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Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes (2015)

184 points by wallace_f 8y ago

superkuh 8y ago
>The Red Cross said it has to scale back its housing plans because it couldn't acquire the rights to land. No homes will be built. The article's second half spends most of it's time describing the unreported management overhead that probably has to do with trying to navigate the infeasibly complex and ill-defined land ownership and transfer system of Hati's government.
- senectus1 8y ago
  interesting and tbh completely understandable. They would have been better off setting up a "no/low" interest loan system and building a supply line that caters to it.
- solotronics 8y ago
  This makes sense that if a country has a hard time building their own infrastructure it must be exponentially harder for outsiders to do so. Scams, graft, and corruption abound. Sad!
  - Synaesthesia 8y ago
    So hard that only six houses were built ... ?
- shard972 8y ago
  And yet the clinton foundation had no issue building a 5 star hotel. Maybe they could have just asked them for some help dealing with the government? Nah not worth it, it's just half a billion.
  - makomk 8y ago
    Apparently plenty of people had no trouble building 5 star hotels: https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-11-25/does-haiti-really-need-luxury-hotels https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-11-25/does-haiti-really-nee... Maybe the Haitian government was simply more open to hotel-building than home-building?
ncmncm 8y ago
Giving the money to other organizations actually competent to do the work was a good idea. Skimming 9% and then allowing those to skim 24% off the top, less so. (But we don't even really know about the remaining 67%.) Probably they should have identified groups actually doing work, and let them skim off 0%. I.e., let them submit bills to reimburse expenses for shipping, materials and local labor. Well-run organizations can achieve more when they don't need to scrounge for material expenses. Then, you can apportion according to tangible results. But what do I know?
- fyfy18 8y ago
  > Probably they should have identified groups actually doing work, and let them skim off 0%. I.e., let them submit bills to reimburse expenses for shipping, materials and local labor I worked for a UN aid organisation a few years ago that worked like this. They have teams in the country that work with local suppliers to procure whatever goods or services they need to complete projects. The local supplier submits estimates that will be paid upon completion (the local supplier usually receives a bank loan for the funding, rather than being paid in advance). Even so there is still a large amount of overhead. As with any government-esque organisation there is plenty of red tape and beuracracy at every level. The employees at this organisation are paid a very good salary, tax free, and get a whole host of other benefits and great pension. A lot of people don't seem that great at their job, but once they are in, they stay for life as it's rather cushy. The teams in charge of projects will fly a few times a year to the country, first class. Worst of all I heard rumors of projects being carried out that weren't needed, but were just done for whoever was in charge to get their promotion.
deleted 8y ago
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drilldrive 8y ago
Stories like this are why I cannot in good faith donate to large charities. There needs to be more details on the inner workings on these charities, and even if they are in good faith it seems that smaller (and likely religious) organizations do the work more efficiently.
- 0xADEADBEE 8y ago
  I've similar reservations but GiveWell [0] do some fine work in this area and I'd encourage you to at least check out their work. I'm not sure I agree with the religious part of your comment, on the basis that religious belief seems orthogonal to altruistic work. [0] - https://www.givewell.org/ https://www.givewell.org/
  - shay_ker 8y ago
    What makes GiveWell better than Red Cross? I apologize if this is a "lazy internet" question, but I really don't know how to tell the difference between one charity's marketing and another.
    - seltzered_ 8y ago
      I'm currently reading William MacAskill's 'Doing Good Better' book, and to do a verry rough job of summarizing it boils down to an acts of whether the money donated to a given organization: - Has the most effect on QALY (quality-adjusted life year) per dollar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year - Whether the organization can effectively handle money given to it (i.e. it actually can quickly scale use of it - UBI-esque things like GiveDirectly seemingly fall on the higher end of scalability but effectiveness may still be up for debate) - Givewell (when one donates to them for the discretionary grantmaking option) tries to allocate money for grants over time for what they see as the most effective grant based on their research / current needs of the organizations seeking funding. See https://www.givewell.org/about/FAQ/discretionary-grantmaking https://www.givewell.org/about/FAQ/discretionary-grantmaking for more info. Also intriguing is their 2018 giving spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EM0CCg9tvCCtEoY-QVAi6vn9EYTlL66jHgAREN1fFV0/edit#gid=236952834 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EM0CCg9tvCCtEoY-QVAi... This is my personal (and verry rough) take, honestly recommend reading the book - your local library probably has a copy in digital/audiobook formats. The book generally recommends against donating to disaster relief comparing the 2011 Japan earthquake to Haiti, though the point in that advice was largely that disasters in developed countries tend to attract more noise/news coverage than ones in other areas of the world. If you're really lazy and just want to listen to some music in this vein, try https://lostboyevsky.bandcamp.com/album/existential-risk https://lostboyevsky.bandcamp.com/album/existential-risk
