Salvation Army vs Red Cross: Who should I give to?

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I'm trying to look up who I should donate money to for the Japanese earthquake relief but I keep hearing conflicting things about who is actually getting their money to the right places and who is having issues.

I'm sure we all know the insane controversial stories of all the Red Cross money that "vanished" during relief efforts of the Haiti earthquake and the 9/11 attacks. I am wondering if Salvation Army is better at getting their money to where it's needed quicker.

Also when texting the earthquake relief code on my phone, am I dialing that number to send a blank message or am I typing the relief code in the message? I'm confused.

when you give money to a charity, usually at least 95% of it goes to admin costs/fees.

plus the sally army are the most bigoted people ive ever met.

International Medical Corps claims to spend 92% of their donations directly on their relief programs. The Red Cross claims that 91% of its donations go to its programs. Direct Relief International claims that it covers all of its administrative costs internally, so that 100% of all donations go to their relief programs.

Don't know. I volunteer for one of the places named so all I can say is that a lot of work goes into training the volunteers and there is a small percentage of paid employees that likely gets money out of that. The people there are really great though and it takes a lot and I mean a lot of training and hard work to be one of the employees or volunteers to go out of country, so I can tell you that they really do care about the cause. In the end I say donate to whoever you think is the best fit after doing more research.

I give through the local United Way. http://www.unitedway-york.org/index.html

Red Cross seems to be doing a good job over there.

^nice avatar

I voted for the non-religious charitable organization; the red cross.

Whatever you do, don't give to the salvation army. Not only are they a religious organization, they are openly anti-gay.

Assuming you were talking to me, thanks; are you a fan of him too?
(If you weren't... awkward )

I heard Sea Shepard is exciting, you get to nearly sink every other week.

I think you have overstated the case here . . . . The Salvation Army is a church, and as such, one would expect that they would support a Biblical view of sex (for both sexes). The Salvation Army provides its services to people w/o respect to sexual orientation; meaning, for example, if you are a victim of a natural disaster, they aren't going to first ask about your sexual orientation, and then turn you away if you give them the "wrong" answer. In fact, the Army doesn't even care about your orientation, per se. The Army's sole "anti" position is that you not engage in homosexual acts. They are also opposed to heterosexual people having sex, absent being married to one another.

I guessing that you may be anti-Christian, and as such, most any church organization that maintains a conservative "Biblical" view of things would fail to meet your approval? The original topic was where to give money such that it would actually go to the cause at hand (in this case, the Japanese tsunami). To that purpose, the Salvation Army is the most efficient organization on the planet. There are no high salary CEO's. There are no lucrative side-contracts where the organization overpays outside vendors for services (look up Feed the Children to get where I'm coming from on this one); in cases like this, it looks like all the money is going for program services (e.g., trucking companies to deliver the food to the starving children).

Alternate months donating to each of the two organizations.