by Jack
There are crimes and then are. . . crimes! This is one of them that warrants the exclamation point. Squandering massive amounts of money on parties and personal items for the staffers of “Wounded Warriors” caught the attention of the FBI, and ours. Looks like millions of donated dollars was wasted or stolen by insiders. But, this is nothing new, Wounded Warriors has had trouble with theft before. Seems like wherever there are large sums of money there’s always somebody ready to steal it. Even from wounded vets. Ah, there should be a special place in Hell for people like that.
This example is one of a half dozen people who tried to rip off the Wounded Warriors Charity. Check it out, and she was a community leader: ASHVILLE, Tenn. Former city of Clarksville spokeswoman Christie Overstreet Hill was booked into jail Tuesday on charges she stole $20,000 from a wounded warrior charity.
At the request of 19th District Attorney General John Carney, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents began investigating Hill on June 20, according to a TBI news release Tuesday night.
During the investigation, agents, along with the Clarksville Police Department, developed information that in July 2011, as manager of the Wounded Warriors Project Fund, Hill transferred $20,150 from the group’s bank account to a personal account she opened in her name.
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Donated to the Wounded Warrior Project? You might’ve helped fund lavish parties for employees rather than veterans in need. A two-part CBS News investigation, based on interviews with more than 40 former employees, finds millions in Wounded Warrior donations have been wasted. “Their mission is to honor and empower wounded warriors, but what the public doesn’t see is how they spend their money,” says Erick Millette, a former employee who suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq. He accuses the organization of “using our injuries, our darkest days, our hardships, to make money,” which is then spent on catered employee parties, fancy restaurants, and so-called team-building retreats at beachside hotels, where bar tabs can reach $2,500. The cost of the charity’s four-day annual meeting at a five-star Colorado hotel in 2014: $3 million.
Employees describe CEO Steven Nardizzi arriving to events on a horse or Segway. One time, they say, he rappelled down the side of a building. A former staffer believes the charity wants “to show warriors a good time,” but there’s no follow up, per CBS. “It just makes me sick,” adds Millette. He says Wounded Warriors waits for veterans to call, rather than reaching out to them, though the charity denies that claim. A rep also describes the spending as “the best use of donor dollars to ensure we are providing programs and services to our warriors and families at the highest quality.” Tax forms note spending on conferences and meetings spiked from $1.7 million in 2010 to $26 million in 2014, the same amount spent on combat stress recovery that year. Public records also show the charity spends 60% of its budget on vets, compared to up to 96% for other veterans’ charities.
yes
That has been out for a while. Wounded Warriors is full of corruption. Sad. Bottom Line many charities are shell orgs. If you want to donate go to a reputable charity, look at how much really goes to the cause and donate directly. There are even companies collecting money for profit where they give only 10% to cause.
This includes some superpacs and political orgs. You might want to take a look at what Sarah pac does with the money. Most goes to her travel account. people are naive.
Both parties have fake funds. it is all a business for profit.
Everybody has their hands in the pot. Greed is the New American Way.
All those expensive TV ads when that $$ could’ve gone toward helping our Vets was a red flag.
Bill O’Reilly supports IndependenceFund.org for a reason. Their donations received are in the VERY high 90% to the Vets and are pretty much ALL volunteer.
Jack, this is a article I found earlier this year about Wounded warriors (WW) program, is was not positive in any sense, and your post above just reinforced my opinion of this so called Non-Profit.
Many years ago we looked into how to support our countries veterans, WW was getting a lot of TV exposure (their own ads)and was one group we looked at.
We called and sent out emails to each we were considering, all with this one question, “what percent of funds collected was used as administration cost” and what percent was directed toward the Veterans services support.
Of all contacted only WW did not respond (email sent twice)
Article published May of 2015:
‘Wounded Warrior’ Charity Unleashes Hell—On Other Veteran Groups
What happens when a nonprofit that was started to help veterans becomes the neighborhood bully?
For a charity supposedly devoted to helping veterans, the Wounded Warrior Project spends an enormous amount of time suing or threatening to sue small nonprofits—spending resources on litigation that could otherwise be spent on the vets they profess to serve.
