WASHINGTON — The American Red Cross -- castigated in a recent House report for its disorganization in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina -- had been warned for years that its management structure would plague future disaster response, according to documents released Monday by a Senate panel.
In a letter to the charity that also was made public Monday, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) questioned the effectiveness of its massive organizational hierarchy. He released thousands of pages of internal documents describing long-standing inefficiencies within the Red Cross, the nation's primary provider of disaster relief.
After Grassley wrote the charity in December, questioning the adequacy of its response to Katrina, he received dozens of letters, e-mails and phone calls from current and former Red Cross employees and volunteers. Among other things, they complained about a lack of coordination between headquarters and workers in the field; the use of costly hotels, rather than shelters, to house volunteers; food orders far greater than what was needed; top officials using contributions to hire consultants to buff up the organization's image; and disdain for the local charities that provide needed links to the affected communities.
"We ask for the Red Cross to be more accountable for donor funds," wrote Christee Lesch, a Katrina volunteer from Adel, Iowa. "They tell the public how much money has been spent on disaster relief, but not how well it is spent."
"When they tried to raise concerns ... volunteers were ignored, told to leave or otherwise made to feel like the skunk at the picnic," Grassley said in a statement released with the documents. "This type of culture, a culture that discourages people from coming forward, management that does not want to hear the bad news and is more concerned about good press than good results, is a theme that I am hearing too often."
Grassley is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has been investigating the corporate governance of charitable organizations. In his letter, he questioned whether a 50-member board was too large to govern effectively and noted that only a small group of board members who negotiated the severance agreement knew in advance about the resignation in December of the charity's president, Marsha J. Evans.
"The critical function of a board is whether to hire or fire the CEO," Grassley wrote. "That Ms. Evans' departure took place without any formal action or decision by the entire board is extraordinarily troubling."
