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After taking it on the chin from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform during a January hearing, Help Hospitalized Veterans (HHV) and Coalition to Salute America's Heroes Foundation (CSAH) was hammered again. The Better Business Bureau's (BBB) Wise Giving Alliance issued reports on each charity in February, prompted by concerns about allegedly misleading appeals.
The alliance claims HHV's 2006 mail appeals were misleading, citing emergency financial needs that were not evident, while also not identifying one of its largest programs. The annual report does not identify the nearly $23 million donated to CSAH or that almost $19 million of that was an in-kind donation of sports score telephone cards.
CSAH's Web site included information about the use of contributions that was not supported in the audit report, and did not clearly identify the nature of its largest activity: 1.5 million sports score telephone cards valued at $18.75 million that were donated by HHV. The charity countered that the alliance cited only two paragraphs in its appeals, created by fundraising consultants and representing a 10th of total letters sent, in deeming the entire fundraising program misleading.
The alliance not only had concerns about whether the cards were overvalued, but also whether one million of them were in fact delivered to the USO of Metropolitan Washington for distribution. While the USO reports the gift was not received, CSAH told the alliance its "files contain evidence which establish, to the satisfaction of the organization's management and ... auditor, that they were in fact delivered."
For the complete reports issued by the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, go to www.bbb.org
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