nabla9 8y ago
Article talks about The American National Red Cross. American Red Cross has controversial reputation. It's unfortunate that the reputation of American Red Cross can tarnish the good reputation of The International Red Cross. Another point, not related to this case: Money from fundraisers for large charities does not necessarily go to the cause they are collecting it. It often comes too late over weeks and months and you have budged and organize everything ASAP. If the money collected goes to fund the next big catastrophe and not the current one, there is nothing wrong with that. People are just emotional and irrational givers. Money is given as function of lobbying effort, not as function of need.
- trollian 8y ago
  I wish they'd stop using the Red Cross' good name.
- mongol 8y ago
  Same with the Swedish Red Cross. A couple of scandals showing poor use of donated money. Huge salaries to board members and also a previous "CFO" was a criminal and sentenced for embezzlement.
- fogetti 8y ago
  The Hungarian Red Cross also had a similar fund handling scandal about a decade ago. It seems it happens across the organization in many different countries.
- phd514 8y ago
  Admittedly, the American Red Cross has problems distributing humanitarian aid effectively, but the ICRC creates a separate set of problems for itself by departing from its founding mission as an impartial and neutral distributor of humanitarian aid. They risk losing their access to monitoring prisoners of war by advocating for certain interpretations of international law, something that's certainly important, but better left to organizations that don't need the same kind of cooperation from otherwise hostile regimes that the ICRC does.
threeseed 8y ago
> The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six. I don't understand what is wrong with this situation. The priority was to stop people dying not necessarily to solve a future inequality problem.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  Do you really want to donate a charity that lies about what it's doing with your money? I definitely don't.
  - joesb 8y ago
    Did they lie, though. Providing homes as in places to stays during disasters does not neccessary means "permanent" homes.
    - yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
      I think what you’re insinuating is actually worse than the reality. I can understand “we genuinely wanted to help but we’re too incompetent to action on our promises”. That’s morally much better than “we intended to deceive from the outset and other people’s suffering is just the cover we need to line our own pockets”.
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    The article says that the Red Cross, lacking expertise, provided money to other organizations that had more. So I'm suspecting the criticism of "only six houses" is crafted to be misleading. It doesn't seem reasonable to say "they only built six houses" with the implication that their aid was direct, while at the same time, in the same article, criticizing them for the overhead of providing aid indirectly. You can slam them for one or the other, but not both.
grecy 8y ago
After three years moving through 35 countries in Africa, this sums up my experience and thoughts on aid money. I have spent considerable time with a ton of UN and NGO people in many different countries, and heard plenty of great first-hand accounts of how things actually work on the ground. It sounds great, and the people giving the money really think they're helping. Unfortunately, it's rarely the case.
- realusername 8y ago
  > After three years moving through 35 countries in Africa, this sums up my experience and thoughts on aid money. I have spent considerable time with a ton of UN and NGO people in many different countries, and heard plenty of great first-hand accounts of how things actually work on the ground. I also worked in Africa (although in a more limited way than you) and I came to the same conclusion, it really was an eye opening. Actually our company which had absolutely zero humanitarian goals (and the CEO himself was very far from those ideals, he was just in for the money) was doing more locally than the vast majority of NGOs there.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    It's not a surprise: when all others give you fish, a company may give you a fishing rod (I don't know if it was what happened in your case, but I wouldn't be surprised).
- na85 8y ago
  >and heard plenty of great first-hand accounts of how things actually work on the ground. I'm interested: how do things actually work on the ground?
  - grecy 8y ago
    UN people are making $1000 USD per day, NGOs spend millions on a project that leaves a town worse off than before, foreigners come in and mess with the local economy in every way they possibly can. Aid money buys foreign rice, floods the African market with it so the locals don't grow any next year, then the problem is worse and the dependence just grows every year. I'll write at least a chapter on all these and more in the book I'm writing about my time around Africa.
rawmodz 8y ago
There are so many other organizations worthy of donations - UNICEF, Oxfam, Partners in Health, and tons of local NGOs. Maybe it's time for Red Cross donors to look elsewhere, until they clean up their act.
- zhengiszen 8y ago
  The others also have big moral and corruption problems. It seems, like in the general society, that the problems comes from the higher management. For example, the last Oxfam pedophile scandal...
- steve19 8y ago
  Oxfam was literally banned from Haiti due to staff exploiting locals for sex after a natural disaster. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/15/timeline-oxfam-sexual-exploitation-scandal-in-haiti https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/15/timeline-oxfam...
  - BubRoss 8y ago
    Sure, but how many permanent homes have they built?
onetimemanytime 8y ago
