JustinProPublica

Tl;dr: we don't have a full answer. Laura and I repeatedly asked the American Red Cross for a detailed breakdown of spending by specific project/overhead, etc. They wouldn't provide that. They do release a pie chart of spending in their annual report: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1568746-haiti-five-year-update.html#document/p1/a210740

But it's broken down only into very broad categories. So if you want to actually figure out what happened to the money, it's not very helpful.

Apart from tracking the money, here's the nut graf of the story:

"The group has publicly celebrated its work. But in fact, the Red Cross has repeatedly failed on the ground in Haiti. Confidential memos, emails from worried top officers, and accounts of a dozen frustrated and disappointed insiders show the charity has broken promises, squandered donations, and made dubious claims of success."

Hey Jonathan,

As we noted in the story, the Red Cross has said it “provided homes” to more than 130,000 people. But that’s not accurate. That figure includes people who, for example, got construction training — not a home.

The story also notes the Red Cross did repairs on several thousand of homes and built several thousand transitional shelters.

We focused on permanent housing in part because the head of the Red Cross, Gail McGovern, announced early on that that would be the Red Cross’ focus. But a number of programs to provide permanent housing either failed or fell short. For example one of the planned projects to build new neighborhoods was delayed for years “because of turnover in Red Cross leadership that resulted in shifting approaches to housing in Haiti” — that’s from a GAO report: https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/1669909-gao-haiti-testimony.html#document/p18

We were fairly shocked to get that email. Earlier that day we had been talking to Jean Jean Flaubert, who is the head of a local community group in the neighborhood of Campeche that was actually set up by the Red Cross. We were accused of providing false information to community members when in fact we had shown them a Red Cross press release about the project from the group's website.

I think the role of TurboTax/Intuit and the rest of the tax software industry has been pretty well covered over the years. What I also think deserves attention are the years long budget cuts at the IRS that have threatened its ability to collect taxes, particularly from the rich. My colleagues have been documenting this at ProPublica:

https://www.propublica.org/series/gutting-the-irs

Hi -- I'd love to chat more about your work, if you have time shoot me an email [email protected]