Wounded Warrior - a scam using our wounded military

[packman]

Wounded Warrior was Sean Hannity's favorite "charity" till he was getting roundly criticized for taking part in its excessive , self-indulgent spending. It really rankles me that these type of "charity" groups are nothing more than black holes sucking money out of the emotions of people - Susan Komen, Wounded Warriors, various children cancer charities.

"It has spent millions a year on travel, dinners, hotels and conferences that often seemed more lavish than appropriate, more than four dozen current and former employees said in interviews. Former workers recounted buying business-class seats and regularly jetting around the country for minor meetings, or staying in $500-per-night hotel rooms.

The organization has also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years on public relations and lobbying campaigns to deflect criticism of its spending and to fight legislative efforts to restrict how much nonprofits spend on overhead.

About 40 percent of the organization’s donations in 2014 were spent on its overhead, or about $124 million, according to the charity-rating group Charity Navigator. While that percentage, which includes administrative expenses and marketing costs, is not as much as for some groups, it is far more than for many veterans charities, including the Semper Fi Fund, a wounded-veterans group that spent about 8 percent of donations on overhead. As a result, some philanthropic watchdog groups have criticized the Wounded Warrior Project for spending too heavily on itself."

" Charity Watch, an independent monitoring group, gave Wounded Warrior Project a “D” rating in 2011 and has not given it a grade higher than C since."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/us/wounded-warrior-project-spends-lavishly-on-itself-ex-employees-say.html?_r=0

[Wounded Bear]

1. For me, the excessive advertising was the give away...

especially since it happened on cable networks, on shows aimed at the kind of low information, easily swayed viewer that would fall for the tear-jerking hype.

Never gave them a dime. Never will. And I'm a vet who cares a lot about VA issues. Always suspected this kind of shit would eventually surface. So, yeah, color me not surprised.

[Sadierose1313]

2. Hannity is brain dead, but WWP is on the right track

I'm a veteran and have known other vets to receive great support from WWP. As for WWP passing the sniff test when it comes to independent monitoring groups, "Charity Watch" had problems doing the math, don't know if that's Charity watch or WWP's problem, but that was their comment. However, "Charity Navigator" gave them a 4 star out of 4 stars rating as of January 2017 with info from mid 2015, and "www.Give.org" gave them their accepted rating of "Meets standard of Accredited Charity". WWP got the horse in front of the cart in the beginning in an attempt "to get things really rolling", according to the charity. I think they have sense seen the error of their ways and rethought how they are best able to support America's wounded military members. Just my observation.

[Hortensis]

3. Packman's dated post is based on old information.

All that was apparently true, which lead to the FIRING of the then-CEO and "nearly the entire executive suite of the charity." This happened after the year-and-a-half-old article.

"After months of investigation, the Better Business Bureau has cleared the Wounded Warrior Project, one of the nation’s largest veterans charities, of “lavish spending,” and gave the nonprofit organization its seal of approval. The bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance report found that Warrior Project spending has been “consistent with its programs and missions.”

(Interestingly, one of the fired executives with Wounded Warriors later joined the Kochs' front group "Concerned Veterans for America," which, of course, actually works to destroy the VA.)