$12 billion given to veterans charities but not for veterans

If you read Wounded Times on even an occasional basis, you know how great the need is for our veterans to find help. You also know about some great charities doing great work along with some collecting millions because they are great at raising awareness for themselves. No matter how much you've read in the past, this report will make you sick, sick, sick! It is linked from NBCNews.com.

'Scoundrels, Thieves and Rip-off Artists' Prey on Veterans
News21
by Chad Garland and Andrew Knochel
Published Aug. 24, 2013

Over four years, as increasing numbers of veterans returned home from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a charity called Disabled Veterans Services of Pompano Beach, Fla., reported raising more than $8 million in cash and nearly $4 million in donated goods that it claimed would help disabled and homeless veterans.

But barely a nickel of each dollar the charity raised in cash went directly to help veterans, a News21 analysis shows. Although it claimed to have sent about $2.5 million in donated drugs and medical supplies to a Boston homeless shelter, the shelter said it received just one shipment worth about $210,000.

Another charity, Help Hospitalized Veterans of Winchester, Calif., spent only 25 cents of every dollar it raised on arts-and-crafts kits and “craft care specialists” as “diversion therapy for veterans facing extended hospitalization.” Most of the rest of the money, according to the charity’s filings with the Internal Revenue Service, paid for mass mailings soliciting more money and urging Americans to volunteer at veterans’ hospitals and become pen pals with patients.

In the years that the country has been at war, Americans have given more than $12 billion to veterans’ and military charities. Donations grew nationwide from more than $615 million in 2001 to more than $1.6 billion in 2011 alone.

Federal and state laws demand financial reporting from all charities, but they require little in the way of reporting the results of services the charities claim to provide, the News21 investigation shows.

Though many charities offered needed help, others spent much of their money — sometimes most of it — on the organization’s overhead expenses, rather than services promised to veterans.

“The scoundrels and the thieves and the rip-off artists … that want to make a lot of money know that these are categories of charities where the American public is gravitated, it pulls at the heartstrings and they know that the tendency of Americans is to give impulsively, emotionally with that pull,” said Ken Berger, president and chief executive officer of Charity Navigator, an independent charity evaluator. “They exploit that and they use that.”
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The excuse of "raising awareness" is as stupid as it gets. Example, this site does it everyday but so do thousands of others and we get the information to share from reports all over the country, FOR FREE! Facebook is free, Twitter is free and so is LinkedIn.

Another good example of this are the charities around the country operating with budgets funded from their own pockets because what they do is on the local level requiring time more than anything else and gas money.

Some charities do more like put a roof over their heads in a shelter or food in their bellies so they need more money just as charities to put clothes on their backs need funding as well as clothing donations.

If you know someone giving to a charity that says they are taking care of veterans, they should be able to prove where your money will go if not, then you need your money to go some place else. Just because they are great at raising money doesn't mean they are great at taking care of veterans!