JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) – The board of Wounded Warrior Project, which grew from a shoestring charity providing goodie bags to hospitalized soldiers to become a fundraising phenomenon that took in $372 million last year, has fired its top two executives, aiming “to help restore trust in the organization.”
Chief executive officer Steve Nardizzi and chief operating officer Al Giordano are out as the board cracks down on employee expenses and strengthens controls that have not kept pace with the group’s rapid growth, according to a statement released late Thursday by a public relations firm specializing in crisis management.
The Wounded Warrior Project’s directors hired 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 after CBS News and The New York Times reported in January about allegedly wasteful spending within the charity.
According to those reports, Wounded Warrior Project spends 40 to 50 percent of its money on overhead – including extravagant parties and last-minute, business-class air travel – while other veterans charities spend as little as 10 to 15 percent. Former employees accused the organization of profiting off the veterans; one said the project’s spending is equivalent to “what the military calls fraud, waste and abuse.”
A widely cited example was the group’s 2014 staff meeting in Colorado, where Nardizzi rappelled from the tower of a 5-star hotel into a crowd of employees. The public relations firm, Abernathy MacGregor, said the meeting cost about $970,000, and “such events will be curtailed in the future.”