This is why I so often seem heartless and cynical when I don't donate to these admittedly dire situations and needy causes. It just seems so often useless and full of the normal red tape that you would see in governments that I normally just refuse to give money due to a bad attitude about the level of bullshit that seems to go on behind the scenes. I know there are good people involved in these organizations...I do...I just have a terribly negative opinion of this type of thing.
I am not a total cheapskate but I do like to choose things that I find important for my yearly donations as well as things that I feel confident are getting direct results and go through as few a number of channels as possible. I am very fond of donating to public radio so hopefully disaster relief can be taken from my tax dollars through Canadian efforts and I'll continue to help people by trying to make them realize that there are alternatives to your news, current affairs and mainstream music out there and it's (mostly, depending on your willingness to donate) free and run by volunteers and it's wonderful and it touches every community you can imagine.
All the best to all everywhere,
Michael
William A Brent wrote:
At 07:20 PM 9/2/2005, Danny Steward wrote:I pulled all this information off Google in the past 30 minutes.hen it must be true.
so who to give money to?
the Red Cross?
The American Red Cross may be expert at responding to public disasters, but for years it has failed to get a grip on financial disasters at its local chapters.
There's the fundraiser in Louisiana caught padding her own bank account with donations, the manager in Pennsylvania who embezzled to support her crack cocaine habit and the executive in Maryland who forged signatures on purchase orders meant for disaster victims, to name a few.
But the biggest criminal scandal inside the Red Cross surfaced in New Jersey last year. And though it's been kept off the front pages, it ranks among the biggest charity frauds ever.-OR-
By Amran Abocar in Toronto
November 22 2002
Police have laid criminal charges against four doctors, the Canadian Red Cross Society and a United States pharmaceutical company after a five-year investigation into tainted blood-and then there was 9/11 here in NY-
WASHINGTON - Generous North Americans who gave more than half a billion dollars (U.S.) to the Red Cross expected their donations would go directly to surviving family members and victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Canadians opened their wallets to donate $10 million (Cdn) to the New York, Washington and Pennsylvania victims, Suzanne Charest of the Canadian Red Cross said last night.
But in a growing scandal which threatens to rock the foundation of the 120-year-old American Red Cross, it now appears that of the $530 million (U.S.) total donated, more than $200 million is being diverted to the blood agency's long-term goals and administrative costs.
That includes (all figures in U.S. dollars):
$109 million for improving the Red Cross' telecommunications, accounting and database management systems.
$50 million for the agency's blood reserves program.
$26 million for "community outreach."
$29 million for "indirect" or administrative relief costs.
$11 million for international assistance.
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