Wounded Warrior Project’s CEO, Steven Nardizzi, and COO, Al Giordano, who had previously been lauded for building WWP into a charity behemoth, were dismissed by the group’s board of directors in the face of troubling investigative reports by CBS News and the New York Times.
The news organizations said the nonprofit paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries, spent nearly $1 million on an employee retreat and spent 40 percent of donations on overhead, according to the New York Times newspaper.
“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,” said Anthony Odierno, son of former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Raymond Odierno, who has been tapped to run the nonprofit on an interim basis.
Chief among the complaints about WWP was that the organization had put a higher priority on fund-raising than on services it provided to injured veterans.
But the organization consistently denied such charges, hired an outside auditor and contended the audit was not consistent with media allegations and instead was due to its explosive growth.
The group served 1,850 in 2010 and 144,000 in 2015, the organization said.
WWP also said only 20 percent of its fund-raising went to overhead.
But another review by a prominent New York law firm confirmed many of the allegations, including that workers who raised concerns about the spending were fired — including wounded veterans, the newspaper said.
“To best effectuate these changes and help restore trust in the organization among all of the constituencies WWP serves, the board determined the organization would benefit from new leadership, and (Nardizzi) and (Giordano) are no longer with the organization,” said a written announcement from a public relations firm hired by WPP.
The news organizations also had charged that WWP also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying campaigns to discourage criticism, and to battle proposals in Congress to place new spending restrictions on nonprofits.
Anthony Odierno is a retired Army captain who was wounded in Iraq.
