AP Newsbreak: Wounded Warrior founder open to return

AP Newsbreak: Wounded Warrior founder open to return

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Steve Nardizzi’s entrepreneurial approach to charity work transformed the Wounded Warrior Project, which began as a shoestring effort to provide underwear and CD players to hospitalized soldiers, into an $800 million fundraising enterprise.

It also led to his downfall.

A lawyer by training who never served in the military, Nardizzi traded a career in the courts for one helping wounded veterans. He arrived at the Wounded Warrior Project in 2006 after nearly a decade at the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association and persuaded the board that they needed a new, more aggressive leadership style.

By 2010, Nardizzi replaced founder John Melia as CEO and catapulted the nonprofit into the top ranks of U.S. charities. His success led to lavish spending — the group’s annual staff meeting in 2014 cost $970,000 — prompting complaints from employees, veterans and charity watchdogs about profiteering off veterans that emerged in reports by The New York Times and CBS News in January. SOURCE

It’s not that the Wounded Warriors Project is a BAD thing, in its inception it was a marvelous idea, one that was much needed and one that actually did a lot of good.

That was before Steve Nardizzi replaced founder John Melia.

Don’t take me wrong; Wounded Warriors has always done a lot of good work but the level of *good*, with *good* being the dollars they had to work with, seemed to fall greatly after Melia was, how do I say this, relieved of duty in a *board* move maybe? 

Any time a group, especially a non-profit Veterans charity, has annual staff meeting that costs $970,000 to make happen, someone is spending way too much money that is NOT theirs to spend.

The Wounded Warrior Project’s directors fired the two executives after hiring outside legal counsel and forensic accounting consultants to conduct an independent review of the Jacksonville-based organization’s records and interview current and former employees.

The reports by CBS News and The Times described extravagant parties and last-minute, business-class air travel; one former employee compared it to “what the military calls fraud, waste and abuse.”

I became aware of WWP after my son returned from Iraq and one of his friends that he was deployed with became actively involved with WWP.

Initially I was an enthusiastic supporter of WWP, mostly because of what I was told by this friend and what I read about WWP, then the *talk* started about extravagant spending and salaries and I began to look around for sources that offered facts. I won’t attack if I don’t have some solid sources and in this case I had none but others did, or thought they did anyway.

A couple of years ago I wrote a commentary responding to a story from Alex Graham, the only legitimate source I could find regarding the incredible expenditures at WWP. I wrote in support of Alex because as I was reading HIS story I was seeing some of the exact things there I was hearing about from others.

Several mil-bloggers used the post as well, and we were ALL mentioned in the suit WWP was threatening Alex Graham with for what WWP said was lies and misrepresentation and we were requested by Alex Graham to take the post down, with WWP demanding a retraction from him and all that had posted it.

Well, most of us did retract the post, I didn’t save it on the blog, I should have, but if I am not mistaken I DO have it somewhere in archives, all I have to now is find it, and you can bet the farm on this; I don’t care who makes threats this time, if I find it, it will be back on the blog.

It is my most sincere desire to see WWP clean house and return to being a well-respected organization, one that is above reproach. I feel that there are still a few people in positions that need to be fired and/or prosecuted.

I’m not a lawyer but this line in the story above made me think, “what the military calls fraud, waste and abuse” and some of that is criminal behavior that needs to be addressed if WWP expects to ever regain the confidence of the people that put them there to begin with.