Can We Trust the Red Cross?

I work for the Red Cross, and NONE of this surprises me. I’m currently going back to school so I can get away from this organisation. I have found in my fifteen years that if managers can’t make a success in the for-profit sector, they end up at non-profits. If I remember right, accounting practices were so bad at a region out east (New Jersey?), that the CEO and his minions were embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The most troubling thing to me, and I don’t know exactly why, is the one-and-a-half billion dollars made in selling donated blood. They collect it under such a “desperately needed” premise, then sell it off for profit. Punks. And while the executives are raking in half-million plus salaries, they’re giving good, hard-working people the “privilege” of volunteering. Bah.

It makes me glad that they won’t take my blood. Something about mad cow disease….and former soviet union…and hot dogs???

I wrote to 35 charities for the break down of where the money goes and I was just sick. Most have over 80% of their donations going to “administration” some over 90%.

That is shameful. I try to find small independant charities that I know to personally put needed goods and services in the hands of the victims.

Does not surprise me one bit. I heard about this years ago. When I give now, I try to give to the Salvation Army. I don’t mind some going toward administration, but I do mind when it goes into a CEO’s pocket!!

I won’t give to Red Cross or United Way/Red cross because they knew they had or could have HIV blood in their supplies in the early 1980’s, but instead of doing the right thing, they continued to sell it to the hospitals. They did not want to be without a profit til a proven test could be developed…so lets just continue with the blood, tainted or not. The United Way, because my brother use to go around Houston and give out Meals on wheels. I use to be the spoke person for United Way for UPS/ But when they turned my brother away because he had HIV, even thought he was a volunteer… Why would I ever give them my time or money again? I never will. They are cons going for the heart with their commercials.

Ohhh, they all help Aids/HIV now, but what about when they could have made a difference, at a time when they could have been proactive instead of greedy uneducated snobs?

I give to NAVS – National Anti-Vivasection Society. I target the Sancturary Fund. Outside of that I give donations to my congregation. No one has to know how much or see you put it in a plate as there are boxes in the back you can put money into anytime. I am a Jehovah’s Witness. Don’t even get me started on the blood issue. We do not take transfusions for religious reasons. But thankfully we have been protected from what many have suffered through transfusions AND STILL DO!! You can look up the Blood Transfusion Medical Information at http://www.watchtower.org.

My cousin is in Region 1 of 90 Building Regions of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the U.S. and was just sent down to New Orleans to rebuild Kingdom Halls and Homes for those that have lost theirs. All 90 regions are going to be pulled and rotated to get this done. If we waited on the Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity or any other organization, we would have a lot of people without Kingdom Halls and homes for a long, long time.

I stick with Animal Organizations overall. I give food to the local SPCA and utilize Spay and Save for Stray Cats. I’ve always trusted animal organizations with my money more than any other organization outside of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Animal people are……well, NUTS and they would kill someone before not utilizing the money correctly. Still, I like giving food and targeting the Sanctuary Fund for NAVS.

Oh, I forgot to say Thank You for posting this article. The last figure I had on how much the Red Cross makes on Blood was $600 Million a year; I believe this was AT LEAST a decade ago as it was printed in a Watchtower or Awake magazine. The updated dollar figure will help me to inform my Bible Study’s. Blood is BIG business.

Yes this doesn’t surprise me at all. In Canada we kicked the Red Cross out of the blood game due to the distribution of contaminated blood supplies which infected thousands of Canadians with HIV and hepatitis C. You can see one article on this at the following website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4595039.stm

It seems that this problem is not specific to American Red Cross: the management of Red Cross of Slovenia was using the donated money as if it was theirs (of course less carefully, because it was “other people’s money”). They were giving out low interest rate loans to businesses of the manager’s friends. They weren’t even particularly careful about paying them back. The manager was giving himself an excessively high salary (by local standards) and when he was fired because the whole affair was published in the press, he had his golden parachute – he got a year of that salary worth severance.

an Australian and Dutch investigation found that of all aid organisations Oxfam is the one with the lowest overall cost. More than 90% of donated money reaches the people who need it, sometimes as high as 98%.

I dont work for oxfam, but came across their name when my girlfriend ran the famous oxfam 100k run in Melbourne.

