I concluded a few years ago that once anything gets big, it goes bad. What might start out as a noble cause eventually becomes corrupt, mismanaged, and worthless. When I realized the thousands and thousands I had donated to the Catholic Church over the years was funding the priest abuse cover-up, I stopped giving and walked away from the corrupt organization run by evil men. I’ve given money to the Wounded Warrior organization. Another waste of money. The executives were partying with 50% of the contributed funds. Never give a penny to this organization again. The same goes for every large charity organization. The bigger they get, the more it is about the people running the operation.
Any organization that spends more than 10% of their funds on overhead, should be shunned. That’s why I only give to the local foodbank near my house. They directly help people in need every day. No middleman. No advertising campaigns. No massive organization. One building, a couple people running it, volunteers feeding the down on their luck, and no lavish homes and perks for executives like the Cancer scams, United Way, ALS, and a myriad of other massive bureaucracies designed to bilk you.
Wounded Warrior Project execs fired
But CBS News found Wounded Warrior Project spends 40 to 50 percent on overhead, including extravagant parties. Other veterans charities have overhead costs of 10 to 15 percent.
Wounded Warrior Project’s Chief Executive Officer, Steven Nardizzi, and Chief Operating Officer, Al Giordano, were fired after a meeting Thursday afternoon in New York.
By appealing to America’s generosity, Wounded Warrior Project raised more than a billion dollars in donations since 2003 — $300 million in 2014 alone.
But while the money was pouring in, it was also flowing out on lavish employee conferences — $26 million in 2014.
He took a job with Wounded Warrior as a motivational speaker, but after two years he quit.
“I’ll be damned if you’re gonna take hard-working Americans’ money and drink it and waste it, instead of helping those brave men and women who gave you the freedom to walk the face of this earth.”
More than 40 former employees told CBS News that spending by the charity was out of control. Two former employees were so fearful of retaliation they asked us not to show their faces.
“It was extremely extravagant. Dinners and alcohol and and, just total excess,” one said. “I mean, it’s what the military calls fraud waste and abuse.”
Former employees also told us the excessive spending began when Nardizzi took over as CEO in 2009. They point to the 2014 annual meeting at a luxury resort in Colorado Springs as typical of his style.
“He rappelled down the side of a building. He’s come in on a Segway. He’s come in on a horse.”
Nardizzi has defended the charity’s spending. “If your only fixation is spending the most on programs, that’s feeling good, but not necessarily doing good,” he said.
“I feel like I am representing all these people who have donated over the years, all these seniors over 65 sending $19 month, all these people on fixed incomes,” Fred said. “If no one is going to talk about this right now and it has to be me, then it has to be me.”
Fred continued, saying he is done with WWP except for his new mission of trying to see change within the organization.
Sources tell CBS News the board has received preliminary results of a financial audit. And there are discussions under way about retired senior military officers who are being considered to take over leadership of the organization.
BREAKING NEWS:
PEOPLE SUCK
It’s hard to believe, but every year or two, that shit-for-brains Trudeau gets something right.
[img]http://assets.amuniversal.com/5562b020b1b301333cf4005056a9545d[/img]
I never give to those charities. The other big scam is the curren AVON 39 where women walk 39 miles to cure breast cancer.
Give me fuckin’ break. Walking will cure cancer? Because they walk 39 miles I should give them some money? Actually they are wasting their time – instead of doing something productive for two days, they are walking around for nothing.
Besides, if money will cure cancer, the HNIC should get on it and give them a couple of billion.
I’m sure all the people at the top of all these charities pull down big bucks.
Biden’s curing cancer. No need to give.
I gave them money once, now try and get off their damn email list.
Imfuckingpossible.
Agreed. Of course, in this particular instance, an ounce of non-intervention is worth a pound of war. The best thing one may do for a wounded warrior/invader/rapist/thief/liar/torturer/pet dog of war pigs is to not fucking go to war over and over and over again, year after century after millennium. Jesus fucking Kee-rist, Charlie Brown! You still buying Lucy’s horseshit?!
