I've been a volunteer with the American Red Cross for the last 7 years. I may not be aware of every aspect of the organization in it's entirety, but I've been involved with enough volunteers and staffers at the local chapter level to know that this piece doesn't do the organization as a whole much justice.

Dig in to just about any non-profit, and you're sure to find improprieties, but to dig into an organization whose main purpose is to unite willing volunteers with those in need of help is just plain wrong. Without the Public Image work that is villainized by this piece, the Red Cross couldn't function. The American public isn't going to just give money to any organization without seeing some signs of their money at work. Should those efforts overstep the relief efforts on the ground? Absolutely not, but to act like an organization whose main source of funding comes from the public shouldn't have a major public image campaign to go with every disaster is unrealistic.

Times are tight for everyone these days. No one's responses to recent disasters have been where they should have been, but 92.2% of every donation made to the Red Cross goes directly to responding to people in need. Only 4% is spent on administrative, and about 3.7% is spent on fundraising campaigns.

I appreciate the work that NPR does as a whole, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't report on certain improprieties of any major organization, but this piece went too far.

I beg to disagree with you. I think NPR is just relaying information from people in the know who also worked with the Red Cross. You may not experience any problems at your Chapter. But that does not mean problems don't exist elsewhere, or on a larger scale within the Red Cross. In my Chapter, there was no secret that there was a disconnect between Headquarters and our Chapter. And it created problems.
I was deployed to a different disaster, which I will keep anonymous. But the same type of problems happened. Volunteers being sent where there were no clients. Rumors flying that certain Multi Agency Resource Centers were being closed, and volunteers being blamed for those rumors -- when in truth, those rumors started due to poor planning and poor management. There were citizens who did not get help during my deployment. There was poor communication, that would have placed me at risk had I not listened to my own better judgment. And I witnessed managers snapping at volunteers and being verbally insensitive and disrespectful to them. The housing conditions for the first half of my deployment were not healthy. No one expects the Ritz Hotel during a deployment. It's a disaster, after all. But it should at least be safe, and healthy. It was not. When I reported these problems to an official with the Red Cross, that official defended the Red Cross and rationalized the problem. So it does not take a huge stretch of my imagination to believe what NPR is reporting, because I witnessed this with my own eyes and ears.
I am sure there are other disasters besides the one I was deployed to that other volunteers have witnessed similar problems as I did, and other persons I volunteered with. I can understand your desire to remain loyal to the Red Cross. But the first step is to acknowledge there is a problem. And if my own Chapter could see the problem also, I think there is credence to what the NPR is reporting.

Any organization taking in this much of people's resources should be subject to -and welcoming of- independent performance evaluation.

"The American public isn't going to just give money to any organization without seeing some signs of their money at work. Should those efforts overstep the relief efforts on the ground? Absolutely not, but to act like an organization whose main source of funding comes from the public shouldn't have a major public image campaign to go with every disaster is unrealistic."
There are thousands of small, medium and large charities that spend nothing on advertising. Charitable giving is not driven from advertising. If a person wants to give money and/or time to help others it was not becuase they saw a commercial about the disaster.

The smaller charities do absolutely phenomenal work, many with no advertizing, yes. Few to none of them have the same expectations put on them that we lay on the Red Cross in times of trouble.

Again, I'm no expert, but I'm quite certain that the cost benefit ratio for the Red Cross's advertising campaigns has been traditionally in the favor of those the Red Cross serves.

It didn't go too far, it highlighted a severe issue in play that while may not be pervasive is present at high levels and seems to be affecting their ability to respond.

While their public image is key to their ability to fund raise it should not be abused in regards to the people they need to help. Maybe they need to improve their funding model and actually start laying away money in advance for the next crisis, which i know is hard for them since donated money is supposed to go to a given event even when they are over funded.

It's not a perfect system but it could be better.

Unfortunately, donors just don't donate nearly enough to do that. Responding to major disasters isn't all they do. Their services to armed forces, local emergency responses, and other public awareness and outreach cost money too. I agree that it shouldn't be abused, but people need to realize that $300 million for the size and length of the Sandy event isn't a huge number. These efforts are predominantly staffed by volunteers.

An aging and shrinking donor and volunteer base have introduced some huge hurdles. Pieces like this don't do anything to solve the problem, but only force them to respond with a larger PR campaign to repair the damage in an attempt to not lose a huge portion of their donorship.

