The Red Cross says: Thanks, we've got enough money now!

I am on the American Red Cross’s mailing list and I just got this e-mail:

"…Last week, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies announced that the $1.2 billion raised worldwide in the 30 days following the tsunami was sufficient to meet the costs of the entire Red Cross tsunami relief program projected at this time…

“…Should the American Red Cross need additional resources to support the long-term relief efforts, we have no doubt the generous American public will step up and meet the need…”

How about that!

There isn’t a smack smiley big enough.

I was intrigued by the part that read:

“…and if people are still looking for a worthy cause, donations should be made to the Hal Briston Foundation.”

That was pretty nice of them.

Don’t you recall the fall-out over their collection for 9/11 beyond what they planned to spend on relief for that disaster?

They don’t want to make the same mistake this time.

Clearly, some relief agencies spend more on “overhead” than they should, or than they promise to those who donate. And some CEOs of such agencies are getting filthy rich, which is unethical. But I am not convinced that the Red Cross should be blasted for this after 9/11. The fact is that truly effective organizations must invest in infrastructure to be sure that their funds are distributed appropriately, and from what I know of the Red Cross, I think this was their aim.

When I did AIDS work in the Caribbean, there were a number of agencies collecting funds for HIV meds for patients in the region. But the meds do no good if there are no HIV testing programs, no qualified laboratory techs, equipment, reagents, no public policies to protect confidentiality so that those affected can come forward, no administration to plan and organize these programs. But the money earmarked for Drugs could not be used for those things. In some cases the funds were wasted in duplication because of a lack of communication. Meanwhile, the gaps still exist and it is heartbreaking to see.

I was a volunteer special events coordinator with the American Red Cross during the 9/11 fallout, and from what I understand the problem was not that part of the funds collected was going to overhead: people were upset because donations were being solicited for 9/11 relief that were not used for 9/11 relief. Some of the 9/11 money was spent on other relief efforts, but the people who had donated wanted to specificially help the 9/11 victims (and thought that’s where the money was going). It forced the ARC to change the language they use when soliciting donations: nowadays they won’t say that the money is going to a specific effort unless they are darn sure it’s true.

I haven’t been connected with the Red Cross for a couple of years now, but I’m sure this tsunami-related message is just what jdc said: they don’t want a repeat of the “you didn’t spend my money on what you said you’d spend it on” backlash that followed 9/11.

Wait, so when you donate, you can write in for what your money goes to? Like, “I want to help those poor people who were destroyed by the tsunami, but not those fuckers who don’t wear condoms?”

Our local chapter put out that announcement on the the nightly news. They had set a goal for Alaska of $50,000. The received nearly $1,000,000.

$1.2 Billion in 30 days? [chris rock]Good Lawd, that’s a lot of money[/chris rock]

Anyway, lest anyone decide to hold on to their as-yet-ungiven donation, might I remind people that there are a multitude of other relief organizations who could certainly use the money. I won’t link to them here (lazy), but you all know where they are.

Also, check with your employer. Many corporations will do some type of company-matching of your charitable donations. My company matches 50% on any donation to a non-profit organization (up to $5000/year), and 100% on donations to 501©(3) organizations. Your company may not be as generous, but it’s worth a shot.

Poor fellow. Looks like he’s not much of a hunter; I suppose we can chalk his demise up to natural selection.

You can’t specify how your donation gets used, but if the organization specifies a use they’re supposed to follow through. If the ARC says “all donations collected today will go to tsunami relief,” people will (understandably) get upset if the money doesn’t go to tsunami relief.

Did that help any? :slight_smile:

Well, a couple of weeks ago I went to the German website of Doctors Without Borders. There was a text on it stating they’d received a year’s worth of donations dedicated to tsunami relief and would we please not donate stating a specific cause because then they were forbidden to use it for anything else…but maybe that’s German legislation.

That’s awesome.

Sometimes I hate people, but things like this make me love them madly.

Oxfam have closed their Tsunami appeal which raised £70 million in the UK. What they are saying now is don’t forget the other parts of the world ( i.e The Sudan ) where there is an ongoing need for money. So thanks for all that effort folks , but the job isn’t over yet.

Emergency relief funds by definition have to be spent within a six-month period. Most funds raised in an emergency appeal falls into this category.

The problem with huge appeals like the tsunami is that aid agencies get more than they can handle, so saying ‘we’ve raised enough’ is the only ethical and transparent way around it.