“In war, truth is the first casualty.” ~ Aeschylus (525 BC – 456 BC)
“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.” ~ W.C. Fields
“As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.” ~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship…
“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” ~ Hermann Goering
“We have guided missiles and misguided men.” ~ Martin Luther King
“The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” ~ Marcus Aurelius
“The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.” ~ H. L. Mencken
I stop giving to charities years ago when I found out the United Way way a scam. The people supposedly running it were paying themselves Hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Having lavish parties , traveling the world and getting rich stealing donations.
I did give a guy 20 bucks at truck stop a few days ago. Hell he probably spent that on booze but at least I know where the money went to.
The worst charities, ranked by money blown on soliciting costs
Totals from the latest 10 years of available federal tax filings.
Data updated in December 2014.
http://www.tampabay.com/americas-worst-charities/
My dad has played in their “charity” golf tournaments a few times, given them money several times, too. I’ve told him multiple times to please stop giving them money. He probably does it for me, because Im a veteran(non combat, not wounded, nothing special at all) but Ive told him that shit is a waste of money.
All of these veteran charities are bullshit. Its a way for older and probably wealthy people to soothe their conscience about sending the countries young people to fight in wars that turned out to be absolute bullshit. Now that they see the very same feckless government they supported(at the ballot box and with those dumbass support the troops stickers on their cars, and myriad other ways) in getting into these wars abandoning the people they sent to fight and die for corporate profits and empire building, they feel maybe just a little bit guilty about the small amount of culpability they have, so they figure, why not, Ill send these people a little money, feel good about myself, and where my free WWP hat around sometimes, so that everyone will know they ‘support the troops’.
Its the same with the idea that veterans/active duty need to be “thanked for their service” all the time. No veteran of any of these wars has ever fought for your freedom because they were never in danger from any of these foreign countries in the first place. WWP and others serve to further the idea that any of this is justified, and it also takes the heat off the government for abandoning these people.
If anyone wants to ‘help the troops’ the last thing you should do is give WWP project. Instead you should be demanding the immediate return of every single one of them from foreign soil.
dutchman,
that shit doesn’t cure a damn thing, its about placating guilt and “doing something” that makes them feel good about themselves. its all about ego-feeding.
now if those hogs walked more often than jsut for “charity” it might help them cure their own obesity.
@bb, that funny. And honest. I was in key west a few years ago, and there was a guy on the street begging with a sign that said “why lie, I need booze” so me and a couple buddies bought the guy a slice of pizza and a 4 pack of tall boys. He ate the pizza in a bout 15 seconds and walked off down the street drinking the beer, and was very appreciative.
I stopped giving to charities like that too. The fucking people at the gas station ALWAYS ask if you want to give your change to the red cross. I say “no, I won’t give them any money, too much overhead” and they always either just give me a blank stare or say ‘ok’. For all I know, they just dump that money in their pockets at the end of the day, but if they aren’t doing that, Im fairly certain the people who run the RC are doing essentially the same thing. Throwing yourself lavish parties at the expense of the charity is no different than an employee at the gas station dumping the money in their pockets.
Sounds like all these charities are taking a page out of the clinton foundation…
When I was between software jobs I took a job at a small local company that processed donations for several charities, mostly veteran and religious charities. 9 to 10$/hr 20hrs per week max. so they wouldn’t have to pay any benefits. 6 half shifts so the place was running around the clock when needed but if there was no work they’d just send you home with no pay. The place was so full of cameras and rules that there’s no way the people working there could skim if they wanted to. During the few months I was there several of the charities were accused of being scams, so I figure most of them were.
The company had a whole menu of advertising methods designed to get average people to donate including:
– sending you address labels and requesting a donation
– sending you a nickel or a penny and requesting that you at least send them the nickel or penny back (these were the worst to process. You’d be surprised at the number of people who would mail not only the one nickel but a whole envelope full of change back.)
