A SOLDIER'S PERSPECTIVE
THE WEB'S LEADING MILITARY BLOG SINCE 2004
[bump] Today is the last day!!
A couple of months ago, the American Institute of Philanthropy released a report card on veteran’s charity organizations. At the bottom of the list – not surprisingly – was Army Emergency Relief. But, at the top of the list was Fisher House and Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. One of my stated causes when I started They Have Names (don’t remind me, I beat myself up enough!) was the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund.
Long time readers may also remember a young man by the name of Luke Stricklin, a former National Guard Soldier, who released a CD titled “American By God’s Amazing Grace” (click the link to hear the title track).
Thanks a generous offer from AAFES, I’ve got three copies of Luke’s CD to raffle off. I’m not going to name a price for the raffle tickets. Anyone that makes a donation through the donation link in the sidebar will be entered to win one of the CDs. All money will go directly to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. I’m gonna keep this on top for a few weeks. On March 10th, I will combine the donations and send the money to the Fund and announce the three lucky winners. I’ll pay for shipping. Good luck and thank you for supporting a worthy cause.
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![[UPDATE] The “Face” of Military Dating Scams – The Wall of Shame](http://militarygear.com/asp/wp-content/themes/LondonLive/thumb.php?src=http://militarygear.com/asp/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/2.jpg&w=53&h=41&zc=1&q=100)
Anatomy of a Military Dating Scam
@Jc great job scammers NEVER seem to get their lies right glad you sme
l_67adf48d1a7f4cfb5ad16cbc7155d263
@ No Name dont you think you can find something better to do besides a
Anatomy of a Military Dating Scam
OK how about Clement Rogers, US Army? he sent me a long email after me
tony neria
It’s interesting that the American Institute of Philanthropy report gave both Soldier’s Angels and the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund pretty low scores. In the past seven months, those two organizations have really been there for my family…flying multiple family members back and forth to Bethesda, Maryland from Sacramento. To this day, a representative from the Semper Fi Fund comes to visit my son-in-law (severely injured in Iraq by an IED) and my daughter at the Palo Alto, Ca VA hospital. I might also add that my daughter has been staying at the on-site Fisher House for the past five months—free of charge. That is also an incredible organization!
Miss Ladybug
tony~
I think I recall seeing that report reported upon when it came out. If I recall correctly, one of the reasons Soldiers’ Angels didn’t score well with their methodology is that so much of it is done by volunteers and I think some of the donations never hit a bank account or “headquarters”, since often the donations are “in kind” – like when I, through an email from SA, said I’d help with their holiday program to get blankets to VA hospitals to be given to patients as gifts. I was given the address and contact name at the nearest participating VA hospital and mailed the blanket directly. Nothing actually even passed through official SA hands…
FbL
It’s more than that, but another factor is that they don’t understand the military, and thus accused Soldiers’ Angels of exaggerating the need for things like boots or the backpacks for the wounded in order to raise money. They pointed to the Soldiers’ Angels store, in both those cases, not realizing that when people “buy” boots or a backpacks to be given to a soldier, they are paying nothing more than the basic costs for the item plus the shipping. It’s a real mess. They also completely misread the percentage of incoming funds that are spent directly on soldier support, as displayed in the tax records on SA’s site–they flipped the percentages for overhead vs. soldier support. It’s really just appalling and they aren’t backing down. Everytime you point to something they’ve got wrong, they just change the goalpost and point to something else that isn’t wrong but that they misunderstand. It’s a mess. AIP is pretty much worthless. Better standards for judging SA (and other military charities) are the BBB’s charity section or things like Guidestar.
PVA (Paralyzed Veterans of America) got dinged really bad, too because a huge percentage of their money is spent on employing caseworkers who help veterans navigate the VA benefits mess FOR FREE! But AIP considers the salary of those caseworkers to be overhead. They’re just clueless.
American Institute of Philanthropy
The preceding post by FbL contains inaccuracies as to how AIP rates charities. Please view our website at http://www.charitywatch.org for information on AIP, and more specifically, the criteria we use when evaluating charities (http://www.charitywatch.org/criteria.html).