http://www.charitynavigator.org/

I had visited CharityWatch as well, but looking further I came across CharityNavigator which for me has a better presentation via statistics on a number of criteria rather than a simple A, B, C, etc. grading.

One thing that I found interesting about TPRF's call for donations is the following statement that can be found on the following page:

 http://inspire.contactinfo.net/v1_i43/story_2.htm

Volunteers from TPRF and from Raj Vidya Kender (RVK), the organization that promotes Maharaji's message of peace throughout the Indian subcontinent, are already in India preparing to distribute food to
people most in need.

My first question is about the volunteers from TPRF.  Who are they?  I didn't think that TPRF had any members.  Are they talking about staff members or board members?

Maybe I'm reaching a bit on this, but they use "are already in India" as if Maharaji has quickly dispatched them there.  Of course we know that most of these people are Indians.

Finally, the last question I have about the relief work that TPRF might be doing is how efficient is it to have Maharaji's relatively small charity with no real track record of providing relief aid to stricken areas.

Let's consider the flashlights given to residents of Grenada at http://tprf.org/press_releases.htm#grenada 

There's no mention of how many flashlights were distributed and there is no hard number as to the dollar value of the flashlights.  Did they fly people to Grenada and put them up in hotels so that they could hand out (oh, let's just guess) 500 flashlights that might cost $20 each (see http://www.foreverflashlights.com ) with a total cost of about $10,000?  So, how much did it cost to send, say, 2 people to Grenada to do this?  You've got to figure that the expense could easily be $2,000 if not more.

Now for India, I don't know if Maharaji has volunteers living on the coasts, but wherever they organize their relief effort they will have to transport people and food to the stricken areas.  Surely, for a small volunteer effort this could be a costly and complicated operation.  Hopefully, the Indian premies or volunteers are more "together" than the Western ones, but if memory serves me right any kind of DLM or EV organized effort to do anything always turned out to be a major hassle because of all the honchos and concepts in trying to make sure that Maharaji is pleased.  I remember doing ushering at programs and holy cow!  "The Speaker was not pleased today because when the program started there were still people trying to find their seats."

Finally, there are economies of scale when giving money to a large established charity like the Red Cross or Red Crescent.  These organizations are far more likely to be able to fly or truck or ship in large quantities of food, water, and medicines.  And they will be able to do so efficiently and effectively because they've got the know how and the experience.  There's simply no comparison and no reason to give Maharaji any money except to give him another photo-op and another notch in his suite of miserly charity efforts.