– sending you one of those cheap blankets, or greeting cards, or watch, or calculator, or … These things were so valuable that we tossed most of them when they were sent back. I still have a few of the blankets somewhere that I took because they were going to toss them.
– religious charities sending you a card that you could fill out to request prayers. We did collect these cards and send them on somewhere, but I know that we weren’t praying for anybody except for ourselves!
So you have to figure that any “charity” doing any of these things is a scam.
One thing that I request from all TBPers is that, whatever you do, do not send literal or figurative shit in response to these scams. The people opening the envelope are probably poorer than you and the people perpetrating the scam are probably not even in the same state, much less the same building, where the donations are being processed.
If anyone wants to donate $$$, give it to any politician who promises (iron clad, not BS) to clean up the VA.
22 vets per day kill themselves, and the VA is staffed by jack offs and morons who couldn’t fight their way out of a piss soaked paper bag.
(Trump will need $$$ in the General Election…hint, hint)
“That’s why I only give to the local foodbank near my house. They directly help people in need every day. No middleman. No advertising campaigns. No massive organization. One building, a couple people running it, volunteers feeding the down on their luck, and no lavish homes and perks for executives like the Cancer scams, United Way, ALS, and a myriad of other massive bureaucracies designed to bilk you.”
—-Admin
Bingo. Vet local. Give local. Period. End of story.
“those brave men and women who gave you the freedom to walk the face of this earth.”
That’s the basic line of bullshit that makes it possible for WWP to bamboozle old people living on cat food into donating $19 a month that they can’t spare. Of course, this comes after politicians and party ratfuckers have bamboozled young men and women into going to war with that exact, same lie.
When you get something for free, you don’t appreciate it. These charities get money for free. It’s not the CEOs or the COOs money, it’s someone elses money, so the money gets squandered. You see the same thing with lotto winners. In two years, the money is gone.
You only appreciate what you put your heart and soul into. The money you give is your life’s blood and time. You earned it. You deserve it. You don’t have to feel guilty for having it. These charities prey upon that guilt. You give to relieve that guilt, to make you feel better. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be charitable. Be charitable for the right reasons. Help directly. I like the idea of giving to the local food bank. Go to Costco and buy cases of food and deliver them. Too much work, you say?
That what putting your heart and soul into it means.
The Girl Scouts cookie sales money mostly goes to the central highly paid, big office building, CEO and corporate higher ups. We made more money for our local scouting organization selling calendars than selling cookies. Most money selling cookies is funneled up the corporate chain.
But, I always buy over priced girl scout cookies because I always buy anything a kid is selling. I am old and I like the interaction with young people. It, nostalgically, reminds me of the innocence of youth long past. Beside which you get to eat the cookies.
HEY! You get the same thing with Congress.
May I suggest a charity that provides ‘service dogs’ to vet and non-vets. You can review and hopefully determine the best one. About 6 years ago, I happened to meet a vet in a nearby Deli; he had a service dog with him – found out what his disabilities were and he gave me the name of the agency that provided the dog (NEADS). So I give to that charity each year around XMAS.
I’m still waiting for the military to protect my freedom. It seems the more they fight, the more freedom I lose.
One larger charity I’ve found that appears to be on the up and up is Charity:Water (charitywater.org). They give information on the disposition of donated money right on their web site, so as long as they’re not lying (I know, big supposition), all of your money goes to the charity work. They dig wells for villages in third world countries (mostly Africa) that didn’t have access to potable water. Makes a big difference for the women and children of the village. The well allows them to pump decent water nearby instead of walking miles each way to a questionable water source. I’ve given money to them a few times.
Gator says: “If anyone wants to ‘help the troops’ the last thing you should do is give WWP project. Instead you should be demanding the immediate return of every single one of them from foreign soil.”
——————
+1000!
I’ve known about WWP for years now. Most states have a charity office that requires all charities soliciting funds within that state to file public documents that detail the financial specifics for each charity. Your tax dollars fund it so you may as well use it before donating your hard earned money. There are a number of websites that can help as well.
http://www.charitynavigator.org
http://www.guidestar.org
Better Business Bureau’s http://www.give.org
I believe this the organization that George W Bush ‘gave’ to by reducing his speaking fee from the usual 250k down to a mere 100k.
