Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS
An Organizational Analysis of the American Red Cross
Amy Deller, Emily Schneider, Haley Baker, and Stevona Burks
Human Services Program
Western Washington University
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ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS
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Introduction
The American Red Cross is a non-profit category 501 (c)(3) organization that is
dedicated to helping people in need across America and in association with other American Red
Cross organizations throughout the world. Generous contributions of blood, time, and money
keep the organization sustainable (American Red Cross, 2014, History). Supporters, volunteers
and employees of the American Red Cross provide five key areas of care; people affected by
disasters in America, support for members of the military and their families, blood collection,
processing and distribution, health and safety education and training, and international relief and
development (American Red Cross, 2014, History).
A mission statement is the key to success for any non-profit organization. An
organization could not exist without having a clear mission; it is the starting point for planning
(Worth, 2014, p.164). The American Red Cross has a clear mission statement that states not only
what they do, but also how they will follow through with the mission. The American Red Cross
mission states: “The American Red Cross prevents and alleviates human suffering in the face of
emergencies by mobilizing the power of volunteers and the generosity of donors” (American
Red Cross, 2014, Mission Statement Section). While Worth (2014) describes a non-profit’s
mission in the textbook, he mentions the work of James Phillis (2005) and his description of a
mission as, “the psychological and emotional logic that drives an organization. It is the reason
people get up in the morning and go to work in a nonprofit… Mission describes the social value
that the organization creates” (Worth, 2014, p.164). The American Red Cross mission defines
the social value that it strives to create (American Red Cross, 2014, Mission Statement Section).
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Worth (2014) describes in his text that every non-profit organization fits into one of five
life stages. These stages include, “stage one: imagine and inspire, stage two: found and frame,
stage three: ground and grow, stage four: produce and sustain, and stage five: review and renew”
(Worth, 2014, p.192). According to Transforming the Future (2013), over the past five years the
American Red Cross has gone through a major management transformation. They drafted a plan
to restructure the chapter network to function more as one Red Cross and less as separate
entities. The restructuring created greater efficiencies, increased collaboration and broke down
silos between different parts of the organization (Transforming for the Future, 2013). After going
through such a significant structural change after having the same model for hundreds of years,
this would put the American Red Cross in stage five: review and renew. They reviewed their old
model, figured out it does not work, and reviewed a different model.
Current Programming and Services
Disaster Services
When a disaster occurs, the American Red Cross is there to help the community with
emergency food, shelter, supplies, and education presentations on disaster reliefs (American Red
Cross, 2014, Disaster Services).
Nurse Assistant Training
American Red Cross provides Nurse Assistant Training to help individuals effectively
work in a nursing setting (American Red Cross, 2014, Nurse Assistant Training).
Preparedness
The National Capital Region provides individuals with presentations to the community on
how to prevent and prepare for a disaster (American Red Cross, 2014, Preparedness).
ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS
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Preparedness for the Deaf
Community Outreach
Each year the Community Outreach volunteers attend events throughout the National Capital
Region to inform others on how to prepare, prevent, and respond to emergencies (American Red
Cross, 2014, Community Outreach).
International Services
This program allows families to contact relatives that they have lost contact with because of
a natural disaster, war, or internal conflict (American Red Cross, 2014, International Services).
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International Services Overview
International Disaster Relief
Building Safer Communities
International Humanitarian Law
Healthy Safety Training
American Red Cross offers CPR, First Aid, AED training, swimming and lifeguard
lessons (American Red Cross, 2014, Health & Safety Training).
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Water Safety
American Red Cross helps with lifeguard and water safety training (American Red Cross,
2014, Water Safety).
Services to the Armed Forces
The American Red Cross carries on the SAF program, which helps serve as a line of
communication between the U. S. Armed Forces and families (American Red Cross, 2014,
Services to the Armed Forces).
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Emergency Communication Services
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Provides emergency communications to all active members of armed services such as
emergency, critical accident, illness or death (American Red Cross, 2014, Emergency
Communication Services).
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Financial Assistance
The American Red Cross provides financial assistance to qualified applications (American
Red Cross, 2014, Financial Assistance).
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Information and Referral Services
American Red Cross provides confidential services to military personnel and their family’s,
community resources through their network of chapters in communities across the United States,
and offices on military installations worldwide (American Red Cross, 2014, Information and
Referral Services).
Deployment Services
American Red Cross provides workshops and information to support families with
emotional challenges that they face with deployment (American Red Cross, 2014, Deployment
Services).
