{"id":59639,"date":"2015-05-05T08:56:31","date_gmt":"2015-05-05T12:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=59639"},"modified":"2015-05-04T17:21:10","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T21:21:10","slug":"tim-mak-on-wounded-warrior-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=59639","title":{"rendered":"Tim Mak on Wounded Warrior Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve stayed out of the controversy over that charity called the Wounded Warrior Project – mostly because it takes too much time to do the research and to verify all of the claims that they make and folks make about them. So I just sat on the side lines and waited for someone like Tim Mak to come along and do the heavy lifting so I can ride his coat tails. Tim has been on WWP like Oprah on a ham for over a year. This week at the Daily Beast<\/a> he takes them on again for outspending other charities that have the temerity to use the phrase “wounded warrior” in their titles. The most egregious story, to me, anyway is this one;<\/p>\n

Retired Col. John Folsom formed \u201cWounded Warriors\u201d in 2003 while he was stationed in Landstuhl, Germany, and is a 30-year veteran of the Marine Corps. He has argued that his group, which currently receives four stars on Charity Navigator, was granted non-profit status before WWP was.<\/p>\n

Their organization has spent, in Folsom’s estimation, over $300,000 in legal fees to defend themselves from the Wounded Warrior Project over a protracted, five year process. Folsom\u2019s organization eventually lost the lawsuit and were forced to change their name to \u201cWounded Warrior Family Support,\u201d on the grounds that they were benefitting from the Wounded Warrior Project’s national advertising. The smaller group had to pay $1.7 million to WWP.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very derogatory\u2026 [the Wounded Warrior Project’s lawyers] argued that John’s program was a scheme, that it was fraudulent, that he had benefitted from the wonderful advertisements of the Wounded Warrior Projects, to scam the public,\u201d said Woody Bradford, a former \u201cWounded Warriors\u201d board member who represented the group in court.<\/p>\n

Folsom didn’t even want to talk about the lawsuit, saying that he would lose his temper if he spoke about it on the record.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve heard that executives of WWP pay themselves astronomical salaries and that less and less of their “take” goes towards the veterans that they purport to serve. One of the reasons that I haven’t piled on to WWP is because of the work they did for veterans, but that seems to be lacking these days, too.<\/p>\n

Mak points out that “wounded warrior” isn’t the sole domain of WWP;<\/p>\n

The Army has a Wounded Warrior Program. A band at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is called the MusiCorps Wounded Warrior Band. <\/p>\n

And the Marine Corps\u2019 own battalion\u2026their unit for service members who have been wounded is called the Wounded Warrior Regiment<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve had some experience with bullies lately and I don’t like them. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve tried to go after every organization with \u2018wounded warrior\u2019 and bully them,\u201d said the head of one veterans charity, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn\u2019t want his group to be targeted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Mak’s work is true, I don’t think I like WWP. But you should read the whole thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve stayed out of the controversy over that charity called the Wounded Warrior Project – mostly … Tim Mak on Wounded Warrior Project<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dumbass-bullshit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59639","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}