It never fails – something good can easily turn into something bad without much effort. In fact, the more good it is the worse the pain when it disappoints. So it is with the recent scandal of the Wounded Warriors Project.
The WWP has been the poster child for a clear and much needed outreach to service men and women in all of their various needs – physical, social, emotional. They garnered strong support from generous benefactors and ordinary citizens. Well staffed, fiscally successful, and programmatically developed, they became the envy of all other veterans organizations and admired by the public at large. Until recently, that is.
Now the truth about their lavish spending on extravagant events, travel and perks has been revealed. It’s not pretty. Much of the donor money was not spent on direct services. It was spent on high rolling executives and their lifestyles.
How sad is this? Such an important need! I think the one quote by a recent veteran who for a time worked for WWP broke my heart: “They were profiting off our wounds.”
It’s an easy downhill slide and other not-for-profits have preceded them on the path of shame. At first excess is explained as necessary for courting people with means. Next it is explained that you have to invest money to make money. And finally there is the argument from success: “Who else could have done this as well?”
The sad part is that WWP has done some very fine things. But these will be lost in the fog of unethical behavior. And even worse is how the scandal has reinforced an already existing skepticism about charitable organizations.
Corruption is a terrible thing and a terrible temptation. Unmonitored power just makes self-benefit too easy. It hurts everyone.
I think of the countless millions that the WWP has raised and spent on themselves and I think of the great contrast with our own All the Way Home program in which we strive to address the invisible wounds of war. We operate with the veritable crumbs from under the Wounded Warrior’s table and even so we try to do a lot with a little. It would be a blessing to have more to work with. But one thing I know: Whatever we become or realize I simply do not want to resemble in any form or degree that which has consumed the WWP. We are just meant to be more than that.
Sorry vets. Sorry donors and people of strong heart. The many are still true and filled with integrity regardless of the excess of the few.
I am so pleased that Lutterworth Press in Cambridge, England offered to publish a second edition of my book Liminal Reality and Transformational Power. It is customary in second editions to not only clean up the original manuscript in terms of relevancy and content but to write an additional chapter. That I did. I have wanted to write something about Liminality and War for the longest time because I believe it is a key concept that could reframe much of the current conversation about war, its aftermath and the reassimilation of warriors. This was the perfect opportunity. That topic now occupies the last chapter of the new edition. The release of the book is in April but if you care to you may pre-order it here.
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