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

We need totally transparent charities across the globe. A lot of my friend here in US prefer to support small local charities that they exactly know how money are going to be spent, even more, they can donate time and participate in those activities. Unfortunately for the charities of a large scale other concerns comes to play, especially here in US - taxes.

Thanks, I misread the comment.

More context on this project:

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

After the first investigative story into their Hurricane Sandy response efforts [1], the Red Cross argued that how it spent its money was a "trade secret" [2]. It later stepped back from that position [3]. Later that year (Oct. 2014), ProPublica/NPR published their first indepth story about Red Cross [4]; I haven't read the entire project but I think the OP is the second big feature. And full disclosure: I used to work at PP but not on this project.

[1] http://www.propublica.org/article/long-after-sandy-red-cross...

[2] http://www.propublica.org/article/red-cross-how-we-spent-san...

[3] http://www.propublica.org/article/red-cross-reverses-stance-...

[4] http://www.propublica.org/article/the-red-cross-secret-disas...

The article basically implies they use exceedingly broad categories, and don't exactly characterize everything the way they should. See also this Propublical article:

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-...

There's a chart half way through that shows, by NPR and Propublica's estimates that instead of 90% spent on actual charity, they only spend 60%. This would tank their rankings in places like Charity Navigator and Givewell.

So the short answer to your question, is that they are vague as hell about how they spend the money, and they probably cook the books.

I just finished reading The Big Truck That Went By [1] by Jonathan Katz. It's an amazing account on what happened after the earthquake has hit and why most development help didn't have the impact we had hoped for.

One of the reason he touches is that emergency relief groups like the Red Cross (and other, e.g. MSF) aren't setup to do the nation-building Haiti actually needed, but for more rapid and short term support as is needed in war zones, refugee camps or rural disaster areas (tents, water, food etc.).

I can only recommend the book. I found it through his article on the NYTimes [2] which touches most points.

Most embarrassing for a journalist, they were wrong in ways that would have immediately been made clear had we taken the time to ask some basic questions.

Food and water, for example. When I was in Haiti two years later, to research the relief effort for a book, I was shocked to discover that no one could tell me with any precision if there was ever a food or water shortage in the first place. No one among the responders had even contacted the Coordination Nationale de la Sécurité Alimentaire — the Haitian government agency overseeing food security — to find out what might be needed. Indeed, earthquakes tend to inflict the worst damage on cities, not farms — especially in countries that already have limited infrastructure — and Haiti’s urban areas didn’t have any sewers or piped drinking water to begin with.

People indeed lost their homes and incomes, and markets closed. But the World Food Program had enough supplies in its Port-au-Prince warehouses — which survived the quake — to feed 300,000 people one full meal for three weeks. There was no acute food or malnutrition crisis after the quake; that much we know. But it seems very likely that the city could have avoided one even without the frenzied aid push.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Truck-That-Went-ebook/dp/B009O...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/magazine/how-not-to-report...