One of the best and most transparent charities I've ever donated to - https://www.charitywater.org/ I heard the founder speak at a company event a while back and it's truly inspirational.
In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief
71–80 of 215 posts
Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief
#72$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…
Stolen from the top comment on Reddit:
> Providing homes does not equate building a brand new home. Why would people think that?
>> When land was not available for new homes, the Red Cross provided a range of housing solutions including rental subsidies, repairs and retrofitting of existing structures, fulfilling our promise to ensure tens of thousands of Haitians are back in homes
> Red Cross takes a tough stance in NOT paying off greedy government officials. Saying there was a lack of land is the same thing as saying they couldn't justify paying outrageous prices for land. Many charities have to enter environments like these knowing they are going to be inundated with scammers. And that's the kind of news they don't need, being tricked into doing business with them.
http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/38nkp8/the_red_cr...
Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief
#73The 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...
Have a look at RC's "Annual Report" from 2014 ... http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m4...
This is a fluff piece full of pictures and words. No numbers or financial statements. On page 26 there are a couple pie charts that vaguely outline some general categories of outflows and inflows. No details. If a NYSE company (or even a private company) tried to put out an Annual Report with this kind of glossed-over detail, they...well, they couldn't get away with that.
Guidestar.org is not quite as nice, rating it 3 out of 5 stars: http://www.guidestar.org/organizations/53-0196605/american-n...
People who run these 'not-for-profit' 501(C)(3) institutions are ironically not held quite as "accountable" as people running normal businesses who have to report to shareholders. In the N4P world, where the "shareholders" are reduced to the general public or generic taxpayers or even to the disaster victims themselves -- it's a lot more difficult to get them to own up accountable to the people they serve.
Most of the time the donors are just happy to get their tax write-off and they leave it there.
Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could it be that actually getting things done in horrible environments requires interacting with, and paying off, some shady people? This is of course a charitable guess, but could it be that the Red Cross has made a decision to make morally questionable choices in the short term in support of the greater good, and they know they can't publish such truths and continue to exist?
If the only way they can exist is by doing things so morally reprehensible that they have to keep everyone ignorant of their actions then they shouldn't exist.
That's great in theory, but should the people suffer more of Haiti because of these individuals? I'm guessing that none of these organisations could exist without compromising things for the greater good.
Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief
#75TL;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…
> they include statements from locals who "cannot see that $24 million has been spent here," whatever that means.
I took it to mean that the area didn't appear to receive redevelopment projects worth $24 million. Isn't that a reasonable quote to include in the context of the article?
Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief
#76I stopped giving to 'big charities' twenty years ago and since then have only helped people locally where I can see what happens to the money. That's a real pity because of course on a relative scale those are probably much less in need than the people in Haiti (and Nepal and other areas devastated by natural disasters). But the red cross - once a paragon of virtue - and a number of other big time charities that were…
There are some large-scale charities which I think do use the money well. For example, I felt no hesitation in donating to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) at the beginning of the Ebola outbreak, when they were the only ones with boots on the ground actually helping people.
Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief
#77I stopped giving to 'big charities' twenty years ago and since then have only helped people locally where I can see what happens to the money. That's a real pity because of course on a relative scale those are probably much less in need than the people in Haiti (and Nepal and other areas devastated by natural disasters). But the red cross - once a paragon of virtue - and a number of other big time charities that were…
> Governments are similarly inept at spending their money efficiently ... [big charities] will never get another cent out of me until at least one of their large scale disaster responses works out well...Because of the total lack of end-to-end accountability with organizations like the red cross...
Your post is ideological - sweeping application of game-theory style logic, but without the evidence to suggest that the logic applies to this case.
1) 'Governments are similarly inept at spending their money efficiently' is overly simplified. The most obvious counter-example is that the US and the UK spend the same amount of tax money as a percentage of GDP on healthcare; the former gets limited programs covering a minority of the population, the latter gets a universal health service (albeit obviously with limitations).
2) On what basis do you say that no large scale NGO disaster responses work out well? I would say that is an incredibly difficult conclusion to draw.
Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief
#78The 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.…
Could it be that actually getting things done in horrible environments requires interacting with, and paying off, some shady people? This is of course a charitable guess, but could it be that the Red Cross has made a decision to make morally questionable choices in the short term in support of the greater good, and they know they can't publish such truths and continue to exist?
Perhaps, but I have a friend who worked in water quality in Haiti after the earthquake, and it's possible to get things done even with corruption and graft present.
More likely, the Red Cross is one of many charitable organizations with low direct payout (combined with inexperience on the ground). This is a notorious problem, and was enabled by an earlier era of no-questions-asked donations. But in recent years, big investors have demanded much more accounting of the money, and some organizations aren't up to the increased scrutiny.
Check out http://www.charitynavigator.org/ for more.
Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief
#79TL;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…
Hi -- I'm Justin Elliott, one of the reporters on the piece, with Laura Sullivan of NPR. FWIW you should take a look at the ProPublica version of the story -- we get more into the numbers, and link to various documents: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-... To answer your question specifically about the neighborhood of Campeche: Zero houses have been built there by the Red Cross.
The NPR story I heard yesteday went out of its way to emphasize that Red Cross did do some good things in Haiti. So, in your view, is the failure mainly due to difficulty in operating in Haiti and their lack of local expertise? Or is Red Cross just hopeless and we should stop donating to it ?
Re: In Search of the Red Cross' $500M in Haiti Relief
#80I stopped giving to 'big charities' twenty years ago and since then have only helped people locally where I can see what happens to the money. That's a real pity because of course on a relative scale those are probably much less in need than the people in Haiti (and Nepal and other areas devastated by natural disasters). But the red cross - once a paragon of virtue - and a number of other big time charities that were…
> Governments are similarly inept at spending their money efficiently ... [big charities] will never get another cent out of me until at least one of their large scale disaster responses works out well...Because of the total lack of end-to-end accountability with organizations like the red cross... Your post is ideological - sweeping application of game-theory style logic, but without the evidence to suggest that the…
His post isn't ideological. Yours is.