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Coping with Deployment Course
Pre-Deployment Preparedness Tool for Family Members
Post-Deployment Support Resource
Reconnection Workshops
American Red Cross offers many skill-building to help service members, veterans, and
families cope with the challenges they face after being deployed (American Red Cross,
2014, Reconnection Workshops).
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Boots to Business
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American Red Cross has created this program for veterans that are in need of
employment (American Red Cross, 2014, Boots to Business).
Geography and Demographics
The American Red Cross has chapters in all 50 states of the United States of America,
and they have chapters located in Guam and Puerto Rico (American Red Cross, 2014, American
Red Cross Chapter Locations by State). Out of these 52 states served, the American Red Cross
has 502 active chapters (American Red Cross, 2014, American Red Cross Chapter Locations by
State).
The American Red Cross supplies about 40 percent of the country’s blood. This allows them to
provide life saving services to trauma victims, cancer patients, those with chronic conditions and many
others (American Red Cross, 2014, 2013 Fiscal Year Annual Report). Additionally, “The Red Cross Blue
Tag program seeks to recruit blood donors specifically to help patients with sickle cell disease”
(American Red Cross, 2014, 2013 Fiscal Year Annual Report). Each year, the Red Cross responds to
approximately 70,000 disasters in the United States. These disasters range from home fires that affect
single families, to hurricanes that affect tens of thousands, to earthquakes that impact millions (American
Red Cross, 2014, Disaster relief Section). The Red Cross effectively serves any person, or group of
people, who have been affected by any disaster of any size. To go along with this, the Red Cross
volunteers provide first aid treatment to those with injuries, and emotional support to those trying to cope
after a disaster (American Red Cross, 2014, Health and Mental Health Contacts Section).
Another group the American Red Cross strives to serve is military members, veterans, and their
families (American Red Cross, 2014, Supporting America’s Military Families Section). Also, The
American Red Cross (2014) provides training programs for first responders, educators, babysitters, and
people who want to be prepared to help others in an emergency (Health and Safety Services Section).
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Another population of clients that the American Red Cross aims to serve is any person, or group of people
across the globe (American Red Cross, 2014, International Services Section). The American Red Cross
has about 13 million volunteers that reach 187 countries (American Red Cross, 2014, International
Services Section).
Organizational Structure
The American Red Cross has an organizational structure that controls their organization
to ensure they are working together to provide communities with services and programs. This
chart below will better explain how the structure is conducted.
(American Red Cross, 2014, Strategic Plan of Humanitarian Services)
Fiscal Snapshot
The most recent fiscal snapshot for the American Red Cross is documented in the Annual
Report from 2013. In this report we found that the revenue was just slightly higher than the
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expenses for the year. During 2013, the American Red Cross spent $3,380.5 million dollars on
expenses including 64 percent on Biomedical Services, 13 percent on Domestic Disaster
Services, 6 percent on Health and Safety Services, 4 percent on Management, 3 percent on
International Relief and Development Services, 3 percent on Community Services, and finally 2
percent on Armed Forces. The breakdown of expenses shows the importance of what American
Red Cross clients need and what is significant to the organization (American Red Cross, 2013,
Annual Report).
Last year, the American Red Cross brought in $3,435.9 million dollars in revenue. Of this
amount, 63 percent came from Products and Services, 31 percent from Contributions, and 6
percent from Investment Income. These three areas of revenue create $55.4 million dollars of
true income. The funding diversification comes from three parts: 86 percent Contributions
(Domestic & International Relief, General Operation, and Endowment), 9 percent from United
Way, and 5 percent from Donations of Material and Services (American Red Cross, 2013,
Annual Report).
SWOT Analysis
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Strengths
Abundance of jobs
Variety of services available
Over 100 years of experience
Financially stable organization
Large donor base
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Weaknesses
Slow to respond to disasters
Weak Chapters which causes imbalance
to the organization
BOD is too big causing difficulty for
agreement
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Opportunities
Partnerships can lead to more visibility,
increase trust, and increase donations
Diversify volunteers in order to best
serve clients
Research trends and who gives to the
Red Cross to find out how to increase
donations, such as motivations for
giving, consumerism, fundraising
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Threats
Shortage of funding
Implementation of a new plan and
process for funding
Blood shortage which could potentially
not be able to serve clients
Reduction in employment
Budget cuts
Reflective Analysis
Strengths
The American Red Cross has many different kinds of strengths that have helped them
become as successful as they are today. This organization is extremely trusted, has an abundance
of jobs opportunities and has made many positive changes over the past five years.
