American Red Cross

American Red Cross

Bibliography:

In my paper, I will discuss the Red Cross as an organization, explaining the back ground of the organization goals and what management issues it might face, while identifying the main problem, and searching for a possible solution they may consider to use to accomplish their goals as a nonprofit organization, as well as the solution the organization actually adapted and implemented, through the analysis of the problem. I will discuss the publications and radio talk shows and how the economy as well as the general public consider these solution feasible. And what alternative solution they should have adopted in order to mitigate the situation. The justification of the solution from different reviews and literature as well as talk shows. They expressed their concern of the ongoing policies by criticizing the measures that was taking in 2 major crisis, and how effective or ineffective those measures that were applied actually worked in realty, I will provide a complete thorough references and supporting opinion from the business as well as economic critics. The conclusion of the problem analysis will conclude my opinion of how the resources and the decision making process contributed to a big part of the solution, my opinion based on what we learned in this chapter and through the class will address main points that contributed to the failure of the formulation of a solid reliable solution that prevented the bit falls of the current situation. In other words where we are? What we have? How did we manage it? And finally what we could have done better in future events.

The 500 million collected for Haiti but only 6 homes built the relief was not nearly enough.

40 million dollars of this donation was for food and water and medical supplies the scaling down of the operation was questionable.

Back Ground: Red Cross the nonprofit organization; it began with Henri Dunant a Swiss businessman. In 1859, after 40,000 Soldiers were killed and or wounded in the battlefield of Solferino Northern Italy, and left with no aid whatsoever. Dunant requested international aid as a relief to the injured in wartime. The International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) was born 1863 in Geneva, Switzerland. The idea spread throughout Europe as the minimum standard of conduct for conflict between nations. In the same time period a schoolteacher from the USA named Carla Barton and a government worker was spreading the same idea in the USA. During the civil war she became famous and in May 21, 1881 Carla and her associates founded the organization which is now one of the largest humanitarian network organizations with a presence in almost each country. The strategic direction and plan states how the organization will live up to the high expectations, confidence and trust the public have placed in it. How it will focus its efforts, activities and resources during each fiscal year. The American Red Cross made up of 769 regional or city based chapters. Each is officially charted by national board of governors, the director of each chapter have some degree of autonomy to prioritize the vitality level of each area; with 4.1 billion annual budgets distributed among chapters. It is not funded by the government, it receive the government money as a contracted organization for relief, efforts, but it is tax exempt as a charitable nonprofit organization. It runs under congressional charter that has been placed since 1905. So it acts as an instrument for the government. The president is elected by 50 members of the board all members are volunteers while the president draws a $ 200,000 a year salary. The U.S president is the honorary chairperson, and appoints 8 of the members. The other 42 are elected annually on a national convention, 30 by delegates from the Red Cross chapters in the convention, and the board elects the last 12. The rest are the 1.2 million volunteers and 40,000 paid employees, mostly nurses. Here are some of the organizations struggle and critics during some major disasters.

The problem: Key issues are; the end of Carla Barton with an internal power struggle that led to the accusation of improper bookkeeping which ended with her resignation. The problem erupted again in 1996 senator Bob Dole accusing his wife, the head of the Red Cross for selecting members to help her husband’s election, then Marsha Evans in 2005 resignation which is related to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts and poor planning which she had held the position since 2002. Some of the donors have been angered by finding out that some of the money was diverted for future relief efforts instead of current disasters, for example $200 million of the 1.1 billion collected in the after math of 9/11 attacks was put aside to fund future relief efforts, which resulted in the resignation of the Red Cross president Bernadine Healy and promise of more transparency in financial dealing in the future, and of course the insufficient poorly organized efforts in hurricane Katrina, which some claimed that the aid was targeted for white victims only and that poor black victims were left out with no aid, in a recent radio talk show the announcer was interviewing some red cross drivers that were involved in the aid after hurricane Katrina , he stated that after driving around just to show presence and not render aid to those actually in need he quit the organization along with several . How the resources will be misused for propaganda and to collect more donations instead of actually aiding victims. The amount of wasted food that was being dumped while people were starving in other areas, and many more complaint about a superficial organization that only cater to publicity and does not carry through a true meaning or goal of the organization. The system has failed many victims as well as volunteers in many disaster locations by poor guidance and bad implementation of checks and balances of the day to day operation. It brought so much criticism to the organization and had them under fire for misuse of funds bad bookkeeping and overall poor management. There is an effort from the main organization to combat the flaws and rebuild the image that was under fire in talk shows and news feed.

Surface problems: symptom

1. Not enough operational resources to react to adverse disasters.
2. Questionable mismanagement and decision making process.
3. Several inquire of budget justification and allocation of funds explanation.
4. Lack of trust and public outrage after discussing problems in national radio and talk show and several other social media.

Root causes:

1. Money management is poorly conducted through bad book keeping.
2. Lack of strong checks and balances system in some areas and in upper. organizational structure levels which led to several resignations of past presidents.
3. Clear guide of daily operation is not conducted which lead to bad decision making on the lower levels of management.
4. Communication between chapters is very poorly conducted as it depends on a better way of conducting the system in a wider scale.

Some fundamental issues:

1. The organizational behavior shows a track of mismanagement but the importance of the cause was greater than the effect of the individual flaws that followed which kept the organization at a balance.
2. Better resource management with the organization should grow bigger and will encourage the public participations.
3. Clear general guide is crucial for the maintenance of trust and growth of such organization. The discharge and charge of transportation of each operation was not properly allocated. Unnecessary and even undistributed relief problem.

Literature review: Case Discovery;

• From the review of the organizational history and track record there is a necessary need of reform to the system that will not allow such mistakes of reoccurring in the future and to safe guard the great cause of charitable organization from misuse.  There have to be a quality control and a committee that focus on investigation and allocation of fund and deter the misuse of funds from upper management.
• Also there is a great need to clarify to the pubic the efforts that is being placed in action to guarantee and build the trust for public support and reassurance.
• Such growing organization need an over watch program that provide screening and guidance to the process associated with the various programs available. responding to 70,000 disasters, and 89,000 health and mental programs and many more in January 2010.

Theories review:

• The main logic of I better have too much than too little was overly utilized in a wasteful way which left other locations suffering shortages.
• Plagued by failure to deliver is a result of the focused on public relations instead of providing the aid. The red tape that was placed by Red Cross denied other resources from providing applicable aid.
• The members of relief were not accurate in what they did in the organization was failure to conduct a successful aid unlike NGO or global community, which reflect on the higher echelon of the organization process.

Writer’s opinion about subject analysis:

• Lack of actions.
• Victims were neglected and even placed in harm’s way.
• The organization lacked training and leadership.
• Politically driven and places so much emphases on public relation than helping victims of disasters. For example, the volunteers needed aid from the locals in sandy hurricane disasters. The writer’s opinion thumbs it up as a plagued with failure.
• The organization lost confidence of its abilities to solve the problems so they shifted their focus on public relation and political views to create a false image of them dealing with the situation when in fact they neglected their main goal.

Valuable insight from writers:

The transparent actions and the clear public accountability is a must. in such organization that is capable of generating billions of funds the allocation process need and over watch. The structure of the organization has to be rearranged to allow checks and balance system to take place and avoid falling back into such unethical and damaging actions that will hurt the organization image in the long run as it loses its creditability.