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Sat Dec 18, 2021: "Distinctly Commercial" Wreaths Across America to Return to Arlington National Cemetery
Perhaps the organization has changed within the last few years, but I'd like to see proof of that first.
THINGS TO DO DC
Wreaths Across America to Return to Arlington National Cemetery
Wreaths Across America day is set for Saturday, Dec. 18, 2021
Published December 17, 2021 • Updated on December 17, 2021 at 5:46 am
More than 150,000 holiday wreaths are set to be placed on graves at Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday in a momentous tribute to servicemembers.
Wreaths Across America will bring volunteers to 3,100 cemeteries in a nationwide effort to honor fallen veterans and soldiers during the holidays.
It will be the 30th year that the organization has come to Arlington National Cemetery with the goal of placing a wreath at every headstone.
More than 157,000 wreaths have been sponsored, and Wreaths Across America is fundraising to purchase nearly 98,000 more.
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Where do they get those wreaths?
U.S.
Wreaths Across America Has Family Ties to Its Supplier
The charity exclusively buys its military grave decorations from a closely linked Maine company
By Michael M. Phillips
https://twitter.com/MPhillipsWSJ
Michael.Phillips@wsj.com
Dec. 21, 2015 6:26 pm ET
Each Christmas, the charity Wreaths Across America places millions of dollars in decorations on military graves at Arlington National Cemetery and elsewhere, in what has become a national remembrance of the country’s fallen.
Tax filings, court documents and interviews, however, reveal a distinctly commercial aspect to the charity’s operations.
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Mon Dec 6, 2021:
Placing wreaths on veterans' gravesites angers religious freedom group
Sat Dec 18, 2021:
Wreaths Across America Has Family Ties to Its Supplier
Thu May 14, 2020:
Wreaths Across America Has Family Ties to Its Supplier
I'm clearing out old newspapers. This article in
The Wall Street Journal. caught my eye. It's from 2015. I don't know if the financial ties are still in place.
U.S.
Wreaths Across America Has Family Ties to Its Supplier
The charity exclusively buys its military grave decorations from a closely linked Maine company
By Michael M. Phillips
Dec. 21, 2015 6:26 pm ET
Each Christmas, the charity Wreaths Across America places millions of dollars in decorations on military graves at Arlington National Cemetery and elsewhere, in what has become a national remembrance of the country’s fallen.
Tax filings, court documents and interviews, however, reveal a distinctly commercial aspect to the charity’s operations.
The...
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Should You Donate to Wreaths Across America? A Lesson in Charitable Giving
Money Talks News
Stacy Johnson, Money Talks News • December 14, 2015
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But the wreaths that
Wreaths Across America uses aren’t free and they’re not donated. They’re paid for with donated money. Individuals pay $15 to sponsor one wreath, $30 to sponsor two, and so on. The organization’s online form explains its most popular donation is $75 to sponsor five wreaths. ... And therein lies a potential problem with the way this nonprofit operates.
Wreaths Across America was started by a for-profit company that makes and sells wreaths ... According to its website, Wreaths Across America was founded in 2007 by the Worcester family. The patriarch, Morrill Worcester, is president of Worcester Wreaths, a for-profit wreath-making company. His wife, Karen Worcester, is the executive director of the nonprofit Wreaths Across America.
Every wreath used by Wreaths Across America is purchased with donated money from the for-profit company that started it, Worcester Wreath.
The relationship between the company and nonprofit isn’t hidden. It’s easy to find on both the
Worcester Wreath site and the
Wreaths Across America site. But this relationship should raise the eyebrows of anyone donating to this charity. When donations to a nonprofit are used to purchase goods from the for-profit company that founded it, it raises the potential for problems. Is the nonprofit overpaying for its wreaths? Is the for-profit enriching itself at the expense of donors?
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Conflicts of Interest Are a Red Flag for Donors: Some Charity Insiders May Take Unfair Advantage of Their Position
Feb 20, 2018
The term “conflict of interest” has been seen and heard quite often in the political news arena over the last year or so. President Trump’s potential conflicts of interest, in particular, have been hotly debated given the substantial personal business interests of the Trump family and many of the President’s past and present White House advisers and cabinet members.