Instead of donating to feel good, wish it was easy for people in rich countries to buy someone a cow, change the roof, pay for a kid's school etc etc. Things that costs as little as a few hundred dollars but can change a life. Red Cross should shunned by all, no TV time during emergencies.
- anonymous5133 8y ago
  I think this is a really good idea and would probably make for a good small startup idea. For example, setup a charity where people directly donate to people and have the charity document everything with video/images and so on. People would definitely donate just so they can have the video/images of it (for social media) and for just overall feel good aspect of it. Just imagine how cool it would be if you could buy a goat for a rural impoverished African and get to see a picture of the goat and the person you helped. That would be pretty cool to me! I don't know why charities wouldn't already do this. Lots of people donate money out of personal benefit (the ego stimulation of knowing you're helping to make a difference in the world).
  - markdown 8y ago
    kiva.org
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    "Just imagine how cool it would be if you could buy a goat for a rural impoverished African and get to see a picture of the goat and the person you helped" This was a thing at least two generations ago if not more. Have people utterly forgotten? Maybe it would be good to research why its popularity waned.
- precisioncoder 8y ago
  There is an organization that focuses on this which has been quite successful as far as I know. https://www.kiva.org/ https://www.kiva.org/ The idea is micro loans directly to people who want to do something like buy a cow. "Kiva loans have a historical repayment rate of about 97% (this number fluctuates slightly so check Kiva's homepage for the current rate)" When you receive the money back you can then make another micro loan to help someone else out.
math_random 8y ago
people should just give money to bill gates. he gets things done
cschep 8y ago
https://my.charitywater.org/ https://my.charitywater.org/ has done an amazing thing in recognizing that a lot of people see this corruption and give up on the whole thing. They donate 100% of what you give. They get separate donations to cover operating costs, even using separate money to cover visa fees so that if you give 100$ on your credit card, 100$ goes to getting water to people. I find their work very impressive!
- benj111 8y ago
  I'm not sure that's an improvement. Charity X: 95% of money donated goes to the cause. Charity Y: 100% of money donated goes to the cause ( but we get an extra 20% from some where else). Charity X, incentives are aligned to minimise administration spend. Charity Y obscures that link.
  - falsedan 8y ago
    Who cares if their admin spend is high if as a individual donator none of my donation goes to that spend? I imaging the admin is covered by corporate donors/payment processors waiving fees and claiming it all back on tax
    - benj111 8y ago
      Because those corporate donors would have donated anyway. In fact just like people they probably want their money going to good causes rather than admin. And you start getting all kinds of perverse situations. What happens if they have funding to take $1 million in donations, but they get $2 million? Do they return donations? What happens if they can't get enough admin donations? Do they stop work? Regardless of how much money they have in the bank, waiting to go to good causes? Then there's the issue of splitting your fund raising efforts. Instead of telling everyone 5% of their donation is going to admin. You have to have a distinct team of admin fund raisers. So to answer your question I would care if their admin spend was high. And the current set up obscures what that spend is.
irrenhaus 8y ago
Serious question: The article says that there are roughly 10 million people living in Haiti. It also says that the Red Cross collected roughly 500 million dollars in donations. To me this sounds like it would have been a better idea to take whatever they wanted for themselves and give the remaining lets say 400 million in equal parts to the people of Haiti. Even if only 50% of that money would have reached its destination, each of the Haiti people would now have 20 million dollars to built up new lives. So why would these organizations try everything to buy land there and build houses and stuff - instead of just giving the money to the people who need it. Except for taking the money for themselves, obviously. And I'm sorry but I cannot believe that one would actually need more than 300 million dollars to get an arbitrary amount of money to 10 million people.
- netsharc 8y ago
  > each of the Haiti people would now have 20 million dollars to built up new lives. You mean 20 dollars...
- shabda 8y ago
  > each of the Haiti people would now have 20 million dollars to built up new lives. Isn't your math way off? 50% of 400MIllion = 200MIllion 200Million/10Milion = 20 So each person gets 20$, not 20 million dollars.
  - irrenhaus 8y ago
    Ha, damn, now that's quite some error there! Thanks for correcting :)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
  I see you graduated from the Diane Abbott School of Mathematics.
harshreality 8y ago
I would like to see a requirement for tax-exempt charities (maybe even any organization, tax-exempt or not, that acts like a charity, collecting donations to help with healthcare/shelters/residences/infrastructure/education) to report pass-through granular summaries of material expenses and labor for lowest-level contractors, per project. Each project should state clearly its scope, budget, expected outcome, and final outcome once available. As far as I can see, not even more honorable NGOs like the Gates Foundation do this. I see their annual report, and I see their financial statements, but neither really gets at what I'm looking for. As generic examples, "Haiti earthquake recovery" and "malaria program" are not valid project scopes. They're vague umbrella categories that could have tons of unnecessary overhead with many levels of "contractors".
- charlesdm 8y ago
