katrina donations

[rkt]

FYI:

folks, i'll play with the internets later to give some options, but if you're planning on giving donations, please Please PLEASE find an alternative to the american red cross.

they're shady and their politics suck.

ummm. the same generally goes for the salvation army, but i have no direct experience there.

something local, maybe, might be good.

granted, guidestar.org can't tell you too much about the implicit shadiness or crap politics of an organization, but they can tell you how the money is distributed.

Comments

[xmorningxrosex.livejournal.com]

you think that it'd be possible to donate to any of the local food pantries/food banks/soup kitchens since their stock will go down

[rkt.livejournal.com]

a most excellent idea.

[kaygigi.livejournal.com]

Want reasons SalvA is seriously shady (despite my fondness for thrift shopping at their mecca on Steinway St?)?
So around 1930, the major department stores of NYC decided that, with the depression and all, noone would be buying new clothes. They still needed a way to make money, though, so what they did was they took a small charity that ran a used clothing shop for an evengelical Christian rehab place and turned it into a subsidiary business that is now only nominally a charity. They placed them in convienient neighborhoods - close enough to the major department stores that the richies wouldn't mind dumping their old stuff in their collection bins, but in neighborhoods where the folks were either too poor to buy new clothes in general or hip to buying what was fashionable a few years ago. The money collected from these stores then was funneled somewhat into the rehab business (for which they also collected money from insurance companies and major Christian churches) who then turned out "clean" men in the name of Jesus, but mostly into really shady conservative organizations, who because they were also non-profit, didn't disrupt any of the charitable work of this army of salvation. That was fine and good until the 70's, and there was a huge scandel when it was revealed that the Salvation Army did things like investment banking, venture capital, and foriegn investment schemes that made them huge profits and screwd over a lot of people. That was generally dismantled, but there are still a few banks with ties to the SA, and the board of directors for the SA is still comprised of members of the boards of Macy's and Bloomingdale's (there are so few other major departments stores now that Federated has basically bought up its competition - and this was before JC Penney's and Sears' were even considered competition). And just because something is non-profit doesn't mean they don't make a profit and that profit doesn't just go straight into the pockets of the few at the top who run the entire chain...
The good thing is that they tend to hire former clients at their stores, and most of them just plain steal from the registers, so go ahead and shop knowing most of that money isn't leaving the store via official means.
My friend wrote a book on thrift stores and interviewed many many people who worked at various SalvA's and Goodwill's, so I'm not just saying for the point of saying, I'm kinda cribbing someone else's research.

[rkt.livejournal.com]

damn. i knew nothing on that background.

i'll wait until things die down a bit before (re-)posting my arc rant.

(what's the name of this book?)