This started out as a response to this
diary, but it obviously grew too long for a comment, so here we are.
I've been a local disaster volunteer with the Red Cross for over 6 years now. I've never responded to a national disaster, but I have many friends in the organization that have, and I've heard their tales. I've always been proud of the work the Red Cross does, both the help that I've personally witnessed and the information I've gotten second hand. But lately there have been several diaries where people have complained that the Red Cross is somehow an incompetent, bloated and borderline corrupt organization that should be shunned by anyone who truly wants to help.
Normally, I would just read these and move on. I'm a lurker by nature and I don't feel the need to argue with every little thing I read that I disagree with. (Mostly because I've found that if I try to take the time to craft a reply, get all my facts straight, and write it down in somewhat comprehensible English, someone else usually beats me to the punch and says pretty much what I meant to say, and more coherently as well.) But this time is different. Since no one else is rushing in to defend the Red Cross, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe there is something to all these complaints. Maybe I should be spending my time and energy with a different group. So this is a diary where I'd like to hear from those of you who have had direct contact with the Red Cross in the past ten years, either as a volunteer or as someone who received (or
didn't receive) assistance. The reason I limit it to ten years, is that I don't think one should judge how effective a group is by what they did many decades ago, but rather how good are they today and how good do we predict they will be the next time disaster hits. (More on that point below.)
While I'm here, I would like to address some of the complaints I've read and point out those I know to be specious.
1. The Red Cross is not the be-all and end-all of disaster assistance organizations. Actually, this complaint is true and it is a valid point to bring up. Disaster victims have a wide variety of needs and the Red Cross does not address them all. Other organizations provide important assistance and they need funding as well. This, I think, was the main point of the LA Times op ed piece referenced in here. He's not arguing that the American Red Cross shouldn't exist, but that it shouldn't be the only group that people donate to. The Red Cross has a fairly narrow and focused mission: to provide immediate food and shelter assistance to disaster victims. It's unreasonable to complain that they didn't provide X to your Aunt Sally when her house flooded when X is outside their purview. Here is a list someone else has been keeping of other agencies that are providing Katrina assistance. I myself haven't decided where all of my donated dollars will go. Some have gone to the Red Cross, but the next round of donations I may send somewhere else.
2. The Red Cross is some sort of government agency and is therefore an arm of the Bush White House. Actually no. It is not funded at all by the government. It has a Congressional charter, but it is run by the board and the board members are not appointed or confirmed by the governement. In addition, it is my understanding, from one of the board members I heard speak years ago, that the Medical Services (blood donation), Health and Safety Service (CPR/First Aid training) and Disaster Services are operated separately. Their funding is not intermingled. This information is several years old, and at the time they were considering modifying that, so it may have changed, but at least at our chapter level that separation is still there. Incidentally, in order to keep their status as the only disaster relief group chartered by the government, they are mandated to respond to every disaster that happens in this country, whether or not it gets reported in the news and whether or not they receive any donations directed for that disaster. This includes disasters down to the level of a single family house fire (the type of disaster that I personally work on). The International Red Cross, in contrast, only responds when they receive donations. If a disaster happens and no one sends checks, the International Red Cross most likely will not show up.
3. The Red Cross is some sort of quasi-religious organization. Again no. The Red Cross takes its logo from the inverse of the Swiss flag. The cross is not the Christian cross and it is not associated with any church. They have a non-discrimination policy when it comes to providing assistance and to accepting volunteers, unlike some of the religious based charities, including Salvation Army. I respect the work that these, shall we say, more discriminating charities do, but sometimes their policies offend me personally. I'm not going to try to claim that no Red Cross worker has ever failed to provide service because of discrimination (see the next point) but at least the organization tries to live up to standards I can be proud of.
4. Someone representing the Red Cross did something incompetent or offensive in one place, therefore you can't trust the entire organization. This is the hardest one for me to judge and this is why I am soliciting personal accounts. The problem with a volunteer organization (and according to their web site, 97% of the staff are volunteers, which agrees with my observations) is that you can't "fire" anyone who shows up to help. You can try to shuffle good hearted, but somewhat incompetent folks over to areas where they won't do much damage, and you can firmly direct people to leave their prejudices behind, but sometimes when the choice is using someone who's not really suited to the task or not getting the task done at all, you make do with what you have. So often you don't have the best person for the job, you have the best person who showed up and occasionally these folks royally screw up. I believe that for the most part, the work gets done and people get the assistance they need, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the organization is so full of incompetent or malicious people that it should just be abandoned. If you are one of the people who think the Red Cross is a lost cause, let me know. But please also tell me who you think should take their place and why.