The woman in the article dressed in red cross uniform? Is she a real person? Or is that just a randow drawing?
Her image leaped off the page and hit me right between the eyes. I felt as if I knew her from past time in my life. Very strange experience.
Strongest emotional experience I’ve had in years.
I usually snicker when I read stuff like this. Go figure. Must be getting old.

I think she might be from other publications/used pictures, as I too have seen her before. I think it might be from old war posters, or leaflets asking for volunteers sort of thing.

This is no shock to me. I’ve been dealing with the Red Cross for a while, but for a different reason. The Red Cross bars donations from any non-celebate gay men. Their logic is that male-male sexual activity makes a person terribly likely for HIV infection. Now the numbers don’t really show that, with many more HIV-positive heterosexual people than gay; if there’s a disparity it’s small. At any rate, they’re supposed to be putting ALL new donations through quarantine and batch-screening tests, HIV blood is supposedly yanked very efficiently. If that’s the case, why put an anti-gay rule into place, especially during crises when blood donations are needed? Try explaining to your coworkers why you’re not donating blood after 9/11, when you simply can’t. It’s pretty embarassing when a donation-stand or bloodmobile volunteer asks me to donate, because I have to give a stranger details of my sex life, which elicits great responses, btw. (I realize gay sex grosses straight people out, which is why I don’t detail it publicly). They’re banning ~5% of the population using a bigoted rational that in turn, contributes to bigotry (the anti-gay movement LOVES that a beloved charity like the Red Cross openly discriminates in today’s PC world).

The salvation army isn’t much better on that subject, they for many years offered full benefits to gay couples… But, a few years ago, they decided they needed to save money… And everyone knows gay families are less deserving than ‘normal’ ones. So, they cut funding. If you look, there are plenty of stories of gay/lesbian people having to quit working at the SA because they could no longer provide health insurance to their partner’s children. So every year, I now give the (highly annoying) bellringers a slip of paper that says, “I would have donated $2 but because of your anti-gay policies, I’m donating elsewhere.” Not that I really believe economic boycotts work in today’s market, but at least I can pretend :)

To sum it up, gay and lesbian people who wish to donate money to charitable causes such as these, may find it very difficult to find charities who do not work against gay/lesbian families. It’s a mighty shame, because as another stereotype claims, we have a huge amount of disposable income. And believe it or not, we want to help out just as much as you do. But we don’t want to have to fight against our own equality to do so.

JustAnotherName said: “I give to NAVS – National Anti-Vivasection Society. I target the Sancturary Fund. Outside of that I give donations to my congregation. No one has to know how much or see you put it in a plate as there are boxes in the back you can put money into anytime. I am a Jehovah’s Witness. Don’t even get me started on the blood issue. We do not take transfusions for religious reasons. But thankfully we have been protected from what many have suffered through transfusions AND STILL DO!! You can look up the Blood Transfusion Medical Information at http://www.watchtower.org.

My cousin is in Region 1 of 90 Building Regions of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the U.S. and was just sent down to New Orleans to rebuild Kingdom Halls and Homes for those that have lost theirs. All 90 regions are going to be pulled and rotated to get this done. If we waited on the Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity or any other organization, we would have a lot of people without Kingdom Halls and homes for a long, long time.

I stick with Animal Organizations overall. I give food to the local SPCA and utilize Spay and Save for Stray Cats. I’ve always trusted animal organizations with my money more than any other organization outside of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Animal people are……well, NUTS and they would kill someone before not utilizing the money correctly. Still, I like giving food and targeting the Sanctuary Fund for NAVS.”

Nice comment. I am also one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I think it important that people see how ineffective most charities are. I donate what I can to the collection boxes at the back of my Kingdom Hall and there is no doubt in my mind it goes where it is supposed to.

Ha! That’s hilarious. That makes three of us then:)

I too used to be a Red Cross volunteer. While there are very good reasons why I do not volunteer for them any more (some enumerated below), there are some misconceptions about they way they operate (not all of them exculpatory).

