Disaster & Nonprofits

The worst charity in America operates from a metal warehouse behind a gas station in Holiday, Fla. Every year, Kids Wish Network raises millions of dollars in donations in the name of dying children and their families. Every year, it spends less than 3 cents on the dollar helping kids.

One of the people behind the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter is on a new mission: Get you to donate a dollar a day and learn about different nonprofits along the way.

As a disaster researcher and scholar of nonprofit management, I've followed the (well publicized) travails and (hardly publicized) successes of the American Red Cross over the years. I've met its national staff at research conferences and local staff at state and county emergency management meetings, where I've served on the board of my local Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD).

In 2012, two massive storms pounded the United States, leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless, hungry or without power for days and weeks. Americans did what they so often do after disasters. They sent hundreds of millions of dollars to the Red Cross, confident their money would ease the suffering left behind by Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Isaac.

In the Age of Neo-liberal Monopoly Capitalism The first half-year of my post-college life has been spent in the non-profit industrial complex. INCITE!, a radical organization by and for women of color, wrote a book entitled The Revolution Will Not be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.

Even as the group has publicly celebrated its work, insider accounts detail a string of failures

The agency ran into problems in its response to Superstorm Sandy. Then came the Haiti earthquake. The Red Cross spent nearly half a billion. Our reporter wanted to find out: What did it accomplish?

Experts said there is virtually no way to monitor how nonprofits operate, nor for governments or disaster victims to hold them accountable for mismanagement

Photo via the St. Bernard Project. To mark the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, this week Curbed is exploring how the housing, architecture, and neighborhoods of New Orleans have...

The charity has said it wants to 'lead the effort in transparency.' But when a congressman requested an inquiry into its disaster relief work, Red Cross officials wanted it called off.