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BTW: The above NYT "Story" is not a news "Story" it is a option piece.
While I'm all for local organizations doing great work, Can the do the long term assistance needed 2,3 6 months down the road. These great local organization after a few week, realize there volunteer pool is drying up, These volunteers have to go back to there lives, jobs, etc.
The "National" organizations like the Red Cross, Salvation Army, can rotate new volunteers in from around the country to replace the ones leaving.
The "Local" organizations can't do that, they have a flood of volunteers when it happens, that they offer have trouble utilization them effectively. But once the pool starts to go down, there are no replacement waiting in the wings to take there places.
That's the way they operate. They collect more donations than any other group and do much less for the victims. Red Cross thinks they own disaster management. They get in the way of the people doing the real work.
During Sandy they showed up a few days after with their cold sandwiches and thin blankets emblazoned with their logo. In a disaster situation people are burning calories at warp speed. They need much more to eat than the 1 to a customer cold sandwiches Red Cross provides. I didn't see then taking hot food away from Sandy volunteers that had been feeding people all along but wouldn't be surprised if they did.
They use disasters to drum up money that they stow away in their general fund. People, please don't give $ to them. Your $ will not go to the disaster victims. Please, give to local groups that are doing the real work to help the people.
Which is why I never donate to them.
They are a big business and they need the big bucks just ask Elizabeth Dole.
If you're operating at a Red Cross site under the Red Cross name then you ahve to abide by Red Cross rules. If you're set up your own site and conducting your own relief operation, Red Cross has no authority to tell you what to do or to "take" anything at all.
Yes there are... and my point is.. there are other organizations that can do more for the actual victims and/or area with each and every dollar given than the RC can.
I equate it to purchasing a sofa at a store for $5000.00 because they have more paperwork and employees and overhead to pay or.. I can purchase the exact same sofa at another store for $1000.00 because they keep their admin costs down. Guess where my $$ is going...
This right here. And I'm going to donate funds to local charities that can be checked and where I KNOW the help is going to where it is needed THEN, not the next disaster down the road or into someone's pocket for "overhead".
There certainly are plenty of those and they are pretty easily checked out.
I don't have to donate to an organization that I have good reason not to find to be palatable in order to help people in need.
If you're operating at a Red Cross site under the Red Cross name then you ahve to abide by Red Cross rules. If you're set up your own site and conducting your own relief operation, Red Cross has no authority to tell you what to do or to "take" anything at all.
And if you're operating at a site helping people and the Red Cross shows up and tries to take over and tell you what you can and cannot do on "their" site, they should go pound sand. This whole "liability" thing assumes that the people bringing the sandwiches were acting in the name of the Red Cross and therefore the Red Cross would have some sort of liability, which is not the case. They were there first, by hours, and were helping in the ways that they, working directly with the evacuees, had determined help was needed. If the Red Cross had not shown up they would still have been helping. The Red Cross doesn't get to show up, claim to be "in charge" and then cry "liability" as an excuse when their high-handed actions are exposed on the internet for all to see.
BTW: The above NYT "Story" is not a news "Story" it is a option piece.
While I'm all for local organizations doing great work, Can the do the long term assistance needed 2,3 6 months down the road. These great local organization after a few week, realize there volunteer pool is drying up, These volunteers have to go back to there lives, jobs, etc.
The "National" organizations like the Red Cross, Salvation Army, can rotate new volunteers in from around the country to replace the ones leaving.
The "Local" organizations can't do that, they have a flood of volunteers when it happens, that they offer have trouble utilization them effectively. But once the pool starts to go down, there are no replacement waiting in the wings to take there places.
I think you'd be surprised. The local organizations that I am thinking of are there all the time, too, just like the Red Cross. And they are surprisingly myriad. You just only hear about them during disasters that get widespread coverage. Lots of people volunteer for these organizations on a year round basis.
