Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to explore the Red Cross of America. The paper discusses the historical background of the Red Cross along with the current status of the organization. Nevertheless, the study intends to focus on the section 501 (c) (3). The section specifically enlightens the prospects through which the tax exemption may be applied. International Committee of Red Cross (commonly known as Red Cross) was established in 1863 as a non-profit social organization. Red Cross works under the head of The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, which is the world’s largest humanitarian network. Main objective of the Red Cross is to protect life and health, assuage human suffering, and endorse human dignity. Red Cross supported the development of international humanitarian law (IHL) to make basis for guiding its vision and mission. Red Cross has global operations, and present in nearly every country.
The human service, nonprofit, charitable, and voluntary sector is important to our society. The labels used to distinguish these organizations from government and private-sector corporations reveal their merits: nonprofit, accenting altruism and disregard of self-interest; charitable, referring to reliance on donations and generosity; and voluntary, indicating the significance of volunteers as a primary resource. They are powerful generators of social value for certain, but they also create economic value. The human service organization that has been selected for this paper is International Committee of Red Cross.
Red Cross organization governing bodies consists of a Governing Assembly, Executive Directorate Body, and an Assembly Council. Assembly is dominated by the President, two vice-presidents, Swiss na...
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...the Rise of the Red Cross, Westview Press, p. 15-20
Lester M. Salamon, (1999), America's Nonprofit Sector: A Primer, United States: Foundation Center, p. 15-20
Luce, J., (2009), “Interview with the Red Cross Secretary General in Geneva”, Huff Post World. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-luce/interview-with-the-red-cr_b_240452.html
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Smith, B. (2000), The Complete Guide to Nonprofit Management, United States: Wiley, p. 1-20
Times Topics, (2011), “American Red Cross”, New York Times. Retrieved From: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/american_red_cross/index.html
Worth, M. (2014). Nonprofit management: Principles and Practice. 3rd Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Worth, M. (2014). Nonprofit management: Principles and Practice. 3rd Ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
The nonprofit sector in America is a reflection some of the foundational values that brought our nation into existence. Fundamentals, such as the idea that people can govern themselves and the belief that people should have the opportunity to make a difference by joining a like-minded group, have made America and its nonprofit sector what it is today. The American "civil society" is one that has been produced through generations of experiments with government policy, nonprofit organizations, private partnerships, and individuals who have asserted ideas and values. The future of the nonprofit sector will continue to be experimental in many ways. However, the increase of professional studies in nonprofit management and the greater expectation of its role in society is causing executives to look to more scientific methods of management.
The nation has approximately 1 million nonprofit entities of various sorts and hospitals have long been a traditional service provider in the nonprofit sector (Williams & Torrens, page 185). Nonprofit entities are generally exempt from most taxes at the federal, state, and local levels, including income and property taxes (Williams & Torrens, page 185). These facilities are governed by a community-based board that has ultimate authority for running these entities. Sponsorship for a nonprofit can come from various organizations, unlike other hospitals with traditional religious sponsorship (Williams & Torrens, page 185). A small percentage of the nation’s hospitals are operated by for-profit businesses (Williams & Torrens, page 186).
Retrieved April 4, 2014, from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer? sid=3117d496-29ac-4318-82c9-1dfeeac7cc64%40sessionmgr113&vid=12&hid=109 Hundley, K. (2013, June 13). Above the law: America's worst charities. CNN. Retrieved April 5, 2014, from http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/us/worst-charities/ Independent Auditors Report. (2012).
Throughout this course my paradigms of what a nonprofit organization have been challenged as we have considered the major aspects and leadership challenges of these organizations. Having worked with for profit and nonprofit organizations in the past I was quite confident that I had a clear understanding of the distinctions between the two. I had worked in organizations that regularly used volunteers to accomplish their mission and felt that the management of these processes were simplistic. Despite these misconceptions, I found that I was able to learn a tremendous amount through our reading, peer interactions, group projects and equally important, my volunteer service as part of this course.
Pictet, Jean. “The Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross: Commentary.” The Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross: Commentary. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 May 2014.
When deciding on which non-profit organization to give resources to, a person must think of a number of questions that need to be answered in which to choose a certain one. The most pertinent of these questions is the one that asks which cause the person cares about the most. The problem, for a majority of the population, is that they just do not know what they truly care about. That is why the United Way is the best option for donations. The United way does not focus on one specific, but instead works for a variety of different causes focused on fixing some of the different problems inside of the United States. The United Way is an organization, which envisions a world where all individuals and families achieve their human potential through education, income stability and healthy lives. It plans to do this by improving lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities around the world to advance the common good. The United Way needs money and time in order to achieve some of these goals. This essay will explain why the United Way is the best organization to give ones resources to.
ICRC. (2014, April 4th). The Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949. Retrieved from International Committee of the Red Cross: http://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/publications/icrc-002-0173.pdf
The Red Cross has always been handled by volunteers and charities. It doesn’t work as a business but as a humanitarian organization. It is impartial, neutral, independent, voluntary, united and universal.
Careers in the Nonprofit Sector: Doing Well By Doing Good. Washington: The Taft Group. Wilson, A. and Pimm, G. (1996). The tyranny of the volunteer: the care and feeding of voluntary workforces.
Antipersonnel landmines kill thousands of people every year. Antipersonnel landmines do not recognize a cease-fire; they continue killing or maiming for many years after the conflict is over. Antipersonnel landmines do not discriminate between soldiers or civilians. On the contrary, more and more they are being used in an indiscriminate way, terrorizing civilians and transforming agricultural fields into killing fields. In addition, de-mining is a very slow and very expensive process, and after a war most countries are not prepared to cope with the constant health care demands imposed by the number of injured by landmines. Finally, landmines make it very difficult for refugees to go back to their cities and villages. As response to the landmine problem, the international community has come up with a treaty to ban landmines. On March 1, 1999, the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty came into effect; so far 134 countries have signed the treaty. Unfortunately, the U. S. is not one of them.
... “The Nonprofit Sector: For What and for Whom?” Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, no. 37. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, 2000
The amazing thing is, the people that volunteer to help are making a lot of differences. Our society has benefited from the generosity of volunteers of all ages. More than one and a half million non-profit organizations and charities benefiting as a result. The estimated economic value on the volunteering sector is in the area of billions of dollars annually. It has always been, a very important aspect of our society.
The Charity Organization Society was based in the scientific movement of organizations. Workers believed that charity work needed more definition and organization and that charity should be focused more on individual need rather than as a whole population. Focusing on individual need was intended to improve relief operations while making resources more efficient. They also intended to eliminate public outdoor relief. With the promotion of more organization and efficiency the new Charity Organization Societies were born. Trattner states that these new requirements for organization and efficiency spread so “rapidly that within 6 years 25 cities had such organizations and by the turn of the century there were some 138 of them in existence” (Trattner, 1999).