  Don't disagree, but what you're proposing is also overhead. Not a problem for the large players, but perhaps harder to do for the small tax exempt charities.
eecc 8y ago
Ah ok. I’d have interjected with a scathing comment about how ideological market liberalism dooms these projects. Asked why couldn’t the Haitian government and legislature take over land plots and run the rebuilding projects; with logistical help and training from more advanced FEMA-like agencies from USA or other countries. But then again, I remember how the Protezione Civile made a mess in L’Aquila, Italy and I wonder if Haiti would have fared better
sparkling 8y ago
If you are looking for a charity that provides instant improvement in the lifes for those on the receiving end and does not have huge bureaucratic overhead, i suggest: https://www.onedollarglasses.org https://www.onedollarglasses.org They provide cheap, affordable glasses that can be manufactured/repaired/adjusted locally. They train people in the villages and provide the material needed. I have no affiliation with them.
concernedaboutu 8y ago
Did this article get help to actual people on the ground in this particular relief area? What proceeds did you earn from ads on this article? Did you donate those? Where did you donate those proceeds? Did this article minimize overhead of relief efforts anywhere? Are you suggesting that ARC should not have collected donations at all? Because they do not have an established presence in the relief territory and are thus unqualified to determine how best to allocate donations, they shouldn't have collected and donated hundreds of millions of dollars to help? Here would be a better way to use this time: + Develop a list of actionable suggestions for improving efficiency and allocation of relief aid + Develop solutions for problems in resource-constrained areas + Establish rapport with the people who you think are actually helping + Develop a transparent and accountable international transaction network that operates with minimal resources (on devices powered by hand crank and solar power) + Develop clean energy production capacity, storage, and a resilient power grid in order to produce 3D-printed homes (with plumbing and electrical to code) where there is little timber, clean water, and plenty of sand + Connect people in need of basic necessities with an efficient supply chain that doesn't leave pallets of things undistributed + Go hand out water and MREs and try not to get sick + What is a reasonable MLR (Medical Loss Ratio)
- imtringued 8y ago
  Writing that article probably didn't take more than a week so lets say 40 hours. Now compare that with the donation amount. 0.5 billion dollars. Assuming very generously you paid $300 per hour per employee (just to drive home how crazy the amount of money is) this is equivalent to 1.6 million man hours wasted compared to 40 hours. Someone with only 40 work hours is unable to solve the problem. An organization with millions of man hours should be able to solve the problem. In other words criticizing the author for wasting his time is completely crazy because unless he writes another 40000 of these articles his inefficiency amounts to almost nothing.
arisAlexis 8y ago
transparency could be enhanced by a public ledger such as blockchains
kc1116 8y ago
The comments here are very funny. Lots of finger pointing at Haitians, “corruption”, “land ownership system”, “send the army”. Let’s not forget and please acknowledge real facts. Haiti’s slave revolt the only successful one in history saw African people pummel Napoleons French army, the British army and the Spanish army. From 1804-1825 there was a economic embargo on the country (similar to what we do to North Korea). It only stopped when Haitians agreed to pay French slave owners reparations for the money they lost and property (slaves and land ). “In 1838, France agreed to reduce the debt to 90 million francs to be paid over a period of 30 years to compensate former plantation owners who had lost their property. The modern equivalent of $21 billion was paid from Haiti to France.” So, French banks actually loaned Haiti money with very high interest to pay the French government and avoid sanctions thus very deliberately stifling the growth of the country almost haunting it altogether. Note also this was the colony that made the French more money than all 13 of its colonies put together. Therefore the predicament we have today is due to the pure wickedness and greed of the French coupled with natural disasters. Ps: recently us mercenaries were captured in Haiti deliberately inciting violence and instability. They have since been released to the US. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiYve2o-q7hAhWliOAKHd2UBMwQzPwBegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnationalpost.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Ffive-heavily-armed-u-s-mercenaries-were-captured-in-haiti-why-were-they-allowed-to-fly-straight-home&psig=AOvVaw2QMbJN3QTItNoJbxdUHFWo&ust=1554210201201474 https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiY... Yes these things are not reported.
breakpointalpha 8y ago
Want to get rich in Haiti? Work for an NPO -> https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/haiti https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/haiti You'll likely earn 3x what a Doctor would earn.
Dowwie 8y ago
One thing that requires clarification here is that there aren't shady characters at the helm of the American Red Cross collecting a billion dollars in grant money to develop housing. The money donated to the ARC isn't squandered by executive compensation. The Red Cross isn't even in the business of building houses. It helps provide housing through hotel voucher financial assistance or manages shelters. So, it's no wonder that mistakes were made. The ARC does a lot of things right. If people in the ARC actually committed to housing development, it wouldn't build the houses. It would partner with developers who did. I'm a disaster response volunteer, although inactive since Katrina.

