You'd have some trouble convincing me that either of those organizations are a "safe choice". As far as I can tell, at some layer of management or another (a lower layer, for the SA; a higher one, for the RC) both are run by either prosletyzing or bigoted religious fanatics. Now, one may have more or less of a problem with toleration of evangelism as the price of handouts for those in need -- effectively the situation with the SA; I find it exploitive but not so much so as to outweigh the good the SA does, in that particular situation.
But the RC, not so long ago, forced out the head of its U.S. opera- tions for, among other things, asking a few too many times just why, exactly, it was acceptable to refuse to recognize its cognate organization in Israel, the Magen David Adom (the official reason: the Israeli organization refuses to replace the Star of David with a Christian cross as its symbol; odd, then, that the Red Crescent is unproblematic). The Red Cross, too, it seems to me, does much good -- but is hardly the sort of group that one should paint as so unquestionably and thoroughly good as to be an "always safe" recipient for one's money.
Both of these groups carry substantial baggage from a sort of Victorian era of dogooding in which those in need of help were seen, in some way, as flawed just for needing it, and thus requiring moral improvement. I would certainly want to see such attitudes wane before I would feel good about making either of them the sole recipient of whatever dollars I had available to give to charity.
Thor Lancelot Simon snipped-for-privacy@rek.tjls.com
"We cannot usually in social life pursue a single value or a single moral aim, untroubled by the need to compromise with others." - H.L.A. Hart
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Clara Barton (Red Cross founder) was not as much a do-gooder with an evangelical bent as was General William Booth, founder of the SA, who was really into religion big time. But in that Victorian era, they both would have been a bit too much for many folks who swear by them today. But, you know, around here when there is any sort of personal disaster affecting one or more people, SA and RC are both right there to help, just as they were at Katrina. PAT]