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Posted on 10/28/2001 4:05:49 AM PST by sarcasm

NEW YORK -- It should be a dream come true for the American Red Cross: so many donations it has had to take out full-page newspaper ads seeking more people to help.

Indeed, since Sept. 11 the Red Cross and other charities have been deluged with more than $1 billion in gifts and pledges for families of World Trade Center victims.

But making sure the money is being fairly distributed -- or distributed at all -- is turning the relief effort into something of a nightmare.

Charity watchdog groups estimate that only about 10 percent of the money donated has been distributed to victims' survivors.

"We are starting to get calls from donors asking what's going on with all the money," said Bennett Weiner, chief operating officer of the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance.

Indeed, dissatisfaction about the way the Red Cross is raising and distributing the New York relief funds is believed to be one reason that the charity's president, Bernadine Healy, announced her resignation Friday.

The Red Cross said Friday it had collected $531 million, more than half of the total in all the funds. But the charity said it was not clear how much had been distributed beyond $35 million in cash grants to families.

Devorah Goldburg, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross, said detailed information about disbursements is hard to provide.

"We're getting invoices as we speak and it's been hard to track everything, especially with the mail being kind of strange right now," Goldburg said, referring to the effects of the anthrax scare on mail service.

"At some point we'll make all the numbers available to the public, because it is public information," she added.

On its Web site, the Red Cross estimates the value of services provided following the Sept. 11 attacks at between $300 million and $320 million.

But it may surprise donors to know that much of that money won't be going directly to the victims, but instead to various other projects: the operation of toll-free hot lines, the creation of a new blood reserve, and the initiation of programs encouraging tolerance in communities across the country.

Red Cross officials say that about $2 million a day is spent on everything from hot meals to grief counselling.

What about the rest of the money that has been raised?

"It will be spent on emerging human needs as a result of this tragedy," Goldburg said. "We may provide grief counseling for years."

Goldburg said one factor holding up disbursement is the difficulty of getting people who are entitled to relief to claim it. Some families may be too consumed with grief to think about asking for assistance, she said.

She said that is why the Red Cross has placed ads in newspapers in both New York and Washington and assigned 35 staff members to do little but look for potential aid recipients.

"We're trying to encourage people to call us because we want to give them a gift, but still not all people have called us," Goldburg said.

The New York charities are getting mixed reviews for their performance.

Weiner said charities shouldn't necessarily be criticized for taking their time with disbursements.

"A lot of people expect the money to be spent quickly, but we've never had a terrorist attack and raised $1 billion before," he said. "When you're talking about disbursements, haste can make waste."

But Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, a charity watchdog group in Maryland, said any charitable organization should be able to release an estimate of total money disbursed.

"An agency should be able to release some kind of figure, even if it's just an estimate," he said.

Borochoff also said it makes him nervous when charities start talking about spending money years down the road.

"If they need it down the road, then they can ask for it at that time," he said.

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