Wounded Warrior Project responds to Guns Save Life

In the interests of fairness, I’d like to give the Wounded Warrior Project prime real estate here as a rebuttal to our most recent story about Wounded Warrior Project’s efficiency (or lack thereof) in delivering donations directly to our nation’s wounded servicemen and women.

In our story, “Wounded Warriors Projected called legal scam as scandalous news spreads”, WWP responded via the comments section.  I was all excited and ready to applaud them for taking the time to respond, but in searching out a photo to tag to this story, I found that their response was a canned, cut and paste response.

Here it is at Guns Save Life’s website and read on for more evidence that it’s their canned response…

While we normally wouldn’t respond to false claims from an offensive website like Veterans Today which posts anti-Semitic views and conspiracy theories, we feel it important to provide accurate information, since anyone can twist numbers. The claim that WWP does little, if any, direct support of wounded veterans and programs is false. WWP has 19 direct programs and services such as Family Support Programs, Combat Stress Recovery Program and Transition Training Academy that veterans and their families participate in every day. The article also makes claims that based on our 2011 990, we spent $95 million on administrative and fundraising costs and less than 10% of donations actually reached wounded veterans. That is absolutely incorrect. If you actually read our 990 here http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/media/477620/wwp-900-fy-2012.pdf, (page 10) you will see it reflects $95.5 million in TOTAL expenses including 69.5 million spent on our programs and services. Moreover, the IRS form 990 does not present a complete picture of donations and expenditures the way independently audited financials do, and it does nothing to measure impact. Based on Wounded Warrior Project’s fiscal year 2012 audited financial statements, 81.6 percent of total expenditures goes directly to our programs and services for wounded veterans and their families.

Here’s what the WWP left at “A view from the right” after that blog posted “Is Wounded Warrior Project Scamming The Hearts Of The American People?”

“One would expect that if someone wants their information to be considered legitimate, it should be fact-checked and accurate. Nothing could be further from the truth with this article. The claim that WWP does little, if any, direct support of Wounded Warriors and Wounded Warrior programs is false. WWP has 19 direct programs and services such as Family Support Programs, Combat Stress Recovery Program and Transition Training Academy that veterans and their families participate in every day. The article also makes claims that based on our 2011 990, we spent $95 million on administrative and fundraising costs and less than 10% of donations actually reached wounded warriors. That is absolutely incorrect. If you actually read our 990 here http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/media/477620/wwp-900-fy-2012.pdf, (page 10) you will see it reflects $95.5 million in TOTAL expenses including 69.5 million spent on our programs and services. Moreover, the IRS form 990 does not present a complete picture of donations and expenditures the way independently audited financials do, and it does nothing to measure impact. Based on Wounded Warrior Project’s fiscal year 2012 audited financial statements, 81.6 percent of total expenditures goes directly to our 19 programs and services for Wounded Warriors and their families. We pride ourselves on being a leader in the industry in reporting results from our programs. You can visit: http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/mission/who-we-serve.aspx to see the real impact we are making. For more on our strategy for growing and meeting the needs of this generation of wounded service members, visit wwpinc.org/npt.”

Does that look familiar?

Here’s another posting of the same text.  And the comment from the person who reprinted it from Facebook:

Whatever psycho came up with those claims needs to be dragged in the mud and forced to work in a trauma unit for a year.

And from the looks of it he works for ANOTHER group (yes WORKS for) and slags on anyone else.

Wounded Warriors spent over $20 million on salaries in 2011 and the best they can come up with is a wall of text without paragraph breaks that they cut and paste on every site critical of how Wounded Warriors spends/squanders donations?