{"id":31463,"date":"2012-08-12T06:29:31","date_gmt":"2012-08-12T10:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=31463"},"modified":"2012-08-12T10:50:09","modified_gmt":"2012-08-12T14:50:09","slug":"donating-to-charity-might-want-to-check-it-out-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=31463","title":{"rendered":"Donating to a Charity That &#8220;Helps Vets&#8221;?  Might Want to Check It Out First"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Charitable giving is good.\u00a0 But there are good charities and there are those who give the word &#8220;charity&#8221; lip service.\u00a0 It always pays to check before you send that check.<\/p>\n<p>For example:\u00a0 are you thinking of donating to Help Hospitalized Veterans \u00a0\u2013 or any other organization founded by Roger Chapin?\u00a0 If so, you might want to<a href=\"http:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/2012\/08\/ap-veterans-charity-accused-calif-081012\/\"> read this article first<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Help Hospitalized Veterans \u00a0is pretty efficient at raising money &#8211; an average of $40+M a year over 10 years.\u00a0 But it seems they\u2019re not exactly one of the more effective charities when it comes to putting that money to good use.\u00a0 In fact, it seems there are quite a number of questionable practices at \u00a0Help Hospitalized Veterans, such as<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>$80,000 golf memberships for board members<\/li>\n<li>Loans and grants by Help Hospitalized Veterans to other organizations founded by Roger Chapin<\/li>\n<li>Only around 35% of donations actually going towards program costs<\/li>\n<li>Highly inflated and \u201cspiked\u201d salaries for senior officials, including Roger Chapin and his successor<\/li>\n<li>A $2M \u201cgolden parachute\u201d retirement for Roger Chapin when he retired from the charity in 2009<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Indeed, this isn\u2019t the time Roger Chapin and Help Hospitalized Veterans have been in the public spotlight.\u00a0 They were investigated by Congress in 2008 for allegations of mismanagement.<\/p>\n<p>But this does appear to be the first time they\u2019ve been taken to court.\u00a0 The state of CA is suing them for financial improprieties as a charitable organization.\u00a0 The state is seeking the ouster of the current president and several board members \u2013 and to recover at least $4.3M that\u2019s alleged to have been misspent.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not against the head of an organization with annual revenue of $40M+ receiving a good salary.\u00a0 But I do have a problem with charities using donations as a \u201ccash cow\u201d and skimming big bucks off the top for salaries and perks for their leadership, then spending barely 1\/3 of what they take in on actual charitable programs.\u00a0 And based on what\u2019s been made public to date that\u2019s certainly what seems to have been be going on at Help Hospitalized Veterans \u2013 though it has yet to be proven in court.<\/p>\n<p>Given what\u2019s been discovered at Help Hospitalized Veterans I\u2019d also be wary as hell about giving my money to any other organization founded by Roger Chapin, too.\u00a0 He\u2019s apparently founded over two dozen other organizations besides Help Hospitalized Veterans.<\/p>\n<p>Hey, Yon:\u00a0 if you want to spend time bitching about a charity, you really might want to check these guys out instead of Soldier&#8217;s Angels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charitable giving is good.\u00a0 But there are good charities and there are those who give the &hellip; <a title=\"Donating to a Charity That &#8220;Helps Vets&#8221;?  Might Want to Check It Out First\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=31463\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Donating to a Charity That &#8220;Helps Vets&#8221;?  Might Want to Check It Out First<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,155,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues","category-shitbags","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}