Wounded Warrior Project Under Fire
Reports by The New York Times and CBS News alleging that the Wounded Warrior Project, the country’s largest veteran-care organization, spends an inordinate amount of its donations on travel, hotels, and meals have been angrily challenged by some East Hampton residents who have devoted their time and effort to the charity.
Other residents who have donated time and money to the group, however, privately criticized the organization’s spending and alleged emphasis on fund-raising, while the platoon commander of Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter, a Sag Harbor resident who was killed in Iraq in 2008, ceased donating to the group and participating in its events amid what he called a lack of financial transparency and disrespectful behavior toward veterans and volunteers.
Citing interviews with more than 48 current and former employees, the Jan. 27 article in The Times called the organization’s spending “more lavish than appropriate” and questioned its “aggressive styles of fund-raising, marketing, and personnel management.”
CBS News, which broadcast its report on Jan. 26 and 27, also claimed that more than 40 former employees of Wounded Warrior Project accused the charity of “wasting millions of donated dollars on luxury hotels, lavish conferences, and expensive meals for staff.” It cited Charity Navigator, a rating organization claiming that Wounded Warrior Project spent 40 percent of its donations on overhead in 2014. Charity Watch, another group, assigned Wounded Warrior Project a C rating, also citing high spending on overhead.
A consolidated financial statement on the organization’s website shows just over $400 million in contributions, which it says come primarily from individuals, in its fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2014. Expenses totaled $300 million, according to the statement, with $43.5 million devoted to fund-raising and another $14.5 million to management and general expenses.
Soldier Ride, which benefits the Wounded Warrior Project, was conceived and carried out by Chris Carney of East Hampton in 2004 when he cycled across the country to raise money for wounded veterans. The event has grown into multiple fund-raising events in cities around the world. Mr. Carney was among several founding members when the Wounded Warrior Project organized as a not-for-profit corporation in 2005.
Mr. Carney, who is no longer affiliated with Wounded Warrior Project, defended the organization and its chief executive, Steven Nardizzi, who was paid $473,000 in 2014. “He is managing $500 million annually, and he steered the ship and brought that organization to where it is,” he said on Tuesday. The organization’s board of directors, several of whom are wounded veterans, provide oversight, he said, and “set a standard of criteria for the administrative staff to achieve on an annual basis, and the staff has done that.”
“They are very, very aggressive,” Mr. Carney said of the organization’s fund-raising, “and that sometimes leaves a bad taste. But they get things done. I don’t know if it’s better to spend 20 percent on administration and fund-raising and raise $500 million, or 10 percent and raise $1 million. That’s for someone else to decide, but they’ve gotten stuff done. They are the most successful veterans advocacy group in the history of the world.”
The CBS News report was “completely wrong,” said Peter Honerkamp, an owner of the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett and another founder of Soldier Ride and the Wounded Warrior Project. “I talked to different analysts who say our numbers are between 76 and 80 percent that go to programs” helping veterans, Mr. Honerkamp said, which range from physical therapy, mental health care, and job training to long-term support for families and caregivers of those with post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.
None of the annual conferences he has attended are lavish, Mr. Honerkamp said. “All were work-oriented. From the moment they start to the moment they end it’s all business.” Hotel stays were midweek, at Best Western rates, he said. “I’ve never traveled first class in my life, and I’m one of the founding members.” He also criticized Charity Navigator, whose methodologies he said provide no measurement of Wounded Warrior Project’s effectiveness.
Nick Kraus, a Talkhouse employee and also a founder of Soldier Ride and the Wounded Warrior Project, agreed. “I wouldn’t be involved to this day if I believed it,” Mr. Kraus, who organizes and participates in Soldier Ride events, said of the reports. The numbers cited by The Times are inaccurate, he said. “I don’t see gross waste whatsoever. Everything has always been done with the best of intentions.”
But Dan Runzheimer, Corporal Haerter’s platoon commander, who participated in several Soldier Ride events in East Hampton, pointed to a slowly unraveling relationship between veterans and the organization’s staff. After what he called “generally positive” experiences at East Hampton’s Soldier Ride beginning around 2009, “over the years, a number of guys quit participating.” The problems began, he said, when posters for a Soldier Ride misspelled Corporal Haerter’s rank. A request to correct the spelling, he said, was dismissed, which he said was unprofessional and caused Corporal Haerter’s family emotional distress. The situation continued to deteriorate with further disrespectful behavior toward volunteers and veterans’ families.
Mr. Runzheimer posed questions about contracts for food and alcoholic beverages at post-Soldier Ride Rock the Farm concerts, at the 555 Montauk Highway property in Amagansett, and at the Wounded Warrior Project’s annual gala in Manhattan, to Al Giordano, the organization’s chief operating officer. These were also ignored, he said. In a 2014 email to Mr. Giordano, which Mr. Runzheimer provided to The Star, he itemized complaints that included mandatory minimum fund-raising figures for Soldier Ride participants, which he said excluded many willing participants on the South Fork; the misspelling of Corporal Haerter’s rank on the poster, and insensitive disregard for volunteers, which he said were based on numerous individual comments made to him.
Mr. Giordano’s email reply called Mr. Runzheimer’s message “ignorant, childish, and unprofessional vitriol” and said that given someone of Mr. Runzheimer’s credentials, “the only logical conclusion I can come up with is your system is hacked.” After Mr. Runzheimer was blocked from sending additional emails, he called a telephone number listed in the email, which he said went to the voicemail of an employee who had been terminated. A subsequent call to Mr. Giordano’s cellphone, he said, “resulted in his comment that I had no right to know” about any payments or stipends Wounded Warrior Project made to food and alcohol vendors.
JoAnn Lyles, Corporal Haerter’s mother, reserved judgment on the allegations against Wounded Warrior Project, but said on Monday that “it feels bad, because I know on the local level — as Soldier Ride — it is all-volunteer. Everybody is all for the good of the warriors.”
Mr. Honerkamp and Mr. Kraus insisted that both CBS and The Times ignored current and former employees’ positive assessments of the Wounded Warrior Project. In an email circulated last week, Mr. Honerkamp said that the author of the Times article, Dave Philipps, “was told by our staff how proud they were of their organization” and that the organization heard from a former employee “who told us that when they spoke positively of W.W.P., the interview quickly concluded.” Worse, he said, Mr. Philipps “failed to speak to the 80,000 soldiers we have helped, including the 10,000 last year, 94.5 percent of whom spoke positively about our events and service.”
Fifty-three Soldier Rides will take place in 2016, Mr. Honerkamp said. In addition to raising money for the Wounded Warrior Project, they serve as rehabilitative events for wounded veterans. He also pointed to the Warrior Care Network, a partnership with four academic medical centers to provide mental health care to veterans, to which the organization has pledged $100 million.
Unfazed by the allegations made by CBS News and The Times, Mr. Carney, Mr. Honerkamp, and Mr. Kraus are nonetheless concerned about the fallout. “No one is perfect,” Mr. Carney conceded. “When you bring in $500 million a year, I’m sure you’re going to find where money was wasted, but I defy anyone to say they haven’t done more for veterans. And that’s going to be lost now. That will be sacrificed.”