You can certainly see a reason for calling their donation solicitations deceptive when they use a specific disaster to advertise the need for giving them money and supplies, but all the money goes into their general fund – that was the case 100% of the time until recently. It does make sense for all the money they receive to go into a general disaster fund because they need to be prepared to respond to disasters rapidly, and it takes quite a while for donations to come in following a disaster: how many people donated the same day they saw the damage done by Katrina? By having a general fund the supplies and resources are prepared ahead of time for about any kind of disaster. That money needs to be replaced, so they use the disaster to replenish what has been spent from the general fund.

As for the statement in the article about the government reimbursing the Red Cross for emergency shelters and emergency services, I very strongly have to doubt the veracity of that statement – while congress has officially made it the duty of the Red Cross to act as an intermediary between tro0ps and their families and to provide first aid education, the RC receives no compensation from the government for those services. Every instructor’s class I ever took from the RC drilled into our heads that the RC is funded by donations and gets NO money from the government. (But, being a charity, they do get some serious discounts and exemptions.) Also, the nurses that operate the blood donations are not usually volunteer, but are paid. There are volunteers that assist them, but they are in the minority.

At the national level the RC does tremendous amounts of good works for people in tremendous need by developing the classes and standards for services at no small expense. The RC exists by definition as a volunteer organization with a small paid staff to support the functions of the volunteers in doing these good works. The horrible breakdown is that on the local, chapter level, the paid staff have subverted that structure for their own ends. The paid support staff immediately start to believe that the volunteers are there to help THEM, and have turned the org chart for doing the good works upside down. They are aided by a few volunteers who have reached leadership positions in the chapters and their egos are left unchecked. You can see where that will lead things.

For the administrators (both at the executive director of the chapter level and division [blood services, health and safety, disaster services, etc.]) there is a lot of pressure to not operate at a loss (after all, these are paid staff we’re talking about), and they bend any rules they feel they have to in order to achieve that. As a former CPR instructor for them, I was shamed events called “CPR saturdays” where they rush large numbers of people (on the order of 50-200) through a 8-hour CPR class in 3-4 hours in rotating station fashion. To say that the normal standards of instruction were not maintained would be an understatement.

I was invited to assist in the final practical exam for a first responder’s class (basically a 60 hour first aid class), and was overruled when I refused to pass several students for gross failures in the standard of care. If you had a suspected spinal injury, would you want to be secured to a backboard by elastic bandages normally used for dressing sprained ankles? For our efforts, my wife and I received a letter signed by the chapter executive director telling us we were no longer acceptable as volunteers and were not allowed on that chapter’s premises or to attend any of their functions again.

I have spent nights taking snacks and drinks to firefighters working to extinguish fires so they are not in danger of collapsing, I have assisted in giving lodging vouchers to people whose homes have burned down and all their posessions been destroyed, and I have several gallon pins for blood donations. The RC does do some incredibly vital good works for people in need, and they should not be stopped or hindered in providing those good works – but people need to be educated in what the RC does do and learn how to use it. (They do not, as an organization, enter a disaster scene until it is declared safe – their liability insurance does not allow it. They leave that to the professionals) It is a shame that small pockets of corruption give such a bad name to an organization that does provide such needed services. The CPR classes they teach (regular, no more than 8 students per instructor, not the mass workshops) work… two students I taught performed CPR on me the week after I taught their class, and they got my heart started again. I was awake before I got to the ambulance.

Like most other groups it does contain some bad people , but the organization in general is good and does good for people in need. Those are the people you need to keep in mind.

Damn good post, Drakvil.

And the Red Cross associates with Red Crescent but not with Magen David Adom (the Israeli equivalent).