184 points by wallace_f 8y ago

>The Red Cross said it has to scale back its housing plans because it couldn't acquire the rights to land. No homes will be built. The article's second half spends most of it's time describing the unreported management overhead that probably has to do with trying to navigate the infeasibly complex and ill-defined land ownership and transfer system of Hati's government.

senectus1 8y ago
interesting and tbh completely understandable. They would have been better off setting up a "no/low" interest loan system and building a supply line that caters to it.
solotronics 8y ago
This makes sense that if a country has a hard time building their own infrastructure it must be exponentially harder for outsiders to do so. Scams, graft, and corruption abound. Sad!
- Synaesthesia 8y ago
  So hard that only six houses were built ... ?
shard972 8y ago
And yet the clinton foundation had no issue building a 5 star hotel. Maybe they could have just asked them for some help dealing with the government? Nah not worth it, it's just half a billion.
- makomk 8y ago
  Apparently plenty of people had no trouble building 5 star hotels: https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-11-25/does-haiti-really-need-luxury-hotels https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-11-25/does-haiti-really-nee... Maybe the Haitian government was simply more open to hotel-building than home-building?

ncmncm 8y ago

Giving the money to other organizations actually competent to do the work was a good idea. Skimming 9% and then allowing those to skim 24% off the top, less so. (But we don't even really know about the remaining 67%.) Probably they should have identified groups actually doing work, and let them skim off 0%. I.e., let them submit bills to reimburse expenses for shipping, materials and local labor. Well-run organizations can achieve more when they don't need to scrounge for material expenses. Then, you can apportion according to tangible results. But what do I know?

fyfy18 8y ago
> Probably they should have identified groups actually doing work, and let them skim off 0%. I.e., let them submit bills to reimburse expenses for shipping, materials and local labor I worked for a UN aid organisation a few years ago that worked like this. They have teams in the country that work with local suppliers to procure whatever goods or services they need to complete projects. The local supplier submits estimates that will be paid upon completion (the local supplier usually receives a bank loan for the funding, rather than being paid in advance). Even so there is still a large amount of overhead. As with any government-esque organisation there is plenty of red tape and beuracracy at every level. The employees at this organisation are paid a very good salary, tax free, and get a whole host of other benefits and great pension. A lot of people don't seem that great at their job, but once they are in, they stay for life as it's rather cushy. The teams in charge of projects will fly a few times a year to the country, first class. Worst of all I heard rumors of projects being carried out that weren't needed, but were just done for whoever was in charge to get their promotion.

deleted 8y ago

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drilldrive 8y ago

Stories like this are why I cannot in good faith donate to large charities. There needs to be more details on the inner workings on these charities, and even if they are in good faith it seems that smaller (and likely religious) organizations do the work more efficiently.

0xADEADBEE 8y ago
I've similar reservations but GiveWell [0] do some fine work in this area and I'd encourage you to at least check out their work. I'm not sure I agree with the religious part of your comment, on the basis that religious belief seems orthogonal to altruistic work. [0] - https://www.givewell.org/ https://www.givewell.org/
- shay_ker 8y ago
  What makes GiveWell better than Red Cross? I apologize if this is a "lazy internet" question, but I really don't know how to tell the difference between one charity's marketing and another.
  - seltzered_ 8y ago
    I'm currently reading William MacAskill's 'Doing Good Better' book, and to do a verry rough job of summarizing it boils down to an acts of whether the money donated to a given organization: - Has the most effect on QALY (quality-adjusted life year) per dollar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year - Whether the organization can effectively handle money given to it (i.e. it actually can quickly scale use of it - UBI-esque things like GiveDirectly seemingly fall on the higher end of scalability but effectiveness may still be up for debate) - Givewell (when one donates to them for the discretionary grantmaking option) tries to allocate money for grants over time for what they see as the most effective grant based on their research / current needs of the organizations seeking funding. See https://www.givewell.org/about/FAQ/discretionary-grantmaking https://www.givewell.org/about/FAQ/discretionary-grantmaking for more info. Also intriguing is their 2018 giving spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EM0CCg9tvCCtEoY-QVAi6vn9EYTlL66jHgAREN1fFV0/edit#gid=236952834 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EM0CCg9tvCCtEoY-QVAi... This is my personal (and verry rough) take, honestly recommend reading the book - your local library probably has a copy in digital/audiobook formats. The book generally recommends against donating to disaster relief comparing the 2011 Japan earthquake to Haiti, though the point in that advice was largely that disasters in developed countries tend to attract more noise/news coverage than ones in other areas of the world. If you're really lazy and just want to listen to some music in this vein, try https://lostboyevsky.bandcamp.com/album/existential-risk https://lostboyevsky.bandcamp.com/album/existential-risk

nabla9 8y ago

Article talks about The American National Red Cross. American Red Cross has controversial reputation. It's unfortunate that the reputation of American Red Cross can tarnish the good reputation of The International Red Cross. Another point, not related to this case: Money from fundraisers for large charities does not necessarily go to the cause they are collecting it. It often comes too late over weeks and months and you have budged and organize everything ASAP. If the money collected goes to fund the next big catastrophe and not the current one, there is nothing wrong with that. People are just emotional and irrational givers. Money is given as function of lobbying effort, not as function of need.

