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Crisis Response Time for American Red Cross Essay

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Since the writing of this case, the American Red Cross (ARC) is on record as having conceptually addressed its infrastructure and operational hurdles. However, very few strides have been made to reverse stakeholder perception crisis response time, relief dispatch strategies, and the ethical dilemmas plaguing the organization. Governmental mandates that streamlined the board and that established accounting /reporting parameters have done little to modify the organizations operational culture.

Since 2002, the organization has had seven CEO’s. This high turnover has prompted concern from stakeholders and government officials. Records indicate the organization now has approximately 35,000 employees and its volunteer pools still …show more content…

These re-occurring incidents have shaken the confidence of stakeholders and have begun to have an adverse impact on donor perceptions of the integrity and validity of the efforts promoted by ARC (Welch, 2012).

In March 2012, local leaders and the United Way demanded answers from Red Cross Panhandle Chapter regarding the distribution of $282K that was raised from wildfire relief donations. These funds were raised in 2010 and by the time the inquiries began many of the 2010 ARC staff in this chapter had been replaced under the government restructure. As such, new staff found itself in a quandary as it sought to address the questions and accusations being hurled (Welch, 2012). The tangible numbers that were eventually conveyed indicated that of the $282k raised, $119k was actually given to victims and $60K was used to restock inventories. This account still left $103K unaccounted for. The next speculation that surfaced was revolved around why the funds were not distributed for the purpose for which it was collected? A spokesperson for the local ARC chapter communicated that, personally, he [did] not like this [situation] and he acknowledged the top two previous chapter officials made errors. It was noted that these same two officials left the company in May of 2011 for what ARC labeled as “personal reasons”. In response to the local chapter’s inability to provide acceptable disclosures regarding how funds were

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