I noticed a few comments from some Jehovah’s Witnesses. I can understand why they would try promoting the Watchtower Society here, but as they so often fail to mention is that not even a Jehovah’s Witness could get a full financial report from the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of NY. It just is not possible. Until you know every detail, you cannot be sure where exactly that donated dollar goes. I am aware of their so-called “Annual Report”…..but that is not from any “neutral” audit. I wouldn’t want anyone to even think for one minute that the money donated in a box at the back of a Kingdom Hall goes entirely to some charitable cause. The Watchtower as a charity or a relief agency? Now THAT happens to be hilarious. And about that blood issue……….if you ever want to know about that, simply survey the doctor’s and nurses at your local hospitals. More often than not, a Jehovah’s Witness will accept a blood transfusion as long as there are no other Jehovah’s Witnesses around to know it. The policy is that tranfusions are forbidden yet it is considered a “matter of personal conscience”, that’s the deal……..however, if one does exercise his personal conscience and agree to a transfusion and the rest of the flock finds out, that person will be disfellowshipped and it will be said that the person “removed himself” from the congregation. Furthermore, adherents of the Watchtower Society generally recieve information regarding relief efforts from only one source…….Watchtower publications. That would send up a red flag in most normal people’s minds. Reality is, way too often, these relief efforts are solely for Jehovah’s Witness members and buildings owned by the Watchtower Society. Also, I must mention that a Jehovah’s Witness will share stories about how wonderful it is that they refuse blood and do not participate in the donation of blood, but never seem to mention the assorted parts of blood they will accept even though they never donate these parts to the rest of society…………and this leaves us with one question……..Is a cannibal still a cannibal if he only eats the toes?

One of the worst things I’ve heard about the Red Cross was from my mother. She knew someone who had received aid from the Red Cross. They later received a letter from them demanding that they be reimbursed for the aid they received.

WATCHTOWER HEMOPHILIAC HYPOCRISY

Jehovah’s Witnesses may take certain components of blood, such as hemophiliac preparations (Factor VIII and Factor IX),and have for many years.The greatest risk of AIDS infection comes from this procedure which is allowed by the Watchtower society,so this proves that this whole entire blood ban thing is totally made up and man made and NOT from the Bible.

http://www.ajwrb.org/basics/abstain.shtml

Blood issue at a glance: The Watchtower leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses say NO blood, BUT they actually DO ALLOW some blood “fractions”.
Problem is this variance is so esoteric complicated that by the time special elders appear in the ER with the rule book, the JW patient is at the point of no return,bleeding to death.
NOW,they blame the hospital staff for not having a “cell saver” machine instead of the Watchtower leaders who are responsible for making the rules.

I was born a 3rd generation Jehovah’s Witness in 1957 and endured the Watchtower’s no blood commandment with longstanding bleeding Crohn’s disease.The Watchtower leadership expects followers to die for their dogma and many have.The medical staff get blamed and are ‘damned if they do damned if they don’t’.

In 20 years there will be artificial blood for anyone who chooses it,putting an end to this drama.

I am Danny Haszard a real lifelong JW with a scary 28 year chronic bleeding disease who “took his stand on blood” and refused it countless times

http://www.ajwrb.org/basics/abstain.shtml Jehovah Witness blood policy reform site

http://www.towertotruth.net/Articles/blood_transfusions.htm Will you die for a lie?

I apologize for this off topic remark, but dangerous misinformation should be stopped when possible.

rainman said: “Their logic is that male-male sexual activity makes a person terribly likely for HIV infection. Now the numbers don’t really show that, with many more HIV-positive heterosexual people than gay; if there’s a disparity it’s small.”

This is simply not true, and the perpetuation of lies like this is why HIV has spread as quickly as it has. The risk of HIV transmission from anal intercourse is MUCH higher than for vaginal. Do some research before you spread myths, and please, be safe.

Enter your reply text here. OK

YOU GUYS ARE ALL WRONG. Yes, the United States Congress has fined and held herrings on tainted blood for which the Red Cross has dangerously incompetant management. // Most charities, problobly starting in the 1990’s are hiring high paid CEO’s from the private sector to 1) run optimally 2) tremendisly increase their fund raising abilities.

Small charities are usually efficient but need funding. They hire a million dollar CEO who then raises 10 million dollars each year.

Who’s complaining? If your gay, charity’s reflect society. Discrimination is still around.
Ask a female military general how she had handled discrimination. Yes, America has female generals.

Enter your reply text here. OK

ps: I am a dog walker. Yes, full time job. I am not in the non-profit industry except as a volunteer.

My elderly grandparents *hate* the Red Cross for what went on during WWII.