5. The Red Cross doesn't need my help since I called to volunteer and they never called me back. Actually, what that tells me is that the Red Cross really could have used your help six months ago. If you had signed up and got trained then, they could have relied on you when the disaster hit. As it is, the entire organization from top to bottom has been overwhelmed by this disaster and the people who would normally be answering the phones and processing and training new volunteers are now responding to one of the affected areas or are assisting displaced victims who have shown up to your local area. For years I have watched both paid staff and volunteers break their backs trying to get people involved and trained, only to be met with indifference from the public. Most people don't want to be bothered until something big grabs their attention and then they complain that no one is there to answer the phone when they call. If you want to help, you may have to be proactive and show up at your local chapter.
6. The Red Cross uses well covered disasters to raise money that isn't spent on victims of that disaster. This one is no longer true, and in my opinion, it's a pity that it isn't. The fact of the matter is there are a lot of disasters that happen, that don't get noticed and don't get press and don't get people motivated to give or hold bake sales or anything. After the 9-11 disaster, the Red Cross raised an enormous amount of money. But the plain truth of the matter is that the victims of that disaster didn't need the sort of help that the Red Cross is set up to provide. So which would have been the better outcome: the Red Cross put the money into the general disaster fund to be used for the hurricanes and wildfires that did happen later that year, or that the Red Cross made sure to spend all the money in downtown Manhattan, which led to limo drivers who lost business getting large checks and upper class people getting assistance with their utility bills? Hint: it was the same sort of people who are now complaining about the Red Cross being some sort of money grubbing organization that led to the latter happening. In order to defend themselves against any appearance of fiscal chicanery, they have instituted rules that donations made in the name of a given disaster will only be spent on that disaster. More's the pity. Organizations that are supported by donations are by definition money-grubbing. If they don't ask, people don't donate, and then they can't function.
7. The Red Cross collects all this money, but not much of it goes to the disaster victims. Actually, a few people have already posted references such as this that 90% of the donations are spent on disaster services. Here's the Red Cross fact sheet on how the money has been spent on the Katrina response. Note that on the night of Friday Sept. 23, the Red Cross was housing 298,000 people in hotels/motels in addition to 44,000 people in shelters. You can claim that these figures are lies, but I'd like to have something more than your gut feeling to go on.
8. The Red Cross did something horrible in the past (e.g, charged WWII servicemen for coffee, charged disaster victims in the 1950s for supplies, or ignored the AIDS crisis and allowed HIV to contaminate the nation's blood supply) therefore the group can never be trusted again. I'll address each of these examples, but I have to say, that this argument makes me scratch my head and go, "huh?" Why judge an organization for something they did decades ago in the past that they now admit was wrong and a bad idea and have completely reversed their policies? If they were defending any of these as appropriate, or if any of the people running the organization now were in charge when these things happened, I could see maybe holding the present organization responsible, but that's not the case. Here's a link that explains the WWII coffee debacle. I don't have any info on when or how they charged disaster victims for relief, but I know that now they go to great lengths to keep any fund raising activity separate from any relief operation to the point that they will not even accept donations at the same place or time where they are doing relief operations. They are adamant there will be nothing that even suggests that disaster victims are being asked to pay in any way shape or form for the assistance they are receiving. As for the blood system, the Red Cross completely overhauled the blood donation and testing labs after that debacle (and admittedly after they were forced to do so by the courts) but again, the people in charge now, and were in charge during the overhaul are not the people that were in charge when the problem arose.
In case anyone is wondering what I do for the Red Cross, since as I said I have never gone out for a national disaster response, I work with the team that responds to local disasters. For the past 5 years, I have carried a pager 24/7 that the local fire department is supposed to use to notify us of any residence fire. Since we are a very small chapter, this only happens a handful of times a year, but when it does, I have a team of volunteers I call who will respond at any hour of the day or night to assist people who have been burned out of their house and are standing on the street. We make sure they have a hotel for a few nights and vouchers to buy food and some basic clothes and toiletries. Then another group of volunteers works with them to address more long term needs.
Now allow me to end by saying I am in awe of all of you who post well thought and researched diaries every day on top of reading and commenting on so many other people's diaries. I'm embarrassed to admit how long this took me to write. I can't imagine how you do it day in and day out on top of everything else that makes up our "real" lives.
