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In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

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Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#21

Post by lsaferite »

Gupie wrote: post #8

$500M sound like a large sum. It is if that is you personal wealth. However for Haiti with a population of over 10M it is only $50 per head. According to the article the Red Cross built shelters for 130,000 people. The would be $384 per shelter if that was all the Red Cross did. But they also fed people, provided clean water, medical aid... It is easy to attack big charities. You get support from people who feel guil…

> The American Red Cross says it "provided homes" for more than 130,000 Haitians, but acknowledges that much of that is made up of people who went to a training seminar on how to fix their homes, received temporary rental help or lived in shelters like these in Bon Repos, which start to disintegrate after three to five years. Residents say they don't have bathrooms, kitchens or running water.

I think the 130k people number is a big fat lie.

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#23

Post by mckoss »

tptacek wrote: post #15
Gupie wrote: post #8

$500M sound like a large sum. It is if that is you personal wealth. However for Haiti with a population of over 10M it is only $50 per head. According to the article the Red Cross built shelters for 130,000 people. The would be $384 per shelter if that was all the Red Cross did. But they also fed people, provided clean water, medical aid... It is easy to attack big charities. You get support from people who feel guil…

It's $166/head counting every person in the area affected by the earthquake, and $2000/house counting all the houses destroyed by the earthquake. Most Haitians did not lose their homes to the quake.

Can $2,000 build a whole house? Even in Haiti? I would think 10x that for anything we would call a "house". Its not surprising there is a vast unmet need in Haiti given its poverty and the scale of the disaster.

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#25

Post by nodata »

avar wrote: post #16

The biggest revelation to me in that article, which I feel should be highlighted more, is that the Red Cross provides almost zero information about how it spends its money. It refuses to provide more than very vague information about how the money was spent in Haiti (information like "35% of $488 million on shelters"), with no specific details about what projects they spent the money on, how those projects went etc.…

> the Red Cross provides almost zero information about how it spends its money.

If that is true, how can Charity Navigator rate it 80.5/100?

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#26

Post by danso »

mckoss wrote: post #17
meesterdude wrote: post #7

I'm building an app that utilizes people giving to charities - red cross seemed like an obvious choice to include, but now there's no way. This has been helpful in sleuthing out reputable charities: http://www.charitynavigator.org/

I would not let a single news story exclude you from including them. I've seen too many cases where journalists completely botch an investigative story due to biased sources and their own ignorance. I personally would like to see the Red Cross's response.

This is one in a series of investigative stories conducted by ProPublica and NPR (disclosure: I used to work at PP but not on this project):

http://www.propublica.org/series/red-cross

Red Cross has made responses; I haven't read all the stories but my impression has been is that they haven't been on-point rebuttals:

Red Cross Demands Corrections to Our "Misleading" Coverage. Here's Our Response - http://www.propublica.org/article/red-cross-demands-correcti...

The project began last October: The Red Cross' Secret Disaster, which examined their aid after Hurricane Sandy: http://www.propublica.org/article/the-red-cross-secret-disas...

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#27

Post by bitserf »

meesterdude wrote: post #7

I'm building an app that utilizes people giving to charities - red cross seemed like an obvious choice to include, but now there's no way. This has been helpful in sleuthing out reputable charities: http://www.charitynavigator.org/

If you went by CharityNavigator data, you'd think the American Red Cross was one of the well run ones.

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#28

Post by snowpanda »

lucb1e wrote: post #19

TL;DR (the informational bits): > First the Red Cross took a customary administrative cut, then the charities that received the money took their own fees. And then, according to the Red Cross' records, the charity took out an additional amount to pay for what it calls the "program costs incurred in managing" these third-party projects. > In one of the programs reviewed by NPR and ProPublica, these costs ate up a thir…

> Or did they build 10 villas and leave the rest in tents?

I think they did build 10 villas, just not in Haiti. It's very sad to read all of this. (great TL;DR by the way, thank you).

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#29

Post by cdnsteve »

Gupie wrote: post #8

$500M sound like a large sum. It is if that is you personal wealth. However for Haiti with a population of over 10M it is only $50 per head. According to the article the Red Cross built shelters for 130,000 people. The would be $384 per shelter if that was all the Red Cross did. But they also fed people, provided clean water, medical aid... It is easy to attack big charities. You get support from people who feel guil…

If you had $500M, the best move for the community would be to create a Hati community long term investment of 100M. The community gets the dividends/interest from the investments. Long term sustainability is automatically achieved. That's free money over the long term for clean water projects, community buildings, etc.

Did Red Cross do that? Nope, people got tents and pocketed the rest.

Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief

#30

Post by mckoss »

meesterdude wrote: post #20
mckoss wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not let a single news story exclude you from including them. I've seen too many cases where journalists completely botch an investigative story due to biased sources and their own ignorance. I personally would like to see the Red Cross's response.

FWIW, they have something of a history if I recall; i only recently found out a few days ago, really.

From my memory, they had a reputation for bait and switch - raising money during a disaster, but spending it elsewhere. I think they cleaned that up, including a change in leadership.

This article is new in claiming innefectiveness at usefully spending money to help disaster victims. I would love to see a detailed audit.

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