Background:
The Red Cross is a volunteer-led, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and education inside the United States.
Service to the Armed Forces, a branch of the Red Cross, provides support to the United States military, veterans, and their
families.
Through this program, the Red Cross provides emergency communications, and supports military and veteran hospitals and health care facilities, as well as providing social services to active duty military members, National Guard and Reservists, veterans, and their family members.
The Red Cross provides these services through employees and volunteers that are stationed worldwide alongside the military, on military installations nationwide, in areas of conflict, and through a network of more than 650 Red Cross Chapters that have offices on domestic installations as well as supporting service members, veterans, and their families who are not located near a military installation.
Other services include travel assistance, Red Cross assistance sites based in Afghanistan and Kuwait, personal items, support to families of combat casualties, and deployment support training.
In determining whether the activities of this organization appropriately "shall serve the national interest" per §8077 of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013 (Public Law 113-6), the following criteria, with justification, are submitted:
Management or Institutional Value:
The Red Cross is governed by volunteers and supported by community donations, income from health and safety training and products, and income from blood products.
The Red Cross provides a variety of relief services and humanitarian support services in the U. S. in response to natural disasters, service member notifications in the event of death in the family or other significant family emergency, as well as support to the national blood bank.
In 2012 the Red Cross received three stars (of four) from Charity Navigator.