Charities for Veterans or for Profits?

More Veterans Charities Raising Funds But What Are the Results?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 21, 2015

It is gotten so bad for our veterans that it is a wonder why so many claiming to be doing so much have actually achieved so little. Think about all the news reports lately in case you need a reminder of what they are going through.

Tracking all the reports has my head spinning and I wanted to find out how many charities popped up since troops were coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq. My spinning head turned into spitting out coffee to avoid gagging. From Charity Watch January 26, 2015

A Donor's Guide to Serving the Needs of Veterans and the Military "Donors who want to make contributions towards charitable programs that serve the military and veterans face an almost overwhelming volume of choices with, by some accounts, the existence of over 40,000 nonprofit organizations dedicated to serving the military and veterans and an estimated 400,000 service organizations that in some way touch veterans or service members. 

Even the 2013/2014 Directory of Veterans and Military Service Organizations published by the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs as an informational service for veterans seeking support lists over 140 national nonprofit organizations. Additionally, the number of new veterans charities has increased relatively rapidly over the past five years or so, growing by 41% since 2008 compared with 19% for charities in general, according to The Urban Institute as reported in a December 2013 The NonProfit Times article. 

With so many veterans and military organizations competing for charitable dollars, it may take a little extra effort on the part of donors to be well-informed, but that effort is essential given the great need for donations to be used as efficiently and effectively as possible."

In 5 years 41%? Seriously? Then why are the results so appalling?

No one is held accountable for any of it.  Congress isn't accountable, that's for sure and they never have to explain what the result was from all the money they spent to fund all the bills they wrote. Companies and colleges making money from what Congress spent didn't have to explain anything. No one had has to face the music for sining the same old tired tune of veterans are suffering so send the check to them.

It isn't as if we didn't already have great organizations long before these two wars.

The VFW traces its roots back to 1899, DAV Congressional Charter 1932, American Legion was chartered by Congress in 1919 Vietnam Veterans of America Charter 1980 and you can find even more here Congressionally-Chartered Veterans Service Organizations

If all the new groups were really doing what they said they were, then don't you think things would have been a lot better for our veterans?

Researchers get funds to research rats, yep still after all these years of not understanding that Combat PTSD is an emotional wound on top of regular PTSD, so rats really won't tell them much about veterans at all.  Hey, but they still get the funds.

The DOD keeps spending money on what clearly hasn't worked in the last decades, but again, don't ask them any questions on why they are still taking on the fight of military suicides with empty words and loaded slogans like "train your brain" to be mentally tough.

As for charities, there are a lot of good ones but for the others, it is almost as if they want things as bad as possible so they can point to the problems and then ask for more money.

Neat trick all the way around but veterans are the ones suffering for what you pay for without ever asking for the results you expected.