So why are these two not tarred and feathered, relieved of all their assets and run out of town?
After United Way and Red Cross scandle,I quit giving to organized charities.Figure its all crooks and thieves Just like Obama,congress,Hillary
I said, “Vet local. Give local. Period. End of story.”
Let me clarify. First, I misspelled the verb vett, which means to determine the authenticity of someone or something.
Here in Tucson, there is this horrible lady who ran a thrift shop which is supposed to give its profits to local charities. Trouble is, it is incorporated as a for-profit thrift shop, meaning she takes whatever profits she wants as “salary and expenses” and throws some crumbs to a few charities. She got busted for false and misleading advertising, paid a fine, shut down the thrift shop, and let things cool off for a while.
Then she reincorporated under a different name, changed locations, turned around and reopened another thrift shop under the new name, and is now doing exactly what she used to do without the blatant misleading local advertising. What a terrible human being.
I almost lost my job once when the general manager of a Radio station where I did afternoon drive cornered me in the hall one day and read me the riot act for not returning my United Way auto-deduct from the paycheck donation form. I told him I’d be glad to donate 10% of the raise I was promised when I signed on with the company and didn’t get.. He turned beet red and stormed away as I recall. I guess he was trying to win brownie points with the local elite trash.
Fired? Shouldn’t they go to jail for fraud and mismanagement?
Kokoda: There is a real treatment and cure for PTSD that isn’t even expensive: https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/the-treatment-of-combat-trauma-in-veterans-using-eft-emotional-freedom-NkHiVVOuN6
Thanks for posting the dirt on Wounded Warriors. You knocked me off the fence- thanks to this post, I won’t donate, but will look for another organization that serves the same purpose. I’m a soft touch for wounded vets and was wondering if this was a worthy charity, but ever since I worked my first low-wage department store job in 1972, in which I got my arm twisted to donate a “small” portion of my measly paycheck to United Way (then United Fund), I have been very wary of large charities that advertise heavily and whose boards are populated by the super-rich.
I have three favorite no-kill animal shelters here in Chicago that I like to support, and adopted a beautiful cat from one of them. However, they are now so well-endowed that they are building an architecturally significant new building on a large lot donated to them, and it looks to me like they are spending more money on vanity projects and on maintaining a bureaucracy than taking care of the cats, so I don’t believe I will donate more to them. I scrutinize the organizations that I donate to, to make sure they are staying on mission.
Which takes me to one of the world’s most fraudulent charities, and fraudulent do-gooders, the late Mother Theresa. Christopher Hitchens blew the lid off this hypocritical old woman more than a decade ago, but folks out here still believe in her saintliness. People who worked in her charities, both as workers in her hospitals in India and in the offices of her charities that collected money from guilt- stricken super rich, attested to hundreds of millions of dollars donated to her efforts, which somehow never found its way to her squalid hospitals, where the only pain relief was aspirin. I could have forgiven this and excused it because it always seemed to me that there weren’t enough resources in the world to alleviate the extreme suffering of the hundreds of millions of people born into the deepest poverty and squalor in the 4th world hellholes of the world. However, a woman who worked in MT’s office in NYC and who was responsible for depositing the donations into bank accounts, attested to the tens of millions donated a year, money that could have built a first-class teaching hospital and provided the finest care to the disease-riddled poor who MT purported to dedicate her efforts to helping. What the money was REALLY going for, was to fund the religious order that MT wanted to establish. However, what offended me the most about Mother Theresa was her stated love of suffering and her belief that there was “beauty” in the suffering of the poor. Yes, she actually said this!! Perhaps that’s why she did so little to alleviate it in her hospitals.
As the great Doug Casey says… and I totally agree with him…”All charities should be abolished because the older they get the farther away they go from their intended purpose.”
I volunteered for years at a very well known and respected children’s charity that squandered(s) 95% of their donations on parties, salaries and stupidity.
