Your donation to the American Red Cross

Photo courtesy of the
American Red Cross of North Central Indiana

Have you ever wondered… what happens to the money I donate to the Red Cross? Well I did! And that’s why I thought it’d be a great idea to do a little research into this topic, and thanks to the Better Business Bureau, it was pretty easy!

As you probably know, the American Red Cross provides services to needy individuals through its health and safety, biomedical, armed forces, and international services programs.  In addition, as an organization we respond to about 70,000 disasters nationwide through our disaster services program. Most of these disasters are single family and apartment home fires.

We provide education, training, and products that enable people to prevent, prepare for, and respond to disasters and life threatening emergencies. In addition to this, we collect, process, and distribute blood and blood products, providing more than 40% of the nation’s blood supply, and ensure that service members, veterans and their families have worldwide, around-the-clock access to timely and reliable comfort and support through our services to the armed forces program.

In 2008, it cost us the following amounts to run the programs mentioned above:

•      Bio-medical services:         $2,204,010,000
•          Domestic disaster services:           $502,216,000
•          Health and safety services:           $238,992,000
•          International relief & development services:   $191,892,000
•          Community services:       $127,450,000
•          Services to armed forces:              $57,900,000

In total, it costs the American Red Cross $3,322,460,000, to run!

Now that is a lot of money for an organization to raise, and a large portion of that is donated by our caring neighbors here in WNY, and across the United States.  You all help make what we do possible, which is why when it comes to your donor dollar, we do our best to maximize it.  This is why 90% of the monies raised by the American Red Cross fund the services we offer, 4% fund our fundraising efforts, and 6% fund our administrative costs. 

As you may notice if you go through the Better Business Bureau's report, the American Red Cross was operating at a deficit in 2008, which is why we began reevaluating the way we operate.  Because of this reevaluation, the American Red Cross made the decision to begin consolidating Chapter’s and administration across the country to ensure that we are maximizing the donations our communities are giving across the nation. These changes have allowed us to eliminate our deficit, and we are now on track to develop a surplus in the coming years so that we can better serve those in our community.  

Thank you so much for your support.  You are the reason that we are able to continue to help people down the street, across the country, and around the world.

For more information about the Better Business Bureau’s report on the American Red Cross, please click here.

To learn more about any of the services that were mentioned above, please click here. 

To learn more about how you can support your local Chapter of the American Red Cross, please click here.

(Data taken from the Better Business Bureau)