I deeply believe that they're doing the best they can with what they have.

That they feel they need to create a larger PR campaign is part of the problem. Rather they need to show they are addressing it even if that means pulling back their visible ability to respond to the level of their actual ability to respond.

That would go much further.

I would like to see NPR provide a balanced view of whatever news they choose to cover. In this case, it seems that they did not report on the American Red Cross' response to their allegations.

The ARC response as reported to some of us volunteers can be read here: http://redcrosschat.org/201...

I would certainly like to hear the "Official" Red Cross response on Morning Edition.

This story says, in part, "But while the documents and officials say these problems came to a head during Sandy, their origins go back years. The Red Cross face allegations of financial mismanagement after 9/11 ..." If I recall correctly, the complaint during the 9/11 response was against a Red Cross policy of setting aside a portion of donations for disaster preparedness rather than immediately spending those donations on relief efforts. It wasn't a popular policy. But, I'd hardly call it financial mismanagement.

Wouldn't it be ironic if the current focus on appearance and lack of preparedness were an unfortunate result of changes made to appease the post 9/11 criticss?

I've learned and confirmed a few things with the coverage of recent events. As a follower of much foreign news, whenever there is a disaster or crisis : iran or afganistan earthquakes, disease outbreaks in africa, wars in syria or palestine, or typhoon/hurricane floods in india or haiti, I always see medical aid by Doctors Without Borders. I almost never hear of the red cross there. I've always been under the impression that our red cross primarily handles domestic emvergencies (flood, tornado, fire, hurricane, earthquake) with the lone exception of some aid in our "sphere of interest" - haiti, while DWB was present in many many contries on that side of the world. What I've learned from all the quarantined volunteer ebola aid stateside, is that DWB is by far the better organization to donate to as their aid and participants truely cover the globe. I recall they did provide aid in domestic events (sandy, katrina ?) just as other generous outfits (Remote Area Medical).
It was a tragedy in haiti to hear of amputations done without anestisia and ordinary hardware saws, so much so that we even had independent actors (sean penn) working to lend aid. We always point to how much was donated for that tragedy, but what is most troubling was how when the "text to donate $10" and proliferation of new organizations popped up, bush and clinton quickly got "infront of the mike" to steer the resources to be handled via their distribution. This was in the shadow of clinton admitting mishandling haiti previouly, and still we see the country languishing - possibly because of foreign politics as we still seek to control nations in our backyard (like cuba and haiti).
The bottom line is give, but be more aware of who is doing the most good in regions that need help and be cognizant of other areas that possibly have the potential to be overfunded.

The Red Cross, de facto, stole $600 from me when they never told anybody how they spent the donations immediately after 9/11. From Snopes.com: CEO of Red Cross compensation amounts to $0.39 out of every dollar donated. "The second worst offender this year is Marsha J. Evans, President and CEO of the American Red Cross... for her salary for the year ending in 2009 was $651,957 plus expenses. Enjoys 6 weeks - fully paid holidays including all related expenses during the holiday trip for her and her husband and kids. including 100% fully paid health & dental plan for her and her family, for life. This means out of every dollar they bring in, about $0.39 goes to related charity causes. "Read more at http://www.snopes.com/polit...

Time for the Red Cross to be dissolved!

Your link is from the "Mostly Outdated and Inaccurate" portion of snopes.... Look at the top of the page.

Also, you might consider looking at the entire Snopes article, part of which says "American Red Cross: The information presented above is outdated (as of October 2010), as Marsha J. Evans resigned her position as CEO of the American Red Cross in 2005. The current President and CEO of the American Red Cross (since 2008) is Gail J. McGovern, whose total yearly compensation for 2010 was about $1,037,000 (considerably higher than the $651,957 figure mentioned above) and for 2011 was about $561,000. Charity Navigator and Forbes both rate this organization's efficiency at 92%, much higher than the 39% figure claimed in the e-mail.Read more at http://www.snopes.com/polit..." The part which you quote from is apparently an unattributed email examples.

