by Frank Butler, Orlando Advocate
The answer to the 64 dollar question is “not much.” One thing is for certain: The Red Cross of America can’t be trusted to be transparent in its use of money donated for disaster relief.
In January 2010 Haiti was devastated by an earthquake that caused massive upheaval and thousands of deaths. About half a billion dollars was raised by the Red Cross to help the peple of Haiti overcome the tragedy.
After the earthquake, Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern announced that the organization planned to use incoming donations to “develop brand-new communities”– 700 houses with finished floors, toilets, showers, and rainwater collection systems. The houses were supposed to be finished in January 2013. What was largely unknown at that time was that when McGovern took the helm some 18 months earlier, the Red Cross was operating with a deficit said by some to be as high as $100 million. It was also suffering from operational scandals after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. But people continued to believe in the Red Cross and what it stands for. Because of that, it raised far more in donations than any other charitable organization.
While most donors expect that some of the money they donate to a charity will be used to help defray the organization’s operational expenses, a half billion dollars is a lot of money– and it was expected that it would have a significant impact in Haiti. The Red Cross says it provided homes to more than 130,000 people. What that actually meant was that up to 130,000 people were “trained in proper construction techniques.” The Red Cross only built a total of six houses out of the promised 700.
The charity’s failure to build homes is likely a matter of “no expertise.” Building homes is not what it does. But wih $100 million of the $500 million it raised, one would think the Red Cross could have hired a qualified (and reputable) general contractor to spearhead the project and build more than 6 homes. Instead, it lied about its use of the money.
McGovern had promised that the Red Cross would make sure donors knew exactly what happened to their money. We will “lead the effort in transparency,” she pledged. “We are happy to share the way we are spending our dollars.”
Her words were just more of the same. The charity’s public reports provide no specifics about where more than $480 million in donations has gone.
So much for transparency. And so much for Red Cross credibility.
