> the Red Cross provides almost zero information about how it spends its money.
If that is true, how can Charity Navigator rate it 80.5/100?
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...
If that is true, how can Charity Navigator rate it 80.5/100?
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary...
This is a fluff piece full of pictures and words. No numbers or financial statements. On page 26 there are a couple pie charts that vaguely outline some general categories of outflows and inflows. No details. If a NYSE company (or even a private company) tried to put out an Annual Report with this kind of glossed-over detail, they...well, they couldn't get away with that.
Guidestar.org is not quite as nice, rating it 3 out of 5 stars: http://www.guidestar.org/organizations/53-0196605/american-n...
People who run these 'not-for-profit' 501(C)(3) institutions are ironically not held quite as "accountable" as people running normal businesses who have to report to shareholders. In the N4P world, where the "shareholders" are reduced to the general public or generic taxpayers or even to the disaster victims themselves -- it's a lot more difficult to get them to own up accountable to the people they serve.
Most of the time the donors are just happy to get their tax write-off and they leave it there.
http://www.redcross.org/about-us/publications
This seems to be a common pattern with non profits, to separately issue their financials and annual reports. I'm not sure why.
That's because it's for benefactors, and not the publicly-available IRS-990 form that details what you're looking for.
If you want major financials, you can see them here: http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/530/5301966...
It also gives salaries of the execs too (president makes $550k/yr)
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-...
There's a chart half way through that shows, by NPR and Propublica's estimates that instead of 90% spent on actual charity, they only spend 60%. This would tank their rankings in places like Charity Navigator and Givewell.
So the short answer to your question, is that they are vague as hell about how they spend the money, and they probably cook the books.
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.news&or...
I'm just summarizing what I took from the article, in particular skip ahead to around 4m50s. The audio is much clearer than the transcript on this issue.