My Nonprofit Reviews

Throughout the many past years of retirement I have been a regular donor to our military, as well as other charitable organizations. But along the way, I learned I was often mislead by taking things at "face value" and was donating to the wrong organizations. One such case is the Wounded Warrior Project. (See why below.)

I don't like giving my money away to "inefficient" organizations. This is like giving my hard-earned money to the wrong people since administrators, Presidents, CEOs, and other officers are often taking a significant portion of my donation. It is like you worked to help support them, not the needy. So after digging past the first layer of sad TV ads and relentless mailed donation requests, it became obvious many of these people are simply in this for the money.

Luckily, scraping away the surface layers was made much easier using free, independent online references such as GuideStar.org and CharityNavigator.org. In this way your money gets the most "bang for the buck."

Based on factual information available through these resources, I CAN SEE THAT WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT (WWP, Jacksonville FL) DOES NOT FALL INTO MY CATEGORIZATION OF BEING AN "EFFICIENT" CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION. If you check the above references yourself, which include IRS Form 990, and you will see the following pitiful data: Less than 60% of WWP's total expenses goes to the programs and services it exists to deliver; the CEO was compensated $419,715 in Fiscal Year 2014; the COO and CFO together received a total of over $604,000 compensation; eleven other "officers, key employees, and highest compensated employees" were compensated a total of$2,272,256 ($206,568 average/person); and more than 33% of expenses were spent on "Fundraising."

Now compare WWP to other military charities such as those suggested by CharityNavigator.org: the USO of Missouri, Inc. (MO) or the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (VA), or even your favorite charity. You will see the percentage going to soldiers or veterans in need are significantly higher than the 60% provided by WWP: For the Tragedy Assistance Program over 79% percent of its total expenses are spent on the programs and services it exists to deliver; for the USO of Missouri, over 83% is spent on services for the ones in need. And fundraising and officer salary expenses are grossly less. Also, "Overall Ratings" of these two are 4 of 4 Stars compared to WWP's 3 stars; "Overall Scores" are 92+ and 96+ compared to WWP's 84+.

What is a notable difference is that WWP's revenues are many times larger than the above two examples. But how does one justify fourteen WWP CEO, officers', and administrators' salaries totaling $2,745,271?