Samaritan's Purse
Samaritan's Purse is an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid organization that provides aid to people in physical need as a key part of its Christian missionary work. The organization's president is Franklin Graham, son of Christian evangelist Billy Graham. The name of the organization is derived from the New Testament Parable of the Good Samaritan. Their international headquarters are in Boone, North Carolina. The organization has been criticized for requiring volunteers to sign a controversial Statement of Faith, for Graham's controversial statements, and for his compensation. History. Samaritan's Purse was founded in 1970 by  Baptist pastor Robert Pierce (Bob), the founder of World Vision International, in Boone, North Carolina. Franklin Graham met Pierce in 1973, and they made several trips together to visit relief projects and missionary partners in Asia and elsewhere. Graham became president of Samaritan's Purse in 1979 following Pierce's death in 1978. In 2020, Samaritan's Purse has offices in Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Hong Kong, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and the organization provides assistance in more than 100 countries. Programs. Samaritan's Purse includes several ongoing ministries. Operation Christmas Child. "Operation Christmas Child" was created in  1990 by Dave Cooke and his wife Gill for children in Romania. Each November thousands of churches, schools, groups and individual donors prepare and collect shoeboxes filled with toys, school supplies, personal items, and other small gifts. A booklet of bible stories is often distributed alongside the shoebox gifts which are given to children based on need alone, regardless of their faith. These boxes are then distributed overseas by volunteers. , over 124 million boxes have been delivered. The program uses "follow-up" evangelism with pamphlets of bible stories that are given to families that receive the boxes, and an organizer  for Operation Christmas Child says his goal every day is to "expand [God's] kingdom through Operation Christmas Child." The follow-up evangelism program of Operation Christmas Child is called "The Greatest Journey". It is a 12-week discipleship program for children who receive shoebox gifts. Emergency aid. The organisation's medical mission in Liberia, West Africa, was one of only two medical NGOs active in Liberia during the beginning of the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Samaritan's Purse and SIM USA both have been actively engaged in treating the recent outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Liberia. On August 1 , 2014, the organisation announced that it was evacuating 60 nonessential personnel from Liberia. Dr. Kent Brantly, a Texas-based doctor working for the organisation, was the first U.S. Citizen to contract the Ebola virus in Liberia while treating the disease. He arrived in the United States on Saturday, August 2, and was treated and subsequently released after nearly three weeks in a special isolation unit of Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. The organization recorded their mission in Liberia in the documentary "Facing Darkness". Samaritan's Purse has a fleet of 21 planes and 2 helicopters for the emergency transport  of basic necessities and aid workers. Financials. In the fiscal year ending December 2012, Samaritan's Purse generated over $376 million. Of that amount, 89.3 percent goes directly to projects; 4.3 percent is used for administrative support; and 6.2 percent is spent on fundraising. The organization has received a 4 star rating (out of 4 stars) from the monitoring organization Charity Navigator. The "Consolidated Statement of Activities" section of the organization's 2014 accountant's report lists the total revenue as $520.4 million. In 2020, Samaritan's Purse declined federal funding from the Trump administration originally withheld from  the World Health Organization. Controversy. In March 2001, "The New York Times" reported that Samaritan's Purse had "blurred the line between church and state" in the way it had distributed publicly funded aid to victims of the January 2001 and February 2001 El Salvador earthquakes. Residents from several villages stated they first had to sit through a half-hour prayer meeting before receiving assistance. In a statement, USAID said Samaritan's Purse had not violated federal guidelines, but emphasized the need for the organization to "maintain adequate and sufficient separation" between prayer sessions and publicly-funded activities. In 2003 , Islamic leaders criticized Samaritan's Purse within the United Kingdom after its president, Franklin Graham, stated that Islam is a "very evil and wicked religion", leading to opposition campaigns by the Islamic leaders. Samaritan's Purse responded to accusations of being anti-Islamic by highlighting their long history of non-denominational co-operation and charity work in Baghdad without attempting to preach or proselytize. The Operation Christmas Child project has been criticized in several countries, most notably in the UK, but also in Ireland, India and Canada. In the United States, Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations , has stated that such religion-and-relief groups are "using their position of power to try to persuade people to leave their faith." In 2003, The British supermarket chain Co-op and South Wales Fire Service both suspended their support for the project after numerous complaints about its religious connections. Samaritan's Purse responded by stating that Christian literature