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How outrageous can some of the conflicts of interest within a charity really be? You can judge for yourself from the three real life examples below.
(1) The Sekulow Family: Turning “Law & Justice” Charities into Personal Millions
The American Center for Law and Justice or “ACLJ” may be a familiar name to some donors, but there are actually two different charities that use that name to raise funds –
American Center for Law and Justice and
Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism. The charities each file their own Form 990 with the IRS and issue separate audited financial statements, but as the name confusion suggests, the charities otherwise are interconnected in a number of ways. In particular, one family is at the heart of those connections, and in what appears to be an outrageous example of conflicts of interest, that family and its businesses have used the ACLJ charities to reap millions in personal benefits.
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(2) Up to No Good at Goodwill Omaha: Related Party Contract Conflicts Abound
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(3) “Naughty or Nice?”: Wreaths Across America Funds Its Related Wreath Company
Each holiday season the charity
Wreaths Across America (WAA) coordinates the placement of wreaths on the cemetery headstones of veterans. The annual wreath-laying tradition started in 1992, long before WAA was founded, when Morrill Worcester, owner of Worcester Wreath Company of Harrington, Maine, arranged for his company’s 5,000 wreath-surplus at season’s end to be placed in one of the older, less visited sections of Arlington National Cemetery. About 15 years later, the Worcesters, along with veterans and others who had helped with their annual wreath-laying tradition at Arlington, formed WAA in 2007 “to continue and expand this effort, and support other groups around the country who wanted to do the same.”
Karen Worcester, the wife of Worcester Wreath’s Morrill Worcester, has been the executive director of WAA since the start. One of Morrill and Karen’s daughters, two of their daughters-in-law, as well as a former senior Worcester Wreath employee and his then-wife, also joined the initial WAA board of directors, according to a December 2015 article in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The year after WAA was formed, tens of thousands of volunteers helped place over 100,000 wreaths on the graves of veterans at over 300 locations, and the number of wreath placements has been growing ever since. In 2017, more than 1,565,000 wreaths were placed at 1,422 locations, including Arlington National Cemetery where all 244,700 markers received a wreath.
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Sat Dec 18, 2021:
As Wreaths Across America has grown, so has scrutiny about its practices
Posted December 9, 2018 Updated December 10, 2018
As Wreaths Across America has grown, so has scrutiny about its practices
The Washington County nonprofit paid $10.3 million last year to its supplier, Worcester Wreath Co.; both entities are run by the same family.
BY ERIC RUSSELL | STAFF WRITER
A Maine nonprofit that places wreaths on veterans’ graves has seen explosive growth in donations over the past decade, its revenues growing from $227,000 in 2011 to $14.6 million last year. As Wreaths Across America has grown, the company from which it buys all of its wreaths has reaped similar rewards. ... But the nonprofit and the company, Worcester Wreath Co., are run by the same family, and that arrangement is drawing more criticism as the two entities have become more successful.
Wreaths Across America paid $10.3 million – 70 percent of its revenue – last year to Worcester Wreath for about 1 million circles of balsam that adorn headstones, including a quarter million at Arlington National Cemetery. In five years the company has nearly tripled its business from the nonprofit.
That relationship, which nonprofit attorneys agree is unusual though not illegal, has not changed since its inception. Yet as more money has flowed in, heightened scrutiny from charity watchdogs has followed. Wreaths Across America has added a bidding process for wreath purchases and now discloses the relationship with Worcester Wreath on its website.
But even some of the changes have prompted criticism. This February the nonprofit CharityWatch listed Wreaths Across America among three “outrageous” examples of nonprofits operating with clear conflicts of interest. It drew attention specifically to the bid process that it said seemed designed to ensure the business went to Worcester Wreath.
Dan Boxer, a former adjunct professor of governance and ethics at the University of Maine School of Law, said he can’t think of another Maine nonprofit that has such a strong and lucrative tie to a single private company.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