If the Red Cross were dissolved, who would be there for the people who have so little to begin with, if their home burns down in the middle of the night? The Red Cross was there for me when my house burned down in 1995, and I was so grateful I became a volunteer (DAT, Client Casework) so I could help provide that free service for other strangers, my neighbors. I welcome anyone, or any organization, that wants to make that commitment to be there, raise the funds to provide gifts of financial assistance and material goods, hire the administrators to recruit, train and organize volunteers as well as operate fundraising campaigns to go ahead and create a competing organization. Nothing is stopping you! It would be great if the Red Cross had an agency to compete with in a race to see which group can best help people to become prepared for emergencies, and help them recover should they suffer that kind of loss. What a great world that would be if that's how we were trying to outdo each other!

This explains the issue of CEO compensation in mostly-volunteer
organizations:
http://www.addictinginfo.or...

One, possibly minor, detail that the report on the Red Cross missed is that it has a special relationship with the government. I only wonder if maybe this special status under the law should be re-evaluated.

One reference (maybe there are better): www.redcross.org/about-us/h...

"The relationship between the American Red Cross and the federal government is unique. We are an independent
entity that is organized and exists as a nonprofit, tax-exempt, charitable institution pursuant to a charter granted to us by the United States Congress. Unlike other congressionally chartered organizations, the Red Cross maintains a special relationship with the federal government, which, as I recall (I hope correctly) includes tax advantages.

We have the legal status of “a federal instrumentality,” due to our charter requirements to carry out responsibilities delegated to us by the federal government.

Among these responsibilities are:

to fulfill the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, to which the United States is a signatory, assigned to national societies for the protection of victims of conflict,

to provide family communications and other forms of support to the U.S. military, and

to maintain a system of domestic and international disaster relief, including mandated responsibilities under the National Response Framework coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)."

While absolutely true I'm not certain it has bearing on this story yet. Though this is supposed to be part of a series so maybe it will come up later.

Reposted from another thread. I have been very cautious of the work the RC professes to be involved in for decades. I found them to be very dishonest in their dealings with missions and money. The donations contributed by the public sit in bank accounts barely touched. The amount of funds collected related to specific disasters (and more frequently, unspecified) sit idle in these bank accounts (or so it seems). They lack basic honesty when collecting donations in their ability to allocate. Their staff is a club which breeds secrecy and opaqueness rather than openness and transparency. The volunteers are mismanaged and treated poorly. The volunteers are used (or volunteering is used) as a guise to effectuating missions. It is a ruse. The RC is a ruse. When in idle mode (without an event to promote themselves and behave as heroes) they do nothing all day. There is absolutely no accountability to anyone or any entity. It is in effect a ruse to 'bank' money, misrepresent, and mistreat. I agree 100% their primary focus is image which must be maintained to continue to build the bank account. They have no concrete objectives. I would advocate continued monitoring and probing in their objectives, allocations, and program management. It wreaks of corruption. I commend NPR for the investigative journalism and support on-going probing into the RC's activities. The investigation shouldn't be limited to the U.S.. It should extend for a global view on appropriations and mis-appropriations.

Their 07/01/12-06/30/13 tax return shows W2 reportable and estimated other compensation, for key employees and/or highest compensated employees, ranging at the low end from, for example, $346,087 for Melissa Hurst, Chief Human Resources Officer, to $619,906 for Steven Wagner, VP Development Operations. It also reports these people working 60 hour weeks.

I expect they do in fact work this hard, that they are not lying on the tax return. And it seems to me their compensation might be a tad low compared to compensation in the Fortune 500 for similar positions.

These are not lazy crooked jerks doing a fundraising scam, I conclude. However much PR idiocy such as empty trucks driving around, or prop-setting and other excessive stagecraft, might make it seem so.

I'll say it is a matter of natural tendencies in a bureaucracy toward appearance over substance, toward inertia, settling down into the minutiae of endless doing-lunch meetings with people who tend to share the same groupthink. A whole organization can veer off track.

I will say the Red Cross is in trouble, big trouble, in danger of deterioration and eventual irrelevancy. But it is repairable, I think. I hope. A significant part of this repair simply involves reading the mission right there in the tax return, remembering it on a day-to-day basis, using it as a guiding beacon. For example, does the slippery slope down into an excessive focus on PR harm that mission? Duh.

Perhaps more broadly, compensation like the above reflects the increasing disparity in net worth in the United States, almost inevitably leading to unspoken arrogance, in-group thinking, inevitable loss of mission focus. I've got no problem with hardworking execs earning good dough, but in our country it has gone too far. I'd say this is the real underlying problem.