WINNEMUCCA — American Red Cross leadership was here Tuesday (January 19) to promote the streamlining of operations to a sometimes skeptical group of volunteers.  The move was necessary due to a decade of costly disasters in a bad economy. 

On hand to outline some of the changes was Pat Hofmaster, the vice president of the ARC’s West Division.  She explained the organization's financial struggles made the changes necessary to ensure the ARC’s sustainability in the future.  The changes will not affect the services provided to the community, such as disaster relief, but will change the way individual chapters do business.  For example, instead of having a paid bookkeeper in every chapter, the bookkeeping will be centralized and utilized by the surrounding five states.

“People take the Red Cross for granted and assume we’re always gong to be there, but that’s not the case,” Hofmaster said. “Recently we’ve seen institutions who took a nose dive and went under.  We must shore-up business practices and take a look at how we operate as an organization.”

Historically the ARC’s nearly 700 chapters have operated autonomously with the national office paying the big bills – such as disaster response to Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, the Wells earthquake and the Fernley flood.  In addition, the national office funds large-scale programming.

Due to the refining of the business model, resources have been pooled and there will now be fewer pots of money spread out across the country.  The consolidation of resources caused some consternation at the local level.  Funds that were once managed locally were transferred to chapter headquarters in Reno. In addition,  the vehicle that had been assigned to Winnemucca was transferred to Elko -- primarily because Elko has a larger population to serve and their volunteers have been actively traveling around the county for disaster response training.

Local volunteers argued these resources should have stayed in Winnemucca. 

Caroline Punches, the Northern Nevada Chapter Executive Director, explained the funds that were transferred were not designated funds.  Instead, they were operating funds in an unrestricted account. Operating funds are now being managed through chapter headquarters in Reno, who will continue to fund the Winnemucca Service Center.

The issue of designated vs unrestricted funds is a sticky one that applies to most service organizations.  If someone donates to the American Red Cross, but doesn’t specify where the money should go, the money goes into a pool of funds to be used at the ARC’s discretion.  If the donor specifies an area of need, such as Haitian disaster relief, the money goes into a restricted account and will only be used for the need specified.

The issue of designated funds is expected to complicate the ARC’s ability to fundraise in the next year.  Americans giving generously for disaster relief in Haiti, as is appropriate,  may not understand the ARC’s need to keep the disaster-response infrastructure here in place.  In other words, when the ARC attempts local fundraisers residents may think, “I’ve already given to the Red Cross” without understanding the difference between the designated funds going to Haiti and the unrestricted funds that keep the Red Cross disaster-response infrastructure in place.

Locally, the all-volunteer disaster team continues to train and the health and safety component continues to teach first aid and CPR.  There will, however, be challenging times ahead.