At issue is the Wounded Warrior Project’s brand: The charity has become particularly litigious over the use of the phrase “wounded warrior” or logos that involve silhouetted soldiers. At least seven such charities have discussed their legal problems with The Daily Beast.
The Wounded Warrior Project has become, in the words of those it’s targeted for legal action, a “bully,” more concerned about its image and increasing the size of the organization than actually providing services to wounded warriors.
“They do try to bully smaller organizations like ourselves… They get really territorial about fundraising,” said the president of one charity with the name “wounded warrior” in their title.
He asked to remain anonymous out of fear that the Wounded Warrior Project would launch legal action against his group if he spoke out. His group hasn’t been sued, but he said individuals from the WWP had pressured him to change their name. “They’re so huge. We don’t have the staying power if they come after us—you just can’t fight them.”
The Wounded Warrior Project’s latest target is the Keystone Wounded Warriors, a small, all-volunteer charity based in Pennsylvania.
How small? Keystone Wounded Warriors had a total annual revenue of just over $200,000 as recently as 2013. That’s less than the $375,000 that Wounded Warrior Project Executive Director Steven Nardizzi was personally paid in 2013.
The Keystone group was forced to spend more than two years and some $72,000 in legal fees to defend itself from the legal actions of the Wounded Warrior Project, which brings in annual revenues of close to $235 million, according to the outfit’s most recent tax forms.
“That’s money that we could have used to pick up some homes in foreclosure, remodel them, and give them back to warriors. We spent that money on defending ourselves instead,” said Keystone Wounded Warriors Executive Director Paul Spurgin, a Marine Corps Vietnam War veteran.
“The lawsuit was just the coup de grâce,” he added. “They want us gone.” At issue is their similar logo and names—Wounded Warrior Project complained that it will “suffer irreparable damage to its business, goodwill, reputation and profits.”
Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) Logo and Keystone Wounded Warriors (KWW) Logo side by side
The Wounded Warrior Project did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But in an interview with local Virginia news channel WTKR, Nardizzi said that most organizations simply change their names when asked.
The Wounded Warrior Project has a history of legal attacks against those it perceives to be infringing on their brand. However, the term “wounded warrior” is a generic term in the military community for an injured service member. The Army has a Wounded Warrior Program. A band at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is called the MusiCorps Wounded Warrior Band.
And “the Marine Corps’ own battalion… their unit for service members who have been wounded is called the Wounded Warrior Regiment,” pointed out Ann Barnwell, a spokeswoman for Hope for the Warriors, a veterans charity that was threatened for five years between 2007 and 2012 by the Wounded Warriors Project over its logo.
At the time, both organizations had logos featuring the silhouettes of servicemembers. Hope for the Warriors eventually did change their emblem. They say that was not in response to legal threats, but rather the modernize their image.
Wounded Warrior Project is a gigantic organization that has yielded a plethora of complaints from the veterans community. Many vets have been critical that, despite hundreds of millions in revenue, the Wounded Warrior Project does not effectively spend its money to help veterans. The group has received mixed results from charity watchdogs: Charity Watch gave Wounded Warrior a C+ in 2013, up from a D two years prior. Charity Navigator gave it three out of four stars.
“Have you seen their 990 [tax form]? We often get confused with them—they’re not looked upon very highly by [the veterans community],” said David Brog, executive director of the Air Warrior Courage Foundation, which has not been threatened with litigation by the Wounded Warrior Project.
Many of the charities that Wounded Warrior Project threatens are more highly rated. Three of the charities interviewed for this story, for example, received four stars from Charity Navigator. The others were either not large enough or had not been around long enough to be rated by the charity watchdog.
A substantial cadre of veterans feel that the Wounded Warrior Project is more concerned about organizational growth than getting at the roots of problems vets face. They cite statistics that of the 56,000 veterans that WWP supposedly serves, more than a third haven’t engaged with the group in the past year. The lawsuits and threats of legal action against small nonprofits seeking to do good for veterans reinforce that perception.
