AP Newsbreak: Wounded Warrior founder offers to return
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Steve Nardizzi's entrepreneurial approach to charity work transformed the Wounded Warrior Project from 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 United Spinal 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.
On Thursday, Nardizzi and chief operating officer Al Giordano were fired, their board of directors said, as the organization cracks down on employee expenses and strengthening controls that have not kept pace with the group's rapid growth.
Melia, a former Marine, launched the group in 2003 after he was injured in a helicopter crash off Somalia and saw how wounded veterans were treated, and his exit six years ago left him bitter. He said Nardizzi erased all mention of his contributions from the group's website. But he told The Associated Press on Friday that he requested an "immediate" meeting with the board of directors, and is open to leading the group again.
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."
The group's 2014 meeting, at a 5-star hotel where Nardizzi rappelled from a tower into a crowd of employees, was particularly costly. The board's statement — released late Thursday by the crisis management firm Abernathy MacGregor — said "such events will be curtailed in the future."
Nardizzi, who did not respond Friday to The Associated Press' requests for comment, defended such spending while leading the charity. "An entrepreneurial spirit led to WWP's success," Nardizzi wrote Jan. 18 on his Facebook page.
"If nonprofits are going to be effective in their world-changing work (eliminating disease or eradicating poverty), they must be allowed to research, to advertise, and, most important, to fail — in the same way that corporations like Apple and Nike do. We need to embrace the notion that has long guided the for-profit world: think big, and often spend big, in order to succeed big," Nardizzi wrote.
Nardizzi certainly thought big: According to the Internal Revenue Service reports, the charity took in $800 million over the last six years, while also paying some of the highest salaries, to many more people, than other major nonprofits. Nardizzi earned $496,415 annually and Giordano $397,329, while at least 10 others took in more than $160,000 each for the year ending in September 2014, according to the nonprofit's Form 990 filings.
Compensation accounted for $32 million, or 13 percent of the group's spending that year. Meanwhile, the group's reserves rose to $248 million, mainly held in investments. Charity watchdogs say it's OK to keep a rainy-day fund, but the money should go as much as possible to the mission.
Nardizzi's leadership drew fans. Tom Keller, a communications consultant on WWP projects, described Nardizzi as a "Powerhouse CEO" and a "superb leader" in a 2014 recommendation on LinkedIn.
Reached by phone on Friday, Keller said he no longer feels the same way.
"I have associations with other veterans' organizations, and I just feel sick about the whole situation," Keller said. "My involvement with (Wounded Warrior Project) didn't last long after he came aboard. I know the truth will come out."
The nonprofit's Facebook page was filling with angry comments Friday by people rethinking whether they should donate again.
"Many donors have supported the WWP from its humble inception and have every right to be angry about the lack of stewardship shown by the immediate past leadership of WWP," Melia said in a statement. "The new leadership of the WWP must do everything in its power to restore its relationship and regain the trust of those it serves and its donors."
WWP said in response to the posts that it is proud of its programs and stands behind its fundraising.
The group's statement Thursday said its most recent audited financial statement shows 81 percent of donations were spent on "programming," not fundraising. The statement cited a "joint allocation" accounting rule that enables non-profits to classify fundraising as a service to clients if the event or material also is "educational" and includes a "call to action" beyond simply appealing for money.
Invoking that rule, the nonprofit reported to the IRS that it spent $26 million, about 10 percent of its budget, on conferences and events between October 1, 2013 and September 30, 2014. The statement said about 94 percent of that "was associated with program services delivered to Wounded Warriors and their families."
The IRS filings said 76 percent of the budget, or $189,558,100, went to veterans programs — a share charity watchdogs would consider respectable. However, almost $41 million of that amount was claimed as the "educational" component of fundraising requests; without it, helping veterans accounted for just 60 percent of the budget.
Charitywatch.org says its analysis concluded that Wounded Warriors spent just 54 percent on programs rather than overhead, for a C rating.
Calls and messages sent to Nardizzi were not answered Thursday, and a message the AP left at Giordano's home was not returned.
Board chairman Anthony Odierno is overseeing the charity on an interim basis. "It is now time to put the organization's focus directly back on the men and women who have so bravely fought for our country and who need our support," Odierno said in the statement.
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Associated Press contributors include Jeff Donn in Boston, Curt Anderson in Miami and Rhonda Shafner in New York.