National Veterans Foundation

by Anne
(Illinois)

Is National Veterans Foundation a veterans charity worthy of a donation?

I would appreciate any information you have about them.

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**Updated information appears below**

Anne, thank you for your question. Obviously, you must decide whether a charity is 'worthy' of your donation, based upon factors that are important to you and your own personal charitable giving guidelines. We will try to provide you with information to help you make that determination.

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In researching National Veterans Foundation, we discovered that it does not publish financial information on its web site. The Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance reports that NVF did not provide the requested financial information in order to determine whether it meets BBB's 20 standards for charity accountability.

It is not listed by the American Institute of Philanthropy, which is puzzling since NVF has been around since 1985. It began as the Vietnam Veterans Aid Foundation, and changed its name to National Veterans Foundation in 1992.

NVF is based in Los Angeles, and was founded by Floyd "Shad" Meshad, a licensed clinical social worker and Army Viet Nam veteran with substantial experience in counseling veterans suffering from PTSD. It provides a national toll-free crisis management, information and referral lifeline for veterans and their families in need, staffed by veterans trained in delivery of information and referral services, as well as licensed counselors to whom crisis calls are routed. Their outreach program provides food, clothing, transportation, entertainment and employment opportunities for low-income vets.

Guidestar reports the following financial data gleaned from the IRS Form 990 filed by National Veterans Foundation for its fiscal year ending June 30, 2008:

Total Contributions: $1,213,402
Investment Income: $ 320,229
Other: $ (447,481)
Total Revenue: $1,086,150

Program Services Expense: $1,045,920
Administration: $ 67,873
Other: $ 103,626
Total Expenses: $1,217,419

Those figures add up to a NET LOSS of $131,269 for the year.

Those figures don't give us the level of detail we'd like to see, so we've contacted NVF to request a copy of their Form 990 for our own review. We'd like to see what is included in the number for program services expenses, and what the "other" expenses are. Some organizations include a portion of their fundraising expenses under 'program services,' so further investigation is necessary.

Many veterans charities rely on third-party organizations for their fundraising efforts, and thus a large portion of the revenue raised is retained by the fundraising organization to pay its fee. We don't know if that's the case with NVF, because the information is not readily available. That's why we've requested additional information.

We'll report back here once we've received the financial information we've requested from National Veterans Foundation, so please check this page again in a few days.

**Link to our review below.**

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We've now completed our Review of National Veterans Foundation Financial Documents. We think it will knock your socks off! You won't want to believe what we found.