Hurricane Harvey - Red Cross Donations

Media are urging people to donate to the Red Cross to aid victims of Hurricane Harvey.

You might want to reconsider if you plan on giving money to the Red Cross.

From the Washington Post:

People are urging donations for Harvey relief efforts — just not to the Red Cross

With many ways to help the tens of thousands of people estimated to be temporarily displaced by surging floodwaters brought by Harvey, some are asking people to donate — but to be choosy about where they spend the money.

As former president Barack Obama — as well as celebrities and local leaders — encourage donations to the American Red Cross, others on social media are telling donors to give elsewhere, criticizing the leading disaster-relief organization for its response to recent natural disasters, particularly the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

That sentiment has been shared in the past — following investigations by NPR and ProPublica, which revealed how the Red Cross bungled its response in Haiti.

...People were urging donors Monday to seek out churches and local organizations, saying, “Please don’t donate money to the Red Cross! Houston will never see it.”

“For the umpteenth time,” one person wrote, “don’t give red cross your money. Find grassroots efforts so people can actually get helped.”

“They don’t help and pocket majority of your money,” another said. “Very little if any goes to those that need it.”

Over the weekend, Dan Gillmor, author and professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, also advised people on Twitter not to give money to the organization.

Before you send money to the Red Cross (my advice: don't) re Texas read ProPublica's advice on disaster charity. https://t.co/kcwlxt6gto

— Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) August 27, 2017

...As The Washington Post’s Peter Holley reported last year, a 2015 NPR and ProPublica investigation revealed that the Red Cross had only built six permanent homes in Haiti even though it had collected almost a half-billion dollars in donations. The year before, the news organizations published a report about Red Cross’s response to hurricanes Isaac and Sandy.

They reported:

After both storms, the charity’s problems left some victims in dire circumstances or vulnerable to harm, the organization’s internal assessments acknowledge. Handicapped victims “slept in their wheelchairs for days” because the charity had not secured proper cots. In one shelter, sex offenders were “all over including playing in children’s area” because Red Cross staff “didn’t know/follow procedures.”

According to interviews and documents, the Red Cross lacked basic supplies like food, blankets and batteries to distribute to victims in the days just after the storms. Sometimes, even when supplies were plentiful, they went to waste. In one case, the Red Cross had to throw out tens of thousands of meals because it couldn’t find the people who needed them.

The Red Cross marshaled an army of volunteers, but many were misdirected by the charity’s managers. Some were ordered to stay in Tampa long after it became clear that Isaac would bypass the city. After Sandy, volunteers wandered the streets of New York in search of stricken neighborhoods, lost because they had not been given GPS equipment to guide them.

Red Cross officials deny the accusations.