April 15, 2012
Red Cross Makes a Shift to Stabilize Revenue and Give Local Leaders a Bigger Voice
Bob Carey/American Red Cross
Debi Meeds (right), a regional Red Cross leader, confers with Gail McGovern, the group’s national head, on tornado relief.
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Bob Carey/American Red Cross
Debi Meeds (right), a regional Red Cross leader, confers with Gail McGovern, the group’s national head, on tornado relief.
After a tornado hit Joplin, Mo., last May, killing 160 people and injuring nearly 1,000 others, representatives from the American Red Cross’s national office in Washington rushed to the town and did something unusual: They let the local leaders direct the recovery efforts and quietly offered any help they needed.
“I really felt like an equal in planning the disaster relief,” says Debi Meeds, regional chief executive of the Red Cross, in Springfield, Mo., and a
