I know exactly what you're saying, Laton.
I realize, however, that a significant proportion of the money's going to go to the Red Cross despite this, so my personal campaign is to see it earmarked for the "CenLA Chapter" here in Alexandria, Louisiana, where it will do the most good.
As I feared, with the exception of Jesse Jackson's weekend photo op here demanding that Alexandria must do better to create "family-friendly" and "livable" shelters for the 200 people he brought in during the middle of the night from New Orleans, the cameras have turned their attention away from the 10,000 families here in Rapides Parish.
Now that new shelters are cropping up in many other places, people are sending their donations to these facilities instead, because that's where the media is directing its fleeting attention for the moment. Just because the Alexandria shelters took these people in first is no reason to forget about them. They will be here in our community for months to come and, despite everyone's best intentions, the truth is that we don't have enough jobs or apartments to help them for the long haul.
So, as long as people automatically pick up the phone to make Red Cross donations whenever there's a crisis, it's best to just grab whatever crumbs we can from it by steering it to our local chapter. Meanwhile, there are many other Alexandria/Pineville organizations where you can help people directly without the red tape and the overhead and the middlemen. Thanks!