Giving donations to charities set up to help wounded veterans is a really, really good thing, except when the charities are designed to enrich themselves and their friends and don't give a crap about really helping veterans. And, naturally, there are plenty of those.

No less than eight major veterans charities have been caught giving less than one-third of their donations to actual charitable services. Fully 12 charities failed the American Institute of Philanthropy's standards (give 65% of donations to the cause, assholes) for being a good charity. One charity, in fact, gave less than 1 cent to wounded veterans for every dollar they collected. Their excuses? Fundraising is expensive.

The 12 failing charities, by the way, collected $266 million from Americans last year. One charity, Help Hospitalized Veterans, made $72 million in donations, but spent $4 million of that on direct mail alone and paid its exec and his wife $530,000 in salary and benefits. It gave less than $25 million to actual wounded veterans.

Basically, most of these guys got screwed at least once by our government, and then screwed again by these "charities" who were supposed to be spending your money to help them. But I'm sure they appreciate how that $540,000 household income of the executive of HHV helped him maintain the lifestyle to which they were able to become accustomed by pretending to help wounded veterans. That's the American Way, after all, that they were wounded trying to protect.

Study Faults Charities for Veterans [Washington Post]