trollian 8y ago
I wish they'd stop using the Red Cross' good name.
mongol 8y ago
Same with the Swedish Red Cross. A couple of scandals showing poor use of donated money. Huge salaries to board members and also a previous "CFO" was a criminal and sentenced for embezzlement.
fogetti 8y ago
The Hungarian Red Cross also had a similar fund handling scandal about a decade ago. It seems it happens across the organization in many different countries.
phd514 8y ago
Admittedly, the American Red Cross has problems distributing humanitarian aid effectively, but the ICRC creates a separate set of problems for itself by departing from its founding mission as an impartial and neutral distributor of humanitarian aid. They risk losing their access to monitoring prisoners of war by advocating for certain interpretations of international law, something that's certainly important, but better left to organizations that don't need the same kind of cooperation from otherwise hostile regimes that the ICRC does.

threeseed 8y ago

> The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six. I don't understand what is wrong with this situation. The priority was to stop people dying not necessarily to solve a future inequality problem.

nerdponx 8y ago
Do you really want to donate a charity that lies about what it's doing with your money? I definitely don't.
- joesb 8y ago
  Did they lie, though. Providing homes as in places to stays during disasters does not neccessary means "permanent" homes.
  - yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
    I think what you’re insinuating is actually worse than the reality. I can understand “we genuinely wanted to help but we’re too incompetent to action on our promises”. That’s morally much better than “we intended to deceive from the outset and other people’s suffering is just the cover we need to line our own pockets”.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  The article says that the Red Cross, lacking expertise, provided money to other organizations that had more. So I'm suspecting the criticism of "only six houses" is crafted to be misleading. It doesn't seem reasonable to say "they only built six houses" with the implication that their aid was direct, while at the same time, in the same article, criticizing them for the overhead of providing aid indirectly. You can slam them for one or the other, but not both.

grecy 8y ago

After three years moving through 35 countries in Africa, this sums up my experience and thoughts on aid money. I have spent considerable time with a ton of UN and NGO people in many different countries, and heard plenty of great first-hand accounts of how things actually work on the ground. It sounds great, and the people giving the money really think they're helping. Unfortunately, it's rarely the case.

realusername 8y ago
> After three years moving through 35 countries in Africa, this sums up my experience and thoughts on aid money. I have spent considerable time with a ton of UN and NGO people in many different countries, and heard plenty of great first-hand accounts of how things actually work on the ground. I also worked in Africa (although in a more limited way than you) and I came to the same conclusion, it really was an eye opening. Actually our company which had absolutely zero humanitarian goals (and the CEO himself was very far from those ideals, he was just in for the money) was doing more locally than the vast majority of NGOs there.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  It's not a surprise: when all others give you fish, a company may give you a fishing rod (I don't know if it was what happened in your case, but I wouldn't be surprised).
na85 8y ago
>and heard plenty of great first-hand accounts of how things actually work on the ground. I'm interested: how do things actually work on the ground?
- grecy 8y ago
  UN people are making $1000 USD per day, NGOs spend millions on a project that leaves a town worse off than before, foreigners come in and mess with the local economy in every way they possibly can. Aid money buys foreign rice, floods the African market with it so the locals don't grow any next year, then the problem is worse and the dependence just grows every year. I'll write at least a chapter on all these and more in the book I'm writing about my time around Africa.

rawmodz 8y ago

There are so many other organizations worthy of donations - UNICEF, Oxfam, Partners in Health, and tons of local NGOs. Maybe it's time for Red Cross donors to look elsewhere, until they clean up their act.

zhengiszen 8y ago
The others also have big moral and corruption problems. It seems, like in the general society, that the problems comes from the higher management. For example, the last Oxfam pedophile scandal...
steve19 8y ago
Oxfam was literally banned from Haiti due to staff exploiting locals for sex after a natural disaster. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/15/timeline-oxfam-sexual-exploitation-scandal-in-haiti https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/15/timeline-oxfam...
- BubRoss 8y ago
  Sure, but how many permanent homes have they built?

onetimemanytime 8y ago

Instead of donating to feel good, wish it was easy for people in rich countries to buy someone a cow, change the roof, pay for a kid's school etc etc. Things that costs as little as a few hundred dollars but can change a life. Red Cross should shunned by all, no TV time during emergencies.