Keystone Wounded Warriors Executive Director Paul Spurgin is dumbfounded as to why the massive Wounded Warrior Project would spend the resources to sue them. Spurgin is a Marine Corps veteran who served two tours in Southeast Asia in the 1960s. (Wounded Warriors Project head Steve Nardizzi, on the other hand, has never served.)
The Keystone Wounded Warriors co-founder said he spent two years negotiating with the Wounded Warrior Project to come to a sensible conclusion to their disagreements over the name and logo. Then the Wounded Warrior Project filed a lawsuit—forcing the much smaller Keystone Wounded Warriors to offer a settlement agreement.
“It’s the big guy beating up on the little guy… We won’t make the same as we did last year. What’s it really about? If they keep blowing up [in fundraising] 50 percent every year, and we’re going to go backwards this year, what is the point?” Spurgin said. “The money that we get in donations to help warriors—is that going to make or break them? … [They’re] whining about a small number of legitimate nonprofits. I’m at a loss: We all should be working together.”
Retired Colonel John Folsom formed “Wounded Warriors” in 2003 while he was stationed in Landstuhl, Germany, and is a 30-year veteran of the Marine Corps. He has argued that his group, which receives four stars on Charity Navigator, was granted nonprofit status before WWP was.
Their organization has spent, in Folsom’s estimation, over $300,000 in legal fees to defend itself from the Wounded Warrior Project over a protracted, five-year process. Folsom’s organization eventually lost the lawsuit and were forced to change its name to “Wounded Warrior Family Support,” on the grounds that it was benefitting from the Wounded Warrior Project’s national advertising. The smaller group had to pay $1.7 million to WWP.
“It was very derogatory… [the Wounded Warrior Project’s lawyers] argued that John’s program was a scheme, that it was fraudulent, that he had benefitted from the wonderful advertisements of the Wounded Warrior Projects, to scam the public,” said Woody Bradford, a former “Wounded Warriors” board member who represented the group in court.
Folsom didn’t even want to talk about the lawsuit, saying that he would lose his temper if he spoke about it on the record.
“We survived. We’re here. We were never going to be a big player with huge advertising… our focus was to have a presence locally,” Bradford said. “They had the power and they used it. It was was brutal. We adopted the idea that each of us should be able to render services to [vets]. We were a grassroots, on-the-ground kind of [organization].”
The Wounded Warrior Ski Patrol is yet another group that has caught the wrong end of WWP’s litigious behavior. The group, which supports the recovery of vets by taking them on snow sports activities, was served with a letter demanding it cease and desist using the name “wounded warrior.” Fortunately for the Ski Patrol group, a patent attorney on the organization’s board was able to push back and argue that the WWP had no legal ownership over that term.
Wounded Warrior USA, a small Colorado charity with a $15,000 operating budget, had a Wounded Warrior Project lawyer reach out to them to demand they change the free clipart they were using as a label on coffee packages they were using for fundraising. “They got really nasty with us,” said Wounded Warrior USA founder Dave Bryant.
“They’ve tried to go after every organization with ‘wounded warrior’ and bully them,” said the head of one veterans charity, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn’t want his group to be targeted. “We’re not going to spend a dime or a moment confronting the bully in the neighborhood. We’re going to focus on the actual wounded warriors.
If your interested We selected “Fisher House”, where at the time 94% of money was used to support the Vets and their families.
Make a difference, sign petition and share: https://www.change.org/p/steve-nardizzi-we-demand-accountability-of-wounded-warrior-project?recruiter=492135622&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
Chris: “Employees describe CEO Steven Nardizzi arriving to events on a horse or Segway. One time, they say, he rappelled down the side of a building.”
This is hilarious as long as you don’t think about how disgusting it is!
“Ah, there should be a special place in Hell for people like that.”
Ditto!!
And people wonder why it’s important to have standards and teach morality.
Money becomes a powerful temptation, especially when a moral grounding hasn’t been established.
Another “charity” to avoid is the Clinton’s foundation. Reportedly only 10% – 15% of the money is spent on charity. See here, here and, here.
Private – I appreciate the additional info. This is really sad and because this sort of thing is so pervasive in our society, it makes me wonder about our future. I hope we are no where near as corrupt as what Dewey says, but he had plenty of evidence to back up his story. Sad…very sad, I think we’re in a moral crisis. Another payoff of dems and all their bunk logic.