In past emergencies that generated a large public response, like 1998’s hurricane Mitch, agencies did not anticipate this problem. They ended up with unspent funds and had to engage in a lot of negotiating with donors (in this case I mean institutions like the EU or governments) to allow for post-emergency reconstruction and disaster prevention work, which falls outside the strict 'emergency relief category. It’s in the nature of emergency work for events to move so fast that it’s impossible to anticipate these things. In the early days following the tsunami no-one expected the toll to rise the way it did, or for the public response to be so overwhelming.

It sounds bureaucratic and petty, but these rules are designed to prevent abuse and misuse of donor money: something that aid organisations are very sensitive about, and therefore take extra pains to be transparent and to keep to the rules. What international organisations need to do now is find a way of anticipating this so they can make appeals for emergency relief, medium term reconstruction and disaster prevention work, or change the criteria in a way that allows for flexibility in exceptional cases.

Be assured though that all involved will be applying lessons learned and analysing pitfalls and mistakes, probably to the point of tedium. I know. I’ve been to those meetings.

Yeah, except for the whole part where they throw tantrums because they didn’t want to help those people (whoever those people happen to be in the circumstance.)

From what I’ve been reading, international organizations recognize that that the magnitude of the tsunamis are taking money away from the micro level and are cutting off the “give us money!” line until equilibrium is acheived.

Which makes sense to me. “Oh my god thousands dead in Thailand!” trumping “Oh my god millions dead in Sudan!” doesn’t sit right with me.

To a point.

We’ve (I’m speaking from a Red Cross perspective, here) had people walk into the office with a $5,000 check because the newspaper said we were helping out victims of a single family fire and leave (rather irately, I might add) because we wouldn’t administer those funds. Will we take those funds as a donation to the chapter, service area, national society, or international society? Sure. We’ll even apply that five grand to our chapter’s disaster fund. What we will NOT do is give that $5k to an individual family as it violates two of our seven fundamental principles, namely impartiality and universiality. We treat everyone the same regardless of race, income, class, or column lines in the local newspaper. Sounds stupid until you think of it in the microcosm: If your fire received no press and you got our standard services and your neighbor’s fire got a lot of press and received an extra $5,000 would you think that was impartial or would you bitch?

Which leads me to the public relations disaster that was (is) the Liberty Fund.

Internally it was known that any funds directed towards a disaster goes not only to the disaster itself but to other stuff. As an organization funded almost entirely by donated dollars** we hope that the public will donate $25,000,000 to a $50,000,000*** disaster. That extra money helps buy things like rent, printer paper, staplers, computer systems that WORK, telephone and voice mail systems that DO NOT DROP important messages, and yellow stickies.

While the brouhaha started by that phone sex-addicted asshole does mean that “and other disasters” is now included in advertisements it also means that people in New Jersey - those that still have a home and clothes and pets - are or have received cash payouts to which normal Red Cross recipients are not eligible.

That phone sex-addicted asshole’s remarks has also led to some rather stringent legacy rules. If your will says “to the Red Cross” it means that 75% of the amount specified in your will goes to the national HQ and 25% to your local chapter.

To address your point more directly, Chairman Pow: The Liberty Fund fallout has made many organizations examine their donation procedures and you will need to contact your organizations of choice to find their exact procedures. Within ARC your donations can be directed towards specific programs (first aid, CPR, AIDS education, swimming lessons, disaster, AFES) on a micro (chapter, county, service area) or macro (national, international) level.

**Yes, almost entirely. The Red Cross has received taxpayer dollars three times, the latest during the last Florida hurricanes and previously during the two world wars. We also recieve a very small amount of Federal funding for Armed Forces Emergency Services, which relays emergency messages between family members at home and service men stationed around the world. Because such messages contain some rather personal information the military helps us fund secure communications to pass these messages around.

***Numbers completely made up.

Here in Spain organizations have been asking from day one to be given donations “to the organization” and that, it you wanted to give “for the tsunami”, to do it through an organization which already had a presence in the area (Oxfam, Red Cross, Caritas) rather than to a telethon or some such. I remember them saying that since they already had people there, they did not need to spend money just to select them, bring them over, etc, and also they’re pretty sick of “three-day helpers” who go to some French-speaking country speaking only English or vice versa. It’s a lot better to have a paramedic who speaks the local language than a doctor who needs two translators.

They said, eh.

chique: with regards to impartiality, it can’t be stressed enough how important it is. When I was on Disaster Relief in Florida following Hurricane Ivan, some very scary things happened when people thought they were being treated unfairly. A friend of mine worked in the Disaster assessment category, reviewing the damage on houses and giving funds as needed. She had a man threaten her with a shotgun because he felt his ARC check was too small!

Sometimes, I’m really glad I worked in the warehouse so I didn’t have to interact very much with people. She was really shaken up by the whole experience, and I can’t blame her.

Chique: Thanks for the answer. Most enlightening.