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Comment by dogruck | Hacker News Reader

It's astounding how powerful the Red Cross brand is. I'd like to read a study how how much the brand influences donors. For example, try to raise money using identical mechanisms under a different header.

Also, I liked this: "I'm not a big mathematician, but I can make some additions. It doesn't add up for me."

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Are you conflating The American Red Cross and The International Commiteee of the Red Cross? I have in the past, and they are very different.

No I'm referring to the Red Cross discussed in this thread's article.

The problem here seems to be that the American Red Cross uses the same brand as the international Red Cross.

I'm no expert on the Red Cross, but it's entirely possible that most Red Cross organizations do excellent work, while the American Red Cross is a corrupt or incompetent mess. Or has recently become such a mess.

But I also get the impression that Haiti is a particularly hard country to help.

Legit question - what's the alternative?

Internationally and to a certain degree domestically in the US, Oxfam, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and Save the Children are all efficient charities according to CharityNavigator. There are likely others but these are three solid charities imo.

MSF/Doctors without Borders -> https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...

Save the Children -> https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...

Oxfam -> https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...

There are a few organizations that try to quantitatively evaluate charitable organizations and similar- notably (and off the top of my head), CharityWatch [1]. Donating based on their metrics (although not the irrefutable truth of the matter, likely enough) is likely to lead to better "returns" from a donation than going by brand/marketing power.

Notably, despite its prominence, Red Cross scores only a "B+" rating on CharityWatch.

[1] www.charitywatch.org

The B+ rating seems to be at odds with the amount of vitriol being spewed at Red Cross in this thread.

Perhaps Haiti was a particularly bad project for them. I've heard of other charities having problems in Haiti.

Still, Doctors without Borders USA gets an A.

Doctors without a frontier? It's sad though, I think many europeans would like to donate money for people in need, but when you find out things like this ... Americans really managed to ruin this as well.

Mystified as to why you seem to think this is in some way an American problem. We have lots of fake charities in the EU.

In the EU charities aren't as big... Or as well branded. At least not the sketchy ones.

Most big charities I know in the EU have good records... Particularly the state-sponsored ones.

- to be fair I could be uninformed :)

I don't think that's at all true. There are many large organisations that spend a significant amount on staffing and marketing, masquerading as charities. The state-sponsored ones are some of the worst, as they're recycling taxpayers' money to lobby the governments that pay them, with a revolving door of lucrative executive and lobbying jobs keeping it all afloat.

Some EU charities are huge. The Red Cross has branches everywhere in the EU. Greenpeace's main office is in Netherland. Those are two massive brands.

Already said in this thread, but to make sure you see it:

> The American Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross are independent organizations, with very different reputations.

Charities around the world are run unethically. It's far from an American-exclusive thing.

Sure, but the extent of it seems to be American exclusive. Are there not a bunch of cancer charities that simply do nothing but enrich the owners?

Perhaps Americans are more diligent in tracking down bad actors?

Americans give more money to charities, because the services they tend to provide are provided by governments in Europe.

Hence, there's more charities, more attention given to them, etc.

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