anonymous5133 8y ago
I think this is a really good idea and would probably make for a good small startup idea. For example, setup a charity where people directly donate to people and have the charity document everything with video/images and so on. People would definitely donate just so they can have the video/images of it (for social media) and for just overall feel good aspect of it. Just imagine how cool it would be if you could buy a goat for a rural impoverished African and get to see a picture of the goat and the person you helped. That would be pretty cool to me! I don't know why charities wouldn't already do this. Lots of people donate money out of personal benefit (the ego stimulation of knowing you're helping to make a difference in the world).
- markdown 8y ago
  kiva.org
- perl4ever 8y ago
  "Just imagine how cool it would be if you could buy a goat for a rural impoverished African and get to see a picture of the goat and the person you helped" This was a thing at least two generations ago if not more. Have people utterly forgotten? Maybe it would be good to research why its popularity waned.
precisioncoder 8y ago
There is an organization that focuses on this which has been quite successful as far as I know. https://www.kiva.org/ https://www.kiva.org/ The idea is micro loans directly to people who want to do something like buy a cow. "Kiva loans have a historical repayment rate of about 97% (this number fluctuates slightly so check Kiva's homepage for the current rate)" When you receive the money back you can then make another micro loan to help someone else out.

math_random 8y ago

people should just give money to bill gates. he gets things done

cschep 8y ago

https://my.charitywater.org/ https://my.charitywater.org/ has done an amazing thing in recognizing that a lot of people see this corruption and give up on the whole thing. They donate 100% of what you give. They get separate donations to cover operating costs, even using separate money to cover visa fees so that if you give 100$ on your credit card, 100$ goes to getting water to people. I find their work very impressive!

benj111 8y ago
I'm not sure that's an improvement. Charity X: 95% of money donated goes to the cause. Charity Y: 100% of money donated goes to the cause ( but we get an extra 20% from some where else). Charity X, incentives are aligned to minimise administration spend. Charity Y obscures that link.
- falsedan 8y ago
  Who cares if their admin spend is high if as a individual donator none of my donation goes to that spend? I imaging the admin is covered by corporate donors/payment processors waiving fees and claiming it all back on tax
  - benj111 8y ago
    Because those corporate donors would have donated anyway. In fact just like people they probably want their money going to good causes rather than admin. And you start getting all kinds of perverse situations. What happens if they have funding to take $1 million in donations, but they get $2 million? Do they return donations? What happens if they can't get enough admin donations? Do they stop work? Regardless of how much money they have in the bank, waiting to go to good causes? Then there's the issue of splitting your fund raising efforts. Instead of telling everyone 5% of their donation is going to admin. You have to have a distinct team of admin fund raisers. So to answer your question I would care if their admin spend was high. And the current set up obscures what that spend is.

irrenhaus 8y ago

Serious question: The article says that there are roughly 10 million people living in Haiti. It also says that the Red Cross collected roughly 500 million dollars in donations. To me this sounds like it would have been a better idea to take whatever they wanted for themselves and give the remaining lets say 400 million in equal parts to the people of Haiti. Even if only 50% of that money would have reached its destination, each of the Haiti people would now have 20 million dollars to built up new lives. So why would these organizations try everything to buy land there and build houses and stuff - instead of just giving the money to the people who need it. Except for taking the money for themselves, obviously. And I'm sorry but I cannot believe that one would actually need more than 300 million dollars to get an arbitrary amount of money to 10 million people.

netsharc 8y ago
> each of the Haiti people would now have 20 million dollars to built up new lives. You mean 20 dollars...
shabda 8y ago
> each of the Haiti people would now have 20 million dollars to built up new lives. Isn't your math way off? 50% of 400MIllion = 200MIllion 200Million/10Milion = 20 So each person gets 20$, not 20 million dollars.
- irrenhaus 8y ago
  Ha, damn, now that's quite some error there! Thanks for correcting :)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
I see you graduated from the Diane Abbott School of Mathematics.

harshreality 8y ago

I would like to see a requirement for tax-exempt charities (maybe even any organization, tax-exempt or not, that acts like a charity, collecting donations to help with healthcare/shelters/residences/infrastructure/education) to report pass-through granular summaries of material expenses and labor for lowest-level contractors, per project. Each project should state clearly its scope, budget, expected outcome, and final outcome once available. As far as I can see, not even more honorable NGOs like the Gates Foundation do this. I see their annual report, and I see their financial statements, but neither really gets at what I'm looking for. As generic examples, "Haiti earthquake recovery" and "malaria program" are not valid project scopes. They're vague umbrella categories that could have tons of unnecessary overhead with many levels of "contractors".

charlesdm 8y ago
Don't disagree, but what you're proposing is also overhead. Not a problem for the large players, but perhaps harder to do for the small tax exempt charities.

