Veterans, No Soup For You, Fundraisers Sucked Pot Dry

You are reading the work of a successful do'er and financial failure. Doing the work, I'm good at but I really suck at raising money to do it. I had to go back to work for a paycheck last year since no one has donated in over a year.

Anyway, there are more of "me types" out there doing the work for the sake of the work and not for money. It hurts when I have to file my financials and show a loss of a couple of thousand every year. What hurts more is when I read about charities using professional fundraisers leaving them with about 15 cents for every dollar given for the sake of veterans.

Donations to Illinois veterans charity mostly go to pay telemarketers
Chicago Tribune
David Jackson
August 31, 2015

A VietNow charity volunteer pushes a rack of boxes filled with hundreds of sandwiches bound for homeless people in Chicago on July 19, 2015, in Lombard.
(Stacey Wescott / Chicago Tribune)

To address the profound and unmet needs of veterans, Americans last year donated $1.4 million to a Rockford charity called VietNow National Headquarters.

But most of the money — about 85 percent — went to for-profit phone solicitors, and most of the rest was spent on VietNow's own administrative costs and a convention, public tax filings show.

The fraction of donations spent on direct service to former military personnel and their families did not even reach 7 percent in 2014. The charity gives out scholarships to youths, but it reported only a handful, worth $3,985.

"It may not seem like much, but it's the best we could do. That's probably the best way to put it," said charity President Joe Lewis, who took the top office last year.

In all, more than 90 percent of the $24 million donated to VietNow since 2003 came through telemarketers who kept the lion's share, the Tribune found. After fielding questions from the Tribune, Lewis vowed to renegotiate VietNow's telemarketing contracts.

"I wish (critics) could show me another avenue or how to raise money that we could embrace that would provide us with the funds we need for our organization," Lewis said. "I understand from the public's perception how it seems like so little of it comes to us. Do I wish we could get more? Pardon the language but, hell yes."

Helping to manage all of VietNow's fundraising is Richard Troia, a longtime telemarketer who in 2004 was permanently banned from charity fundraising in Illinois.

Troia bought more than $1 million worth of office and residential property in Florida and launched a company called United Publishing Inc. that since 2009 has been listed as a registered agent for VietNow in that state, the Tribune found.
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