And if you're operating at a site helping people and the Red Cross shows up and tries to take over and tell you what you can and cannot do on "their" site, they should go pound sand. This whole "liability" thing assumes that the people bringing the sandwiches were acting in the name of the Red Cross and therefore the Red Cross would have some sort of liability, which is not the case. They were there first, by hours, and were helping in the ways that they, working directly with the evacuees, had determined help was needed. If the Red Cross had not shown up they would still have been helping. The Red Cross doesn't get to show up, claim to be "in charge" and then cry "liability" as an excuse when their high-handed actions are exposed on the internet for all to see.
Agreed. If that's the case. But the post is unclear about that and it sounded to me like the person was signed up as a RC volunteer reporting to a site designated by RC, and upon discovering that they were not ready to distribute food "when we got there to find we had no food to serve" she arranged to get supplies from alternate sources.
If I was conducting my own independent operation with my own supplies at a site I ahd a right to be at, I would not have stood there "mouth gaping open, fighting back tears" while a husband/wife team put my food in their coolers to be thrown out. I would have in fact told them to pound sand and continued distributing food, and if they tried to physically restrain me or take my things, there would have been a physical confrontation.
The fact that the person telling the story so easily ceded to RC authority suggests that RC did indeed have authority over that site.
That's the way they operate. They collect more donations than any other group and do much less for the victims. Red Cross thinks they own disaster management. They get in the way of the people doing the real work.
During Sandy they showed up a few days after with their cold sandwiches and thin blankets emblazoned with their logo. In a disaster situation people are burning calories at warp speed. They need much more to eat than the 1 to a customer cold sandwiches Red Cross provides. I didn't see then taking hot food away from Sandy volunteers that had been feeding people all along but wouldn't be surprised if they did.
They use disasters to drum up money that they stow away in their general fund. People, please don't give $ to them. Your $ will not go to the disaster victims. Please, give to local groups that are doing the real work to help the people.
You can be sure that as soon as the TV camera lights go out, they collect up all those Red Cross emblazoned blankets, to reuse for their next disaster begathon. Who in good conscience could see a disaster as a business opportunity to raise funds for their non-profit? These people have no principles.
Send money, no supplies. We will buy the supplies. If there is anything left after we pay our million dollar salaries.
They DIDN'T "dump 400 warm hamburgers" on the Red Cross. The Red Cross tried to TAKE the hamburgers to send to their distribution center and distribute them there, thus taking the liability on themselves and increasing the possibility of contamination (speaking of not using one's head). I read the original post where it was posted on Facebook and that is very clear. By the time the Red Cross showed up (and the poster acknowledged that it would necessarily take them some time to get there, more than people already with boots on the ground), the woman and other volunteers had been working for hours helping victims of the hurricane.
After having seen the Red Cross in action following an F5 (selling sandwiches while the Salvation Army right next door was giving them away, among other things), and talking to other people in other disasters will similar eye witness stories, I will never donate to them again (there are numerous local organizations where one can verify the funds are going where intended) and have absolutely no problem seeing the above occurring.
The Red Cross does not own disasters or disaster relief. They need to stop acting like it.
In all fairness I didn't read the OP's entire rant. I couldn't. I got dizzy from that giant block of text that had no breaks. My eyes aren't as good as they used to be.
People who use plenty of paragraphs when writing in discussion boards, even when a paragraph really doesn't belong, are an older person's best friend.
I pray this is not representative of the Red Cross organization as a whole. People who donate their money would be horrified. I'm thankful for our local volunteers who continued to fight with them (when I could not) and saw that the burgers and supplies were distributed to ALL those that needed them. As, OUR motto was, we turn no one away.
This is horrible. As a former Red Cross volunteer, I assure you this is not how most disaster relief is handled. I would report the people (the couple?) that were representing the Red Cross.
Even where I live now (where I don't volunteer), I delivered 100 Happy Meals to the Red Cross shelter when the weather was very cold and the homeless needed a place to stay. They happily accepted the food and clothing without question.
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