I have a bone to pick with the entire non-profit, non-governmental development / aid sector although I don’t doubt the high-minded altruism of some of the individuals who work in it. I have extensive exposure and my feelings are that:

1. In a very short time, their focus turns inwards. To the survival and aggrandisement of the organisation itself. To devise new projects, obtain more funds and to increase in scope and influence is the main goal of all such organisations because, think about it, if by some miracle you actually achieved your targets and delivered as you promised, then you would also eliminate the reason for your own continued existence. This was always to be expected if we weren’t all so naive (extend that logic to the many organizations and agencies that have spawned in the last decade and you can also predict how likely they are to willingly eliminate their own jobs).

2. They very cynically exploit guilt and good intentions alike. They milk public sympathy and they bully corporate CSR for donations but they divert the funds to their own uses.

3. At the lower levels, the field workers and volunteers are often only in it to get the “brownie points” – i.e. something killer to put on their resumes so they look like caring human beings when they apply for their high-paying corporate jobs. I’ve seen volunteers in 3rd world countries acting like prima donnas or visiting heads of state. They will go to visit a family that has lost its home to some disaster and it is clear they think that even showing up in this hot, filthy, muddy place was a great sacrifice and kind deed on their part. They will ask a few inane and insensitive questions, all the more insulting because they are not even well thought out. And they will come back and snipe about the ingratitude of the victims if perchance the family was not obsequiously grateful for their interest and did not kill their last chicken to cook the honored guest a fitting meal.

4. At the other end, leaving our few high-minded altruists aside, most founders of charities and the management committees of ngos learn very quickly what a gravy train they have on their hands and, well let’s just say it turns their head a little. I know of the founder of a charity ngo. He always wears very humble, homespun fabric clothing to show how he identifies with the poor. Its almost his trademark uniform. He also wears a Cartier watch and $1500 crocodile shoes which he thinks people won’t notice or perhaps, cotton on to. Actually I saw him at an airport once when we were boarding the same flight. We walked on to the aircraft and as I turned right to go to my seat in coach he turned left to find his in first class.

I know of another committee that, since they run a non-profit charity and cannot take profits or dividends or salaries, pay themselves $5000 in attendance fees for each committee meeting that they attend. There are a minimum of 12 meetings a month and more can be called anytime one or the other of them decides they need a little extra cash. Best of all, they can sign by remote and need not personally attend.

5. The worst are the micro-finance institutes (that’s small micro loans so someone can, for example, build a chicken coop or buy a bicycle to take their chickens to market). The financial engineering of these loans is pure evil. The lucky borrower has to pay processing fees, documentation fees and in some cases the first installment at the time of borrowing. The interest rates are anywhere from 2 – 4% PER MONTH. The reason for this is, since you are lending to the poorest of the poor, they have no security or collateral to give. Micro-finance models don’t even admit mortgage or collateral because then they would not look like charities, they would look like banks. But on the other hand they argue that since the loans are unsecured and the risk of default is high they have to charge higher interest rates. Sounds like a bank to me. But here’s the diabolical part. If you borrow $100, and they deduct $15 dollars as fees, costs and the first installment on the very day they give you the money, you only go home with $85. But you have to pay 4% a month on the $100 that is the official value of your loan. Effective interest rate: 40.8% per annum. Makes Shylock look like a stand-up guy. The amazing thing is these poor people are so honourable, that even though it ruins them, they sell everything and still manage to pay. In many societies, to default on a loan is like breaking your word and carries heavy social stigma. The micro-finance guys know this, that’s why they love the business. The real risk of default is low, they still charge high, high interest, and entire families and even villages are wiped out in their wake.

6. Now all the above points are about how they are run and arguably, that can be fixed. There’s one over-riding question that nobody can give a clear answer too and that is, “Does it work?” This is the development/dependency debate. A whole school of economic theory from Latin America in the 60s and 70s rejected development through aid, however well-intentioned, because they felt it taught people not how to become self sufficient (such as through employment, empowerment and private enterprise) but how to keep getting money from a charity.

Jehovah’s Witnesses oh brother, they will happily use other people’s blood components for inoculations to save their butts, but to give blood of any sort they frown on that. It was not that long ago that they viewed transplants of any kind as cannibalism, till their so called called flashing “new light” got brighter; this is all fine and dandy until you stop and contemplate how many needless deaths have occurred among their rank and file, all because their Governing Body Demigods, (corporate leaders) have successfully hood winked thousands of people over the years to their own demise When everyone’s thinking alike, no one’s thinking at all.