The American Red Cross has been a government charter for the last 100 years, and is
included in the government's National Response Plan for catastrophes (Re-examining the Red
Cross, 2005). Donors also give the most money to the American Red Cross when natural
disasters occur. For example, 1.52 billion out of 2.7 billion dollars for the hurricane relief was
from The American Red Cross. During hurricane Katrina the Red Cross proudly tells us:
That 219,500 disaster relief workers - from all 50 states and overwhelmingly
volunteers - were hard at work helping storm victims. In coordination with the
Southern Baptist Convention, the Red Cross served victims more than 27.4
million hot meals. And perhaps most important of all, the organization gave
victims debit cards with up to $1,565 in emergency funds, essential for families
uprooted from homes and jobs living in unfamiliar circumstance. (Re-examining
the Red Cross, 2005)
The American Red Cross is highly trusted and many individuals donate to them when a
disaster occurs. Not only do they have a large donor base, but they also have over 100 years of
experience. Worth (2014) describes that social media networking is starting to be used by many
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non-profits, such as the Red Cross. In the text, it states that the Red Cross has even used mobile
communication (via text) to donate, and a significant component of giving was through text
donations during the Haiti earth quake in 2010 (Worth, 2014, p.277).
The American Red Cross is a very large company which has more than 27,000
employees and 6,000 jobs are filled each year (Rudulph, 2014). Carol Robinette, Vice President
of Talent Acquisition stated that, "Young people are important to the organization. We're more
than 125 years old, but we're always looking for new perspectives. Everybody here has a voice in
how we can more effectively deliver our mission" (Rudulph, 2014). The American Red Cross
provides an abundance of jobs, trainings and internships to individuals across the country.
Over the last five years, The American Red Cross has made many changes to benefit
themselves. They started out by drafting a plan to restructure the chapter network to function as
one Red Cross, rather than separate entities. This helped create greater efficiencies, increased
collaboration and broke down silos between different organizations (Transforming for the
Future, 2014). They decided to consolidate support services (marketing, human resources,
finance and IT). “We now have just one Red Cross website instead of 700, and one bank account
instead of 4,000” (Transforming for the Future, 2014, p.6). Worth (2014) describes strategic
planning as, “more than a strategy; it is a process that produces a product- a strategic plan-that
puts meat on the strategy and points the way to implanting it” (Worth, 2014, p.160). To make all
these changes, the American Red cross had to come up with a strategic plan by preparing,
assessing the situation, clarifying the mission, values and vision, identifying strategic questions
developing goals and strategies, writing the plan, developing operational plans, executing the
plans, and evaluating the results (Worth, 2014, p.163).
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Weaknesses
The American Red Cross possesses some weaknesses that could potentially hold back the
organization from being as successful as possible. One weakness of the American Red Cross has
to do with their response time after a disaster has occurred. They have a tendency to be slow to
respond to disasters, and they can be disorganized when responding to these disasters (The New
York Times, 2005, Paragraph 3). According to The New York Times (2005), “In the wake of
Hurricane Katrina, some victims and volunteers complained that the organization's response to
the disaster was slow and tangled in red tape” (Paragraph 3). According to Worth (2014),
communication is complex, including how messages are encoded, transmitted, screened,
decoded, stored, retrieved, and acted on” (p. 242). According to this, it seems as though the
American Red Cross lacks certain components of communication when it comes to responding
to disasters. This may be why they are slow to respond to the disasters, and often disorganized.
Another weakness of the American Red Cross comes from the governing board. The
governing board tends to have too many members. “The problem with the board is, number one,
that it’s very large. And most nonprofit experts would argue that a much smaller board would be
much more effective in overseeing the agency” (Paul Light, 2005, Paragraph 16). Paul Light
explains:
The second problem is that the board has a very large number of members who are
elected by the local chapters that the president of the organization oversees. To some
extent, when you’re having conflict with that board, you’re having conflict with the
people that you supervise. (Paul Light, 2005, Paragraph 16)
Worth (2014) says that the governing boards hold the ultimate responsibility for
guaranteeing that the organization serves its mission and for the overall welfare of the
organization itself. Additionally, “the board plays a critical boundary-spanning role in the open
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system of a nonprofit organization, connecting the nonprofit to its community and constituencies,
often including important sources of financial support” (Worth, 2014, p. 73). Since the American
Red Cross has a large, and seemingly disorganized governing board, then it’s going to struggle to
uphold the organizations mission, and the overall welfare of the organization might be in
jeopardy. Also, the community might not be connected to the organization as well as it could be
with a smaller governing board.
