Local Philanthropic

WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT
Using data as of: September 2016

Rating: CAUTIOUSLY RECOMMEND

About
Wounded Warrior Project is a national charity based in Jacksonville FL that offers free programs and services to wounded military veterans. Assistance is mostly in the form of veteran counseling and athletic and educational programs. It is one of the largest veterans’ charities in the country.

More information on the Wounded Warrior Foundation can be found here:
https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/mission/who-we-serve

Wounded Warrior received well-publicized criticism over the last two years due to lavish spending and extravagant parties. LINK, LINK, LINK This ultimately led to the dismissal of several executives as they refocus the culture to helping wounded vets.

Our Analysis
The negative press resulted in a well-deserved (in our opinion) drop in contributions.


Have reforms been made, though? The chart below breaks down their spending since 2010. As you can see, there hasn’t been an increase in spending on their mission (the red line), and mission spending has actually declined.

However, it can take some time to make changes in an organization this large and fortunately we no longer see the $10’s of millions spent on meetings and events that appeared in these reports in the past.


About 70% of Wounded Warrior’s spending goes to their mission. This is below the 75% threshold we like to see. Almost 6% goes to administrative costs, which is very good, but a very high 23% goes to fundraising costs.


Program Spending
Alumni Program 57,903,991
Combat Stress Recovery 48,477,647
Independence Program 23,520,481
Other Programs 83,170,023
TOTAL 213,072,142


Spending on mission
213,072,142 ÷ 302,240,114 = 70.5%

Spending on admin
19,800,383 ÷ 302,240,114 = 6.6%

Spending on fundraising
69,367,589 ÷ 302,240,114 = 23.0%


Requiring closer scrutiny is their use of “Joint Costs.” Sometimes charities include the costs of educational campaigns and fundraising (including things like postage, for example) as spending on their mission. These are included in "Joint Costs." In Wounded Warrior’s case, about 14% of their mission spending includes these joint costs. Joint costs are perfectly allowed under accounting rules and are not necessarily bad, but we show mission spending both with and without these joint costs for informational purposes.

When we exclude joint costs, only 60% of their spending went to their mission and 40% went to overhead.

Spending on mission excluding joint costs
(213,072,142 – 29,566,395) ÷302,240,114 = 60.7%


Our Conclusion
Wounded Warrior has an admiral goal of helping wounded servicemen, but they became too focused on fundraising and lost sight of this. Organizational changes were made in an effort to refocus on their mission. They seem to be on the right path, but have still have some work to do. We give them a CAUTIOUSLY RECOMMEND rating at this time.


Contact:
Wounded Warrior Foundation
4899 Belfort Road, Suite 300
Jacksonville, FL 32256
904-296-7350


Form 990 Financial Information: LINK


Financial information comes from the latest Form 990 filing. This review is the opinion of Local Philanthropic and is provided for general information purposes only. Please conduct your own due diligence before donating to any nonprofit.