“Everywhere I turn, the Red Cross is there like a giant vacuum cleaner, sweeping up every dollar they can,” said Kevin Truax, an insurance agent in Parkersburg, Iowa, who has joined other civic leaders in establishing a fund to help tornado victims, effectively competing with the Red Cross for donations. “There was a television fund-raiser where they got upward of $350,000. There was a fund-raiser on the radio that raised $20,000 or $25,000, and now there was this concert. Where’s the money all going?”

Mr. Truax’s criticism echoes those by Mr. Grassley and local officials and charity leaders on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, when the Red Cross raised $2 billion while grass-roots organizations and others struggled to finance their efforts. After that, the Red Cross announced plans to work more closely with other charities.

“It looks like Iowans received a mixed message about Red Cross needs in Iowa after the tornado,” Mr. Grassley wrote in an e-mail response to a question about confusion over Red Cross fund-raising. “When the Iowa tornado relief effort is finished, the national organization needs to take a hard look at whether it confused fund-raising efforts on the ground.”

More than $400,000 has been pledged to the Red Cross, not all earmarked for the tornado relief, said Joe Becker, senior vice president for disaster services at Red Cross headquarters. Mr. Becker said the estimate by the local chapter did not include the money to cover costs that the national organization incurred for the tornado victims.

“The initial budget was $300,000 to $350,000 for the overall relief effort, and the numbers look like they’ll go north of that now,” he said.