Wounded Warrior Project Paper Example

Wounded Warrior Project is a non-profit organization that offers services, events, and programs to wounded military veterans. It is one of the largest organizations that serves veterans, and has partnered with other charities such as Operation Homefront, American Red Cross, and Resounding Joy. Together with its partners, Wounded Warrior Project are dedicated to assist veterans transition from the military life into society. John Melia, a wounded veteran, founded the project in 2003 (Cahn, 2016). His initial operation involved the distribution of backpacks to injured military personnel at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The program is still a key feature in the organization where it still provides backpacks with essential supplies. Wounded Warrior Project operated under the United Spinal Association of New York from 2003 to 2005. It then became an independent charity program and expanded its services to providing compensation, insurance, health care, education, employment, and housing amongst others to the military veterans (Bernstein & Aulgur, 2017). The project received accreditation in 2008 from the Veterans Service Organization that allows them to prosecute claims under law.

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Wounded Warrior Project has the mission statement "honoring and empowering wounded warriors." The founder, John Melia, was a military man wounded in a helicopter crash in 1992 in Somalia (Cahn, 2016). His project steadily grew to become one of the biggest charity organizations in America. Melia saw the need to help wounded veterans like himself when they returned home. Over time, the organization has appreciated the physical and mental health of the military servicemen, and has since expanded its mandate. Wounded Warrior Project currently offers services and programs to both veterans and service members that help them adjust to citizen life (Bernstein & Aulgur, 2017). Despite the goodwill of the charity organization, there have been several reports that have emerged accusing them of gross misappropriation of funds.

Recent reports in the media have tarnished the name of the Wounded Warrior Project by citing misappropriation of funds. According to the reports, only 60% of donations are used on veteran related programs while the rest is misspent on unnecessary expenses (Bernstein & Aulgur, 2017). The charity organization Fisher House spends 91% of its budget on veterans while Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust devotes 96%. It elicits a bad image on the Wounded Warrior Project when considering the non-related expenditures. In effect, Chief Executive Officer Steve Nardizzi and Chief Operations Officer AL Giordano were fired by the WWP Board of Directors (Cahn, 2016). Their termination came after intense public scrutiny of the extravagant spending in the organization. The main issue was that there was less spending on the veterans that the project is purposed. There were testimonials from employees that went public claiming wastage of donor funds and lavish spending.

Wounded Warrior Project has since come to its defense by stating that there was misinterpretation on their financial records. Representatives of the organization asked for a retraction from the media outlets. The organization claims that it spends 81% of its donations on veterans, their families and related programs (Bernstein & Aulgur, 2017). Nonetheless, the Wounded Warrior Project will suffer from the negative publicity that can push away supporters, partners and donors. The organization's Board of Directors hired Michael S. Linnington as the Chief Executive Officer in efforts to help public relations. 600 employees were released, and there has been an estimated 25% decrease in donations that means approximately $100 million in revenue (Cahn, 2016). There is need for the Wounded Warrior Project to rehabilitate its image through PR strategies.

Goals and Design

The reputation of Wounded Warrior Project is under threat, and the objective is to get rid of the negative publicity. In this endeavor, the PR goals are:

• discredit all the information that has been given against the organization
• provide relevant information on the operations of the company
• validate all of the people the project has helped
• promote transparency within and without the organization

The Wounded Warrior Project has been around for a long time, and it has managed to build its good reputation due to the work it does for the wounded military personnel and veterans (Cahn, 2016). Indeed, there are sides of the story, and there are those in the public that believe in the project. It is them that will need reassuring that the information circulated by the media is not true. Therefore, it is necessary that one of the goals to be to discredit the information provided. Most importantly, it will help retain the trust of current and future donors.

In times of crisis such as this it is crucial to get in front of the story and have control of the narrative (Walters, 2014). After all, it is the organization that possesses all of the information that relates to the matter at hand. The organization should provide relevant data regarding usage of funds. It will be inevitable that the public and donors will see that there is consistency in their delivery. It will be unlike the poor message delivery by the media due to their lack of all the facts.

Another step will be to show the projects the organization has initiated and the objectives they have realized. At this time, donors, employees and wounded veterans can come out to credit the impact of the organization. It will be in such a way that it is clear the Wounded Warrior Project is fulfilling its mission statement.

Transparency in the organization is a key goal to improving public image (Walters, 2014). Since the tarnishing reports, the reputation has come into question. The best way to handle doubt will be to provide data to the public on how money is spent.

Social media can be used to relay information to the public where PR can dispute the damaging reports, and avail information from the organization's database. Donors will receive newsletters on the same. Discrediting the negative information and providing facts will increase the organization's outreach that can be measured in the evaluation.

Evaluation Plan

An evaluation plan can be used to measure the success of a PR campaign. In the Wounded Warrior Project, an assessment can be made on the number of donors and donations made since the beginning of the campaign. An increase in donors or donations will indicate success in the campaign (Walters, 2014). Location where the campaigns have had little effect would need reforms on The PR strategy.

Social media can also help to evaluate the success of the PR strategies (Walters, 2014). It is possible to know the number of people that have received a message on social media sites. Many adults in the US use social media and follow their page interests. There are tools on these sites that one can use to view the number of followers and calculate outreach. An increase in followers indicates success of the PR campaign

Media impressions and brand mentions can also help to evaluate PR campaigns (Walters, 2014). Media impressions are the number of times one's content appears on media platforms. They help to determine the number of people reached by the campaign. Brand mentions are done on blog sites and other websites not related to the organization at hand. Monitoring those sites and seeing what people are saying can help in the evaluation process.

References

Bernstein, R., & Aulgur, J. (2017). What Went Wrong at the Wounded Warrior Project?

Journal of Nonprofit Education and Leadership, 2, pp. 28-4.

Cahn, D. (2016, March 20). New project for Wounded Warrior charity: Regain trust. News.

Military.com. Retrieved from https://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/03/20/new-project-for-wounded-warrior-charity-regain-trust.html

Waters, R. D. {2014). Public Relations in the Nonprofit Sector. Rutledge.