IVAW Money
Last month we looked at how the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America spent their money according to IRS filings. We felt like we were slighting some other organizations by not highlighting their expenditures. So today we’re looking at the Iraq veterans Against the War. There’s nothing really earthshaking in their filings – except how their donations have suffered between 2008 and 2009 (the last year available to the public). Click to embiggenate;
Of course, in 2008, they had their Winter Soldier hearings which probably brought in a lot of money. Their only campaign in 2009 was to defend themselves from us. And it probably didn’t help that there was no more George Bush to kick around in 2009.
You might remember that with IAVA, the largest salary was the executive director’s salary. At IVAW, that’s not true. Jose Velasquez receives less than $20,000/year while Amadee Braxton, the only civilian on the board and the person who we think is responsible for the poor forgery of Jesse MacBeth’s DD214 gets the only livable wage of all members;
Braxton also coordinates with the ISO and ANSWER since that’s where her professional roots lie – she also runs their fundraising efforts. Since their income has fallen almost a $million, how much is she really worth to IVAW. Is she still earning that salary?
So how did they spend their money? Well, their largest expenditures were for travel, conferences and meetings and computer services, while membership services were anemic. So again, like IAVA, they spend the most money on the upper ranks and piss on the membership.
Hey, you have the right to know, that’s why we do this stuff.
Category: Iraq Veterans Against the War
Stuff like this should be public disclosure when they solicit for donations, just like they used to do with the old CFC campaigns. IAVA spends 99.8 percent on overhead? UNACCEPTABLE! IVAW does the same? UNACCEPTABLE!
To go along with your post, Sparky, IAVA? Unacceptable, IVAW? Unacceptable. That way, we cut out a lot of the redundancy.
Not too concerned with where their money goes. I would, however, like to know how many “members” they claim have. Two years ago they were reporting over 2,000 members. Now, they have no numbers on their webpage and some chapters are gone (NJ, VT, MD, VA to name a few). Just like their donations, the peak membership may have come in the 2006-2008 range.
Thank you! Please keep this up. I look forward to you shining this light on several other veterans organizations as well! This should be a daily feature here. there are enough VSO’s and other “Veterans oragnizations” to keep it going for a while.
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