was only handed out where it was deemed appropriate. Franklin Graham drew scrutiny in 2009 for drawing a full-time salary from Samaritan's Purse, while at the same time receiving a full-time salary from Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA ). This was called into question after his 2008 compensation from both organizations totaled $1.2 million. (Most of this was the result of a new IRS rule that required him to re-report deferred retirement contributions that had already been reported over the previous three years.) Some experts on non-profits have questioned whether one person can perform two full-time jobs leading organizations that employ hundreds and spend hundreds of millions around the world. In response to the questions about his compensation, Graham decided to give up his salary from BGEA, stating his calling to the ministry "was never  based on compensation." He also had contributions to his retirement plans suspended until the economy bounced back. However, Graham was again criticized in 2015 when it was revealed he had again taken up his salary from BGEA, and that his annual compensation was significantly higher than that of the CEO's of similar but much larger non-profit organisations In 2010, an American woman and two Sudanese men were kidnapped while working for Samaritan's Purse in Sudan. The two men were released promptly, but the woman was held for three months. Upon her return to the US, she sued  Samaritan's Purse and their security contractor, Clayton Consultants, a hostage negotiation consultancy owned by Triple Canopy, accusing the organization "of failing to train its security personnel adequately and of willfully ignoring warning signs that abductions were a threat to foreigners." The organization settled out of court in March 2012. In May 2013 Franklin Graham wrote a letter to President Obama stating his concern that the IRS targeted Samaritan's Purse prior to the 2012 United States presidential election with a partisan audit. In August 2013, Thankyou Group announced that it will no longer support Samaritan's Purse because it  is not a signatory to the code of conduct run by the Australian Council for International Development, which bans aid as a vehicle for promoting religion or political groups. In October 2014, Samaritan's Purse threatened legal action in the UK against the posters of online comments on the discussion forum Mumsnet. The resultant letters prompted one of the busiest discussions on the site's "Am I being Unreasonable" forum. Response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Italy. On March 17, 2020, Samaritan's Purse dispatched over 60 disaster response specialists, 20 tons of medical equipment and a field hospital to Cremona , Italy which started operations on March 20, 2020. Alaska. Samaritans' Purse airlifted 8 tons of medical supplies to Alaska on April 7, 2020 to help provide supplies to remote communities. New York. In cooperation with New York City's Mount Sinai Hospital, Samaritan's Purse constructed a 14 tent, 68-bed field hospital in Central Park on March 29, 2020 to increase Mount Sinai's surge capacity. Through April, over 190 people were treated there. By early May, all patients had been discharged, and there were plans to dismantle the tents. Criticism. Before the field hospital opened, journalists, politicians and  LGBTQ activists raised concerns that it was only recruiting Christian medical staff and that it would provide inadequate and discriminatory care. According to "NBC News" and "Gothamist", volunteers are required to adhere to a statement of faith, agreeing to a definition of marriage as "exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female" and acknowledging that "[God] will banish the unrighteous to everlasting punishment in hell."New York Mayor Bill de Blasio stated that the presence of Samaritan's Purse was "very troubling," while New York State Senator Brad Hoylman told "NBC News" that he considered it "a  shame that the federal government has left us in the position of having to accept charity from such bigots". Franklin Graham later responded to Hoylman's request for public reassurance by stating: "We do not make distinctions about an individual's religion, race, sexual orientation, or economic status. We certainly do not discriminate, and we have a decades-long track record that confirms just that." New York City's Commission on Human Rights closed an investigation into the hospital after finding no evidence it had discriminated against patients. The group's departure was hailed as a victory by LGBTQ rights  activists. Volunteers are required to adhere to a statement of faith, agreeing to a definition of marriage as "exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female" and acknowledging that "[God] will banish the unrighteous to everlasting punishment in hell." Joint plans between Mount Sinai Hospital, Samaritan's Purse and the Episcopal Diocese of New York to convert the Cathedral of St. John the Divine into a 200-bed hospital were shelved on April 9, 2020. Although this decision was attributed at least in part to the assessment that virus-related hospitalizations had already plateaued, Bishop Andrew M.L.  Dietsche of the Episcopal Diocese of New York later said that Graham's "exclusionary" and "narrow" attitude about Christianity was central to the decision. Specifically, the Samaritan's Purse requires its employees and volunteers to oppose gay marriage, which, in Dietsche's words, was incompatible with the work the New York Diocese had done "around the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people."