It's a familiar story: A nonprofit organization uses images of suffering individuals to appeal for donations. Americans from all walks of life chip in because we are a generous people when others are in dire need.

Questions arise when the donated money doesn't go where it's supposed to. People who opened their hearts and wallets begin to suspect they've been taken for chumps. Distrust spreads to other charities, deservedly or not.

Usually the suspect charities are fly-by-night operations. This time it's the American Red Cross that is doing the nonprofit world no favors.

Since the days of Clara Barton, the Red Cross has been the go-to charity in times of disaster, such as fires and natural disasters. When a massive earthquake devastated Haiti in 2010, killing an estimated 160,000, the American Red Cross sent out a nationwide appeal for help, and donations flooded in, totaling nearly half a billion dollars.

The Red Cross said it used funds to build homes for more than 130,000 people. The actual number, according to investigative reporting in 2015 by National Public Radio and ProPublica, was six.

This recalls the scandal that erupted this year when news organizations reported complaints that staffers of the Wounded Warrior Project were jetting around the country in business class, taking lavish junkets in $500-a-night, five-star hotels and paying executives up to $500,000 a year.

A scandal in 1995 prompted United Way of America to completely revamp procedures and tighten its vetting of member organizations to ensure no more than 13.8 percent of donated money goes to overhead costs.

Against this background, there's no excuse when trusted organizations continue to make enormous mistakes that only serve to increase public skepticism about donating.

Executives and board members of the American Red Cross didn't question their organization's spending claims in Haiti when reports surfaced that donated money was being squandered. Similar allegations arose after the 9/11 attacks.

Instead Red Cross officials blamed the messenger, questioning the reporting that, according to NPR, uncovered a host of "poorly managed projects, questionable spending and dubious claims of success." In other words, officials circled the wagons.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, spearheaded an investigation, which showed that the organization spent an inordinately high 25 percent of the Haiti donations on administrative costs and fundraising. It found no fraud or abuse but said the Red Cross stonewalled congressional investigators when they sought information.

Wounded Warriors engineered a shakeup when its problems were revealed. United Way pledged to do better. Red Cross officials found fault with everyone but themselves. That's no way to restore public confidence.

No one likes to be hoodwinked. Donors deserve answers, not excuses. The public needs reassurance at every turn that donated money will be treated like the precious commodity it is.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH