his Dad was in the service (career military, not just during WWII) and no amount of new information or policy changes or explanation will change his mind. He is also half German, his mom being a former Luftwaffe nurse.
As for me, I give to UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) whose administrative costs are paid out of other funds…!00% of your donation goes to relief. But I used to donate blood to ARC, and plan to begin again now that I’ve lost weight and they can find my veins.
All I know is, on another message board I post on there are at least five people who work for nonprofits and they all spend all day posting on said message board, working on outside writing projects, or gabbing with coworkers. Without knowing which nonprofits have a cushy setup like that, I’m forced to ignore all of them and offer help directly. Yeah, people posting on the Internet from work bother me just that much.
That’s interesting about writing designations on checks themselves - I’m assuming you mean on the memo line, not sure where else it would fit.
I worked for a local United Way a few years ago, during the Boy Scouts brouhaha, and received a number of checks that said “Boy Scouts” on the memo line. Since I was the office at the time & had never been given any training on the subject, I just tossed the checks in the pile with the rest. Apparently I was breaking the law! I never suspected.
However, I knew from donor feedback that an equal number of supporters held opposing views. And really, what the Board decided to give each group wouldn’t have been affected - we’d’ve just shifted money from another agency to make up the shortfall.
I can’t recall the auditors saying anything about it one way or another.
All of the big groups work together, you know.