Worth re-iterating: The American Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross are independent organizations, with very different reputations.
Edit: Based on the downvotes, I'm guessing I wasn't really clear what I was going for - I hadn't heard about the International Committee before, so I was looking for some more information about how they differ.
In the US, the phrase "Red Cross" often is used to refer to "American Red Cross", which is the national society who deliver blood services and local disaster response. They've come under some criticism for apparent lack of transparency around how donations are spent, and for allegedly having very high overheads.
The IFRC (International Federation) is an international organisation that facilitates cooperation between the independent national societies.
The ICRC (International Committee) is a large international organisation whose mandate derives from the Geneva Convention, and whose work is focussed on armed conflict. They work with war casualties, prisoners of war, refugees, civilian victims of all forms, on any and all sides of conflict. They also help coordinate disaster relief in lots of cases just because they have the organisational ability to do it. In my opinion they're among the most trustworthy organisations that you could give to.
They are also borderline abusive with how often they will call you and harass you if you miss an opportunity to donate blood. They apparently have unlimited funds to pay phone operators.
I tried to give blood ONCE and found out that I was ineligible. For the next five years or so they harassed me non stop about giving blood. I told them I was ineligible they just said "ok" but I still got phonecalls. I asked them to stop calling me but they didn't stop. After a while I would just hang up on them. I got the phonecalls to stop by emailing the ombudsman. Never got a reply but the phonecalls stopped shortly after.
I recently decided to stop giving them blood, however, because I was actually reading the fine print for once, and apparently they send your blood off for use in research at universities and you cannot opt out.
Anyways, long story short, I will be using my local blood organizations from now on, or just going directly to the hospital to donate.
Thirty seconds later, the phone would ring again. "Hi, is Duncan there?" Repeat a third time for my other brother. For years. I think it's stopped now, so it didn't quite last a decade (though maybe it did for my older brother).
The Blood Center of Central Texas, on the other hand, stopped calling the first time I asked them to. Once they stopped, I resumed donating regularly.
All that aside, I highly recommend donating blood regularly--it has health benefits and is a pretty effective form of charity.
I redirected it to Google Voice and configured their numbers to go straight to voicemail. I figure if they have anything important to tell me, they'll leave a message.
Well... my dad volunteered in various relief operations during the Balkan conflicts (Bosnia first and Kosovo later, raising and delivering aid as well as coordinating localised rebuild efforts). As a result, his opinion of Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières went way down. According to him, RC activities are routinely used for on-the-ground intelligence gathering and operations by most states involved, a lot of RC people are basically civil servants or straight out spies, and the org often discriminates on religious grounds in many ways (this was particularly relevant in Bosnia, where aid operations were effectively compartmentalised by faith); and MSF is only a career vehicle for a lot of people. Also according to him, a lot of volunteers in any org are simply out for easy sex, abusing their position of privilege with the local population - and often ignoring details like age of consent.
We had a big row once, where I basically proposed that supranational orgs like those will inevitably become more and more key as disasters and wars get bigger and longer, and that scale helps dealing with these scenarios. He was extremely skeptical. This said, he still raises money for a smaller NGO every year.
Obviously this is anecdote, but I bring it just to point out that critical outlooks on RC and other big "relief institutions" do exist, although they rarely coalesce in anything particularly scandalous or front-page worthy.
I tried to look into it one time and find things written by people who watched from up close. It made me physically ill long before I looked at any substantial number of them.
I think the usual formula is to "pay" the CEO 200 k and spending the rest on ever larger promotion cycles.
What is needed in the west is a huge tax on charities and other non-profits to be entirely used to monitor their activities. Then we need to write draconian laws forcing them to insure and guarantee delivery.
Any sign of failure should result in persecution and the entire staff replaced - since we have plenty of volunteers.
We need to raise the standards like that to the point where government can safely pump funds into the mechanism when a situation calls for it.
I don't want to be called, receive letters and fill out paper work. I have better things to do. I'd much rather spend 50 bucks in [extra] tax for aid than suffering 2 hours of promotion to fund promotion every year.
When is gates going to provide drinking water to the entire world? Never? Then lets put him in prison and salvage the fund.
Nah. Just remove charitable donations from being tax-exempts, and then it's no longer a problem for the government when charities don't deliver, but a private problem of their donors.
The Red Cross I know of here in the UK and throughout the world (as far as I knew) are a fantastic, hard-working organisation that provide all sorts of disaster relief and humanitarian aid in warzones and ... well they do great stuff.
That the American Red Cross might be sullying the name of charity through its actions, let alone the name "Red Cross" is a terrible shame.