We recently discussed how America continues to reflexively rely on the Red Cross to provide disaster relief despite mounting criticism of the organization. 

As interest in the organization grows, we looked into Red Cross's financials to see what we could find.

Okay, we basically just want to know how much these guys are getting paid.

In 2010, top executive compensation looked like this:

• Executive director Gail McGovern made $561,210
• EVP for biomedical services James Hrouda made $621,779
• Biomedical services president Shaun Gilmore made $573,933

Here is the full compensation table, via Guidestar, from 2010. 

Total executive comp came to $4.5 million (Line IX-5 in the doc).

That may seem like a lot, but you have to ask what kind of organization you're comparing the Red Cross to. Most would regard them as a charity, but others might say they're more akin to a large, complex organization that competes with corporations for talent.

In 2010, the Red Cross finished its fiscal year with revenues of about $3.6 billion in revenue (Line I-12).

As far as 501(c)3s, that puts it on par with mega hospital networks, not goodwill organizations.

That's a story in itself.

But keeping the focus on aid groups, if we look at executive comp as a percentage of direct grants, we can get an idea of how well Red Cross executives were paid.

For the Red Cross, total grants in the U.S. and abroad came in at $383 million (Line IX-2/3). That's 1.2% percent of executive comp.

Seems reasonable.

But in 2010, Feeding America, another relief group, provided grants totaling $1.1 billion, according to Guidestar (Line IX-1). They paid top execs $2.7 million (Line IX-5). That's .2% of grants.

Here's how that group paid their top execs:

The Red Cross may want to rethink its priorities.

SEE ALSO: Whom To Blame If You Think Your Publicly Traded Company's CEO Is Getting Paid Too Much >

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