Red Cross: How We Spent Sandy Money Is a "Trade Secret"

[eridani]

The Red Cross is a business? Who knew?

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/24506-focus-red-cross-how-we-spent-sandy-money-is-a-qtrade-secretq

As we’ve reported, the Red Cross releases few details about how it spends money after big disasters. That makes it difficult to figure out whether donor dollars are well spent.

The Red Cross did give some information about Sandy spending to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who had been investigating the charity. But the Red Cross declined our request to disclose the details.

So we filed a public records request for the information the Red Cross provided to the attorney general’s office.

That’s where the law firm Gibson Dunn comes in.

An attorney from the firm’s New York office appealed to the attorney general to block disclosure of some of the Sandy information, citing the state Freedom of Information Law’s trade secret exemption.

[Hekate]

1. Seriously? For all the good works the volunteers do at their own expense, this is the answer...

... from the leadership?

I recommend Direct Relief International. http://www.directrelief.org/

[awoke_in_2003]

7. My dad is retired...

and volunteers for them (he was an RN). He was there after Sandy, doing what he could to help. A lot of great people volunteer, but the leadership sounds like assholes.

[bettyellen]

2. Yep, same w Katrina- no transparency.

[BrotherIvan]

3. The deep level of greed never fails to surprise me

So a CEO of the Red Cross makes nearly $1 million a year while people are suffering. I'm sure they justify it that said CEO has some magical powers to get rich people to cough up some of their tax writeoffs; because rich people only deal with other rich people. But the plebs give far more than they can afford to give out of concern for people in need. All those little donations add up to dwarf all that given by rich people and then it's funneled into the bank accounts of managers and CEOs. How do these fucking people sleep at night?

[rocktivity]

4. Would that be the SAME Gibson Dunn law firm

That Chris Christie hired (at taxpayer expense) to write his self-exonerating Bridge(t)-Gate report? And who donated some of their compensation to the Republican Governor's Association, which Christie heads?


rocktivity

[snot]

5. Outrageous. We exempt them from taxes because they're NOT IN A TRADE.

They're supposed to be selflessly helping others. If they've got info that helps them help others, it should be shared in case it might help anyone else help others.

[hardcover]

6. As someone who has experienced it firsthand,

The Red Cross organizes, that's all it does. Paid employees go into a disaster area, recruit volunteers from the area to set up and supervise shelters.
They set up a registration site and give people a survival back pack with the Red Cross logo. A cheesy one at that.
RC accepts money donations only, most of which goes to pay it's administration, advertising, and purchase things with it's logo.
The exception to $ donations was: an insurance company paid for a shovel, a rake, a hoe and a broom, a cooler filled with drinking water, flashlights, sunblock and bandaids for each homeowner who house was destroyed.
Red Cross volunteers did hand these things out to victims to get us started cleaning up our destroyed houses.
I'm willing to bet the RC and Ins. Co. wrangled about the Ins. Co. outsmarting them and purchasing things for the victims instead of $ for the RC admin.