Hahaha poor Trumpster just got rejected by our Vets.
Veterans’ Groups Line up to Reject Money from Trump (if He is Even Raising Any):
“Trump’s standard line when he is about to storm out of a media event because he doesn’t like how it covers him is that he is going to go host an event to raise money for veterans. Thus it was no surprise when he announced that he would be skipping the FoxNews event to hold a separate event to raise money for… well, “veterans,” generally. Of course, Trump did not name a specific charity so that his feet might be held to the fire on this, just “veterans,” generally.
Well, there are two small problems. The main veterans group that Trump has used for publicity stunts in the past, the Wounded Warrior Project, was the subject of a scathing CBS report about their spending practices. Besides, if Trump is planning on using them, he hasn’t told anyone from the group. Per CNN, the Wounded Warrior Project has not even been contacted by Trump about possibly doing an event tomorrow.
If he is doing it for some other group, they are now lining up to say that they don’t want any money Trump might make off of promoting himself, and will reject it if offered.”
Continued..
http://www.redstate.com/2016/01/27/veterans-groups-line-reject-money-trump-even-raising/?utm_content=bufferf0543&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Veterans groups object to being dragged into Trump-Fox feud:
“Veterans groups say Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is disrespecting those who served in the military by using their plight in his ongoing rivalry with Fox News.
Instead of participating in Fox’s GOP debate Thursday night, Trump is holding a separate campaign event that he promised would benefit veterans groups.
Paul Rieckhoff, founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, pledged his group wouldn’t take money from Trump’s event should it be offered.
“If offered, @IAVA will decline donations from Trump’s event,” Rieckhoff tweeted Wednesday. “We need strong policies from candidates, not to be used for political stunts.”
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/267417-veterans-groups-scoff-at-trump-event#comment-2483940197
I hope this revelation about “Wounded Warriors”does not reflect badly on the Gary Sinse Foundation, a worthy veterans support entity that is impeccable.
Ok so this is exactly why we say we need support our vets through Gov function. They vote to cut funds all the time! Starve the beast let private orgs do charity?
When I hear statements from Politicians that Charities should help all in need, I think of their so called non profit orgs. Many are corrupt guys. They tarnish the path of “Real” hard working non profit orgs.
The goal to privatize is the cause. EVerything is for the profit of a few is the effect.
I hate to tell you wounded warriors is a corrupt org period. We have known this for awhile. That is why I demand the fed Gov take care of our vets. Taxpayers are 100% willing to support Vets. Look at the records of those in congress who vote on veterans bills.
The last vets org Trump raised money for on an aircraft carrier “Veterans for a Strong America”, had 1 employee, didn’t give out money to anybody. After the media busted the founder, he lost his non profit status, and is under investigation.
A total scam. Either trump knew or is dumb enough to get scammed. I say it was a Political Stunt.
Wounded Warriors should not exist. They Spend millions a year on lavish travel for minor meetings ect ($500 a night hotel rooms)?
2014: about 40% was spent on overhead. (Semper Fi fund 8%, Fed Gov 2%).
The head of it makes about $470,000 a year?
Privatization of Public Function is a scam period. Starve the beast (Gov) for Fascism.
The only thing stopping a few Billionaires from having complete Power is Government.
I pay taxes for these things. Those in Congress voting to cut funds for our vets (who are sent out to protect corporate interests) need to be voted out. All of them both parties.
“Ok so this is exactly why we say we need support our vets through Gov function.”
Because they’ve done such a bang-up job so far!
The WWP will be handled through the courts…can’t say the same for our corrupt government: Eric Shinsek, Lois Lerner, John Koskinen, Susan Hedman, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedine…and so many more who either resign with full benefits, are moved to another department, or could even end up in the WH as the leader of our nation.
A smaller federal government would solve much of the corruption and illegality that NEVER gets prosecuted.
I pay taxes too and I’m tired of the waste, the fraud, the criminals, and the unaccountable, un-elected bodies that change regulations without representation of the people in oppressive ways and for special interests.
We need a revival of morals and values in our entire nation.