Red Cross Issues Warning about Inaccurate and Misleading Katrina Op-Ed

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 -- The American Red Cross issued the following memorandum for op-ed page editors and journalists, in response to an op-ed article by Richard M. Walden, president and CEO of Operation USA, which appeared in Sunday editions of the Los Angeles Times:

The article contains many inaccurate and misleading assertions about the American Red Cross. Below is a matrix containing a point-by-point refutation of the assertions in the article.

The contact at American Red Cross is Carrie Martin, 202-303-4459. Additional information, as always, can be found at http://www.redcross.org.

COLUMN

“This skewed giving to Red Cross would be justified if the organization had to pay the cost of the 300,000 people it has sheltered. But FEMA and the affected states are reimbursing the Red Cross under preexisting contracts for emergency shelter and other disaster services.”

TRUTH

False. There are no preexisting contracts to reimburse the Red Cross for shelter operations.

As of Sept. 26, the Red Cross had opened more than 1,000 shelters that and had already provided 2,820,678 nights of shelter to Katrina survivors and 163,089 nights of shelter to Hurricane Rita evacuees.

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COLUMN

“The national Red Cross reports it spent $111 million last year on fundraising alone.”

TRUTH

Misleading. The $111 million spent on fundraising includes not only Red Cross national headquarters but also more than 800 local Red Cross Chapters. It represents less than 3 percent of expenditures.

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COLUMN

“And it’s hard to escape the organization’s warning of Armageddon if you don’t . . . donate blood (which it resells to the tune of more than $1.5 billion annually, part of its $3 billion in income).”

TRUTH

Misleading; the cost of collecting, testing, processing and distributing blood in an FDA-regulated environment offsets any potential profit from the sale of blood. In FY04, Biomedical Services represented 66.7 percent of the American Red Cross’ operating expenses, while Biomedical fees represented 68.6 percent of the American Red Cross revenue.

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COLUMN

“Its fundraising vastly outruns its programs...”

TRUTH

False. The Red Cross received contributions (including in- kind) of $668.8 million and had program expenses of $3,199.5 million.

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COLUMN

“...because it does very little or nothing to rescue survivors, provide direct medical care or rebuild houses.”

TRUTH

The Red Cross mission is to provide immediate relief such as shelter, food, clothing and counseling to disaster victims. We specifically avoid portraying ourselves as a rescue organization and never claim to rebuild houses. We have provided more than 200,000 individuals with disaster healthcare assistance this hurricane season, including emergency and preventive health services to people affected by disaster and to Red Cross staff providing disaster relief.

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COLUMN

“After 9/11 . . . the Red Cross could do little more than trace missing people, help a handful of people in shelters and provide food to firefighters, police, paramedics and evacuation crews during the catastrophe.”

TRUTH

The Red Cross has used the funds donated to the Liberty Disaster Relief Fund to help more than 57,000 individuals and families in 49 states and 65 countries who were directly affected by 9/11. These include families of the deceased, the physically injured, rescue and recovery workers and their families, and people who were living or working in the areas of the attacks.

More than 57,000 Red Cross workers-more than 54,000 volunteers among them-have been involved in this unprecedented effort. The September 11 Recovery Program is scheduled to end in 2007.

On September 11, 2001, victims, family members and emergency workers in New York, at the Pentagon and in Somerset County, Pa., received shelter, blankets, crisis counseling, first aid, food, and drinks from trained Red Cross disaster workers. At Ground Zero alone, more than 400 disaster workers responded, handing out everything from cold drinks to eye drops to the thousands of firefighters, police officers and others; one of their emergency response trucks was destroyed when the towers fell. A dozen Red Cross shelters opened their doors to the grieving, the displaced and the weary emergency workers.

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COLUMN

“The Red Cross expects to raise more than $2 billion before Hurricane Katrina-related giving subsidies.”

TRUTH

We have said that we project we will need at least $2 billion to respond to the needs of Hurricane Katrina survivors, not that we expect to raise that sum.

To date we have raised less than half. As of September 26, we have $946.6 million in gifts and pledges; we have already spent or committed $876 million.

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COLUMN

“I doubt each victim under Red Cross care will see more than a doughnut, an interview with a social worker and a short-term voucher for a cheap motel, with a few miscellaneous items such as clothes and cooking pots thrown in.”

TRUTH

In addition to providing shelter, food, clothing and mental health services to hundreds of thousands of hurricane survivors, the Red Cross has also distributed $521 million in direct financial assistance averaging about $1,000 per family. We expect to reach approximately one million people.

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COLUMN

“The Red Cross’ 3 million unpaid volunteers, 156,000 of whom it says are deployed in Hurricane Katrina ...”

TRUTH

We do not, and do not claim to have, 3 million volunteers, though we would welcome them. We have about 1 million volunteers.

Contact Information

Carrie Martin

Media Contact

American Red Cross

Contact via E-mail