eecc 8y ago

Ah ok. I’d have interjected with a scathing comment about how ideological market liberalism dooms these projects. Asked why couldn’t the Haitian government and legislature take over land plots and run the rebuilding projects; with logistical help and training from more advanced FEMA-like agencies from USA or other countries. But then again, I remember how the Protezione Civile made a mess in L’Aquila, Italy and I wonder if Haiti would have fared better

sparkling 8y ago

If you are looking for a charity that provides instant improvement in the lifes for those on the receiving end and does not have huge bureaucratic overhead, i suggest: https://www.onedollarglasses.org https://www.onedollarglasses.org They provide cheap, affordable glasses that can be manufactured/repaired/adjusted locally. They train people in the villages and provide the material needed. I have no affiliation with them.

concernedaboutu 8y ago

Did this article get help to actual people on the ground in this particular relief area? What proceeds did you earn from ads on this article? Did you donate those? Where did you donate those proceeds? Did this article minimize overhead of relief efforts anywhere? Are you suggesting that ARC should not have collected donations at all? Because they do not have an established presence in the relief territory and are thus unqualified to determine how best to allocate donations, they shouldn't have collected and donated hundreds of millions of dollars to help? Here would be a better way to use this time: + Develop a list of actionable suggestions for improving efficiency and allocation of relief aid + Develop solutions for problems in resource-constrained areas + Establish rapport with the people who you think are actually helping + Develop a transparent and accountable international transaction network that operates with minimal resources (on devices powered by hand crank and solar power) + Develop clean energy production capacity, storage, and a resilient power grid in order to produce 3D-printed homes (with plumbing and electrical to code) where there is little timber, clean water, and plenty of sand + Connect people in need of basic necessities with an efficient supply chain that doesn't leave pallets of things undistributed + Go hand out water and MREs and try not to get sick + What is a reasonable MLR (Medical Loss Ratio)

imtringued 8y ago
Writing that article probably didn't take more than a week so lets say 40 hours. Now compare that with the donation amount. 0.5 billion dollars. Assuming very generously you paid $300 per hour per employee (just to drive home how crazy the amount of money is) this is equivalent to 1.6 million man hours wasted compared to 40 hours. Someone with only 40 work hours is unable to solve the problem. An organization with millions of man hours should be able to solve the problem. In other words criticizing the author for wasting his time is completely crazy because unless he writes another 40000 of these articles his inefficiency amounts to almost nothing.

arisAlexis 8y ago

transparency could be enhanced by a public ledger such as blockchains

kc1116 8y ago

The comments here are very funny. Lots of finger pointing at Haitians, “corruption”, “land ownership system”, “send the army”. Let’s not forget and please acknowledge real facts. Haiti’s slave revolt the only successful one in history saw African people pummel Napoleons French army, the British army and the Spanish army. From 1804-1825 there was a economic embargo on the country (similar to what we do to North Korea). It only stopped when Haitians agreed to pay French slave owners reparations for the money they lost and property (slaves and land ). “In 1838, France agreed to reduce the debt to 90 million francs to be paid over a period of 30 years to compensate former plantation owners who had lost their property. The modern equivalent of $21 billion was paid from Haiti to France.” So, French banks actually loaned Haiti money with very high interest to pay the French government and avoid sanctions thus very deliberately stifling the growth of the country almost haunting it altogether. Note also this was the colony that made the French more money than all 13 of its colonies put together. Therefore the predicament we have today is due to the pure wickedness and greed of the French coupled with natural disasters. Ps: recently us mercenaries were captured in Haiti deliberately inciting violence and instability. They have since been released to the US. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiYve2o-q7hAhWliOAKHd2UBMwQzPwBegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnationalpost.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Ffive-heavily-armed-u-s-mercenaries-were-captured-in-haiti-why-were-they-allowed-to-fly-straight-home&psig=AOvVaw2QMbJN3QTItNoJbxdUHFWo&ust=1554210201201474 https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiY... Yes these things are not reported.

breakpointalpha 8y ago

Want to get rich in Haiti? Work for an NPO -> https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/haiti https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/haiti You'll likely earn 3x what a Doctor would earn.

Dowwie 8y ago

One thing that requires clarification here is that there aren't shady characters at the helm of the American Red Cross collecting a billion dollars in grant money to develop housing. The money donated to the ARC isn't squandered by executive compensation. The Red Cross isn't even in the business of building houses. It helps provide housing through hotel voucher financial assistance or manages shelters. So, it's no wonder that mistakes were made. The ARC does a lot of things right. If people in the ARC actually committed to housing development, it wouldn't build the houses. It would partner with developers who did. I'm a disaster response volunteer, although inactive since Katrina.

Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti ­and Built Six Homes (2015)

Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti ­and Built Six Homes (2015)

Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes (2015)

Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes (2015)