Such a shame..
AndrewG
As the great Doug Casey says… and I totally agree with him…”All charities should be abolished because the older they get the farther away they go from their intended purpose.”
—-AndrewG
That’s not true. My wife is an avid volunteer, and we are regular donors, to the best local charity in Tucson, the Assistance League (AL), which dates back to the 1940s. No paid staff. 100% volunteers.
AL takes in about 600K a year from thrift shop sales and spends 500K a year for just two programs: 1) Operation School Bell (outfitting poor children with clothing and school supplies); and 2) Starting Over (helping the ex-homeless and battered women with needed, basic household goods). The other 100K is for building maintenance (there is the thrift shop and a separate large warehouse), utility bills, trash pickup, and grounds/parking lot maintenance.
That’s about 86% going directly to intended recipients, and 14% to unavoidable overhead. Pretty decent record after 75 years. Let me repeat. No paid staff. 100% volunteers.
I have served as a board member of a 501c3 charity. I am proud of my contributions to the group and none of us ever made a dime off our contributions of time and effort on the behalf of the organization. When I started looking for a legitimate organization to donate some money to, one that helps people, I did my research on a charity rating site that shows you how charity groups spend donations. Wounded Warrior was an obvious scam. At the time, the chairman, Nards or whatever his dumb name is, was making 600,000$ a year and his 2 buddies, who were in the next two lower positions were making 400-500K$, too. I don’t believe board members of a charity should be paid. It’s not a job;it’s a service. It cuts out corruption if there’s no cash involved.
I also hate Wounded Warrior project for their sanctimonious stance against guns, knives, alcohol, tobacco, and religion. In the past, these institutions and industries all offered to donate time, money, and free stuff to the charity and were rebuffed. Say what you want about sins-Smokes and Booze and God help relieve stress. Guns and Knives are generally things Warriors, wounded or not, enjoy. Denying their support just shows the jackassery of WWP’s board. I would rather support other vet groups that don’t get away with embezzling the funds.
It’s been a while since I looked, but I believe there’s a Marine Corps charity and a Special Forces Charity that have higher charity ratings than WWP with none of the PC baggage.
I would like to donate more to charity, but I feel stuck. I wish there were a charity that fed and aided people in need, but only citizens. If I donate time/$$$/food in my area, I’m only helping criminal illegal aliens. I refuse to help criminal illegal aliens. Giving to them only makes it easier for more of them to be here and I don’t want that. Every year the local radio runs this sob story collection to give needy kids in pubic schools bookbags with pens and pencils and stuff. It sounds nice and all, til’ you realize the recipients are largely criminal illegal aliens. I don’t think they should even be allowed in tax payer-funded schools, or permitted to have any govt benefits of any kind, so donating school supplies is a non-starter for me. I have a friend who quit giving to her church’s food bank for the same reason. She complained to me the criminal illegal aliens would drive up in nicer cars than she can afford and just wipe the place out. She’s all about helping people, but also refuses to aid criminal illegal aliens.
“I would like to donate more to charity, but I feel stuck,” ———- gilberts
Keep your hands off me, ya fag!!
j/k
They seem to be on EVERY tv station that I watch …. many times a day … every day of the year. THAT COSTS A LOT OF MONEY!!
This is literally true …. the MOMENT it comes on, I change the channel.
That commercial helps me hate Amerikan politicians even more that I already do. “Look what we do to our young men!! We us them as cannon fodder!!” And, for what purpose???
And then we throw them away. Begging others to send bucks to “heal” these broken men … who probably can never be healed, at least in spirit.
WWP should be an indictment against American foreign policy and our warwhore ways. But, it’s not. People feel guilt, send in a few bucks, …. and thoughtlessly go back to whatever the fuck they are doing their consciences absolved from all wrong-doing because they “did something”.
And that’s the biggest crime of all.
Sorry, Stuck. I just can’t keep my hands to myself. It’s probably that big sword….
Here’s a legit charity: http://www.savewalterwhite.com/