Red Cross vs Salvation Army

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TexasFreedom

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Given all the recent hurricanes, I thought this would be a good time to remind everyone about where to donate to really help people.

Go out and search for "Red Cross fraud" and you'll find a million hits. Examples:
http://www.naturalnews.com/054476_American_Red_Cross_Haiti_earthquake_donations_fraud.html
"American Red Cross exposed as massive, incompetent fraud: built just six homes after collecting half a billion dollars in Haiti earthquake donations"

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/de/content/red-cross-fraud-reminder-2014
The American Red Cross has become a man-made disaster. It wasted millions of dollars in Hurricane Sandy aid through mismanagement and poor judgment. It compounded the problem by covering up its errors, hiring lawyers to prevent the public from finding out what happened to its donations. It had raised $312 million for storm relief, but then stonewalled on how the money was spent."

The Red Cross CEO has a "base salary" of $500k, and gets closer to $1million a year. Nice income for a charity. Red Cross does lots of "work" with military men, but often those men find in their next paycheck deductions for charges for this 'charity'. Rule of thumb is that Red Cross arrives just before the news cameras, and leave an hour after the TV people leave.


Bottom line: Red Cross is a good version of the Clinton Foundation, with generously poor use of the word 'good'.

Salvation Army is the exact opposite. They show up while wind is still blowing and bullets flying. They stay months after the cameras leave. They are not a self-promoting organization.The vast majority of their donations received go directly to help the needy (80-90+%). Their CEO makes $13k-130k, depending on who you believe and what you call 'income' vs 'expenses'.

If you are going to donate (and please do), please look into how much good the organization really is before you write the check.
 
I don't remember "building homes" as part of the Red Cross charter. The Red Cross is not an insurance company. It provides primarily immediate emergency relief. Long term relief is provided by other entities - like the Salvation Army... Usually when I hear complaints about the Red Cross, they are due to misconceptions about what the Red Cross does and how they operate.

Now admittedly, it had been decades since I was involved in a Disaster Action Team, so I looked up what the Red Cross's charter is now.
http://www.redcross.org/about-us/who-we-are/history/federal-charter

It referred to the FEMA "National Response Framework"
https://www.fema.gov/media-library-...inal_national_response_framework_20130501.pdf

Nowhere do I see "building houses" as part of their charter or responsibility as an NGO (Non Governmental Organization)

Here are the responsibilities of NGOs in the National Response Framework (no single NGO is responsible for all of these):
 Training and managing volunteer resources
 Identifying physically accessible shelter locations and needed supplies to support those displaced by an incident
 Providing emergency commodities and services, such as water, food, shelter, assistance with family reunification, clothing, and supplies for post-emergency cleanup
 Supporting the evacuation, rescue, care, and sheltering of animals displaced by the incident
 Providing search and rescue, transportation, and logistics services and support
 Identifying those whose needs have not been met and helping to provide assistance
 Providing health, medical, mental health, and behavioral health resources
 Assisting, coordinating, and providing disability-related assistance and functional needs support services (FNSS)
 Providing language assistance services to individuals with limited English proficiency.

The Red Cross uses donations to build a war chest for future disasters. The money they spend on any specific disaster was collected BEFORE the disaster occurred.

Now, let that sink in. The vast majority of the things the Red Cross does in a disaster occur LONG BEFORE they can collect donations.

If the Red Cross had to collect donations for a specific disaster before they could spend money on that disaster, they would not be able to accomplish their mission.

The vast majority of the people doing the work do not receive a cent. I can tell you for certain that in the disasters I was involved with, Red Cross volunteers were the first on the scene. And in some cases were the only responders people saw for days. And we avoided the TV cameras like the plague. Actually, by the time the TV cameras arrived, we had accomplished our mission and were already gone most of the time.
 
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I will not donate to the Red Cross. We have seen to many examples of what they do for our disaster here. They took all donations from our community at the shelters they were at that was meant to be given to our community and loaded them into a truck to be hauls away. Babies who didn't have any diapers and kids who had no shoes. All taken away right in front of them. The Red Cross showed up days after the floods, but rescues were still going on. People in need still showing up. Hot food donated was tossed into ice chest with them saying that they have already eaten. Yeah half a sandwich in a 24 hour period! Churches donated tons of food. Provided good meals. Compare them to what the Red Cross was handing out. They are a big charity that also pays big salaries. Thankfully they weren't at all shelters. I'd rather give to Salvation army or one of the other charities out there.
 
I will not give to the Red Cross they have been providing aid, shelter and money to the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants trying to get into the UK. And when New Zealand was devastated by a large quake they refused to send help because the Kiwis were white in a western country.
 
I will not give to the Red Cross they have been providing aid, shelter and money to the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants trying to get into the UK. And when New Zealand was devastated by a large quake they refused to send help because the Kiwis were white in a western country.
 
Since it's been decades since I was involved with the Red Cross, y'all made me do some digging about their current situation.

It seems they have gone downhill significantly in recent years. They used to have a consistent 4 star rating (highest rating) as a charity, but in recent years have dropped to 3 stars because of a number if problems.

They still do a lot of crucial things in disasters, but nobody knows about them except the people involved. Since I was in the thick of it, I know about these, but I won't bore you with the details. Let's just say a lot happens behind the scenes that the public is never aware of. Specific complaints are sometimes valid, but more often than not are a result of people having misguided expectations (building houses for victims, for example :rolleyes:)

The have a 10% overhead, with 90% of donations going to help people directly in one way or another. They are completely transparent about how they spend money.

Financial Performance Metrics
Program Expenses
(Percent of the charity's total expenses spent on the programs
and services it delivers)
90.1%
Administrative Expenses 3.8%
Fundraising Expenses 5.9%
Fundraising Efficiency $0.21
Working Capital Ratio (years) 0.25
Program Expenses Growth -5.1%
Liabilities to Assets 54.2%
 

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