A third weakness of the American Red Cross is its issue with weak chapters. This can
cause an imbalance in the strength of the American Red Cross. “Since the Red Cross is stronger
in some states than others, it is often underrepresented in the places that need the most help. That
translates into a shortage of relief workers with the detailed, on-the-ground expertise so sorely
needed in a time of crisis” (The New York Times, 2005, Paragraph 5). The New York Times
(2005) goes on to explain that despite some states being larger, they have less volunteers and less
revenue.
To go along with this, Worth (2014) explains that volunteers are a major part of
nonprofits. Also, the service of volunteers is a major economic part to nonprofit organizations
and to society (Worth, 2014). Additionally, many nonprofits rely heavily on volunteers (Worth,
2014). This just shows the importance of the use of volunteers, and it sounds like the American
Red Cross tends to struggle with their volunteer management. If the American Red Cross could
strengthen their volunteer management, then they could strengthen their chapters.
Opportunities
Based on Worth's (2014) text, the American Red Cross has numerous opportunities
awaiting to grow the organization. The opportunities provided in this SWOT Analysis are
focused on volunteers and the public (in terms of funds or exposure). It is important for
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organizations to research the largest populations of people who volunteer, who are being served,
and who are donating to the American Red Cross in order to be intentional in their service.
Though there are few organizations similar to the Red Cross that are on the same magnitude,
researching other disaster relief and humanitarian organizations that offer similar services is one
of the first ways to produce opportunities. Worth (2014) mentions that this process is important
in order to understand the American Red Cross audience.
One opportunity is to analyze how the largest donor populations respond to the American
Red Cross partnering with corporations. Partnering with large companies can increase visibility
and trust for the non-profit and can provide benefits to the company as well. Partnerships can
provide “opportunities to engage your employees, engage your customers and gain positive
recognition” (American Red Cross, 2014, Corporate Partnerships). Another opportunity that the
American Red Cross has in store is to analyze current volunteers to find out their motivations,
why they volunteer, and who is more likely to volunteer in order to market in better ways. The
non-profit can find out what assets the largest volunteer population have in order to best serve
clients. The American Red Cross can attract more diverse and qualified volunteers to decrease
the turn-around rate. Lastly, an opportunity the American Red Cross has is to find out how
people respond to the branding and consumerism. Since this a non-profit organization, this
subject of fundraising is debatable. Finding out why people donate and what leads to an increase
in donations is an opportunity to grow the organization.
Threats
American Red Cross faces threats that may have a negative impact on the organizations
internal and external production. According to Worth (2014) he suggests that agencies should
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collect information from internal and external factors to conduct a SWOT analysis (p.167). This
allows for American Red Cross to find the issues that they are faced with.
One threat is the elimination of the organizations sizeable fiscal year 2010, which
allowed for American Red Cross to do a transformation change. The change was hard for the
company because they were used to doing the same budgeting the same way for a long period of
time. There were concerns pertaining to the shortage of funding, which may bring a shortage of
services for this organization (American Red Cross, 2014, Three Year Report).
A second threat is the American Red Cross Red is faced with a blood shortage, which
may become critical for patients who are in need of blood transfusions, especially for cancer
patients, burn victims, and bone marrow patients (American Red Cross, 2014, Press Releases).
This comes from a lack of blood donors and the FDA is speculating that American Red Cross
failed to properly screen the blood donated for public use. This goes against American Red Cross
values, which states that “its purpose is to protect life and health and to ensure respect for the
human being” (American Red Cross, 2014, Fundamental Principles).
The third threat is American Red Cross has seen a reduction of employment due to the
decline of donor’s money. 1,000 employees were laid off, and they hired their seventh CEO.
Also, there are issues between the American Red Cross management and Board of Directors.
Having to cut budgets, which may force American Red Cross to decline in the services and
programs to communities and the country. Worth (2014) explains how understanding the
boundaries within an organization and its environment will determine how well the organization
is really doing (p. 167).
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Conclusion
Based on the elements composing the American Red Cross organization, we have
decided that it is considered a successful organization. The American Red Cross mission, values,
and vision creates a “strong culture” that acts as the foundation for service to people in need
(Worth, 2014, p 64). The wide variety of services offered to Red Cross clients is a major
component to the success this organization produces.
A management component that needs development is the new reconstruction to the
organizational model. Transitioning to a new management style of changing how local chapters,
and funding are led will take time to run smoothly.
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