Is there anyone out there that has started their own Non-Profit Organization that serves the purpose of helping Veteran's with unmet needs?

2015-10-25T01:16:46-04:00

https://www.facebook.com/WarriorOutreach

Tri-State Warrior Outreach, Quincy, IL. 520 likes · 8 talking about this · 1 was here. Our organization is dedicated to helping Veterans in the Quincy...

Response by Capt Seid Waddell made Oct 25 at 2015 1:37 AM

2015-10-25T01:37:44-04:00

I have started one with the purpose of helping THIS vet with unmet needs, though I did not intend it to be a non-profit when I set it up.

Response by CPT Private RallyPoint Member made Oct 25 at 2015 2:33 AM

2015-10-25T02:33:43-04:00

SFC Private RallyPoint Member There are several. COL Mikel J. Burroughs Can help you with that.

Response by SGT Joseph McBride made Oct 25 at 2015 2:38 AM

2015-10-25T02:38:16-04:00

No I honestly get ones that are word of mouth or if I happen to see one then I will ask but nothing really in my area. Now I have wanted to start one so I can address our homeless vet problem we have here.

Response by PVT Robert Gresham made Oct 25 at 2015 2:43 AM

2015-10-25T02:43:33-04:00

SFC Private RallyPoint Member I am currently working on 501(c)(3) status for my Zero VS (Veteran Suicide) group. Until I can get all paperwork in, paid for and approved it may still take a few months as I understand the process. If you are curious you can look up the information on the following website:

How to Obtain 501(c)(3) Tax-Exempt Status for Your Nonprofit | Nolo.com

How to apply for tax-exempt status for your nonprofit.

Response by SGT Scott Bell made Oct 25 at 2015 1:47 PM

2015-10-25T13:47:21-04:00

Not let but working on it

Response by CPT Jack Durish made Oct 26 at 2015 5:32 PM

2015-10-26T17:32:36-04:00

What is the point of your question? Are you looking for help and advice? Are you attempting to help others publicize theirs? Are you simply promoting your own? All are worthy purposes. I've never started one myself but am helping a couple in Southern California. I believe we need to help each other just as we were trained to do on the battlefield. Waiting around for the government to make good on their promises simply isn't going to help, is it?

Response by SPC Chris Dorsey made Oct 26 at 2015 6:02 PM

2015-10-26T18:02:52-04:00

Yes I have.

Response by LTC Gordon Cucullu made Nov 5 at 2015 4:08 PM

2015-11-05T16:08:57-05:00

Valhalla Project. Begun in 2011, 200-acre homestead operation in Ozarks of north central Arkansas. Mission is to assist post-9/11 combat veterans renew their sense of mission and purpose by participating in a wide variety of homesteading operations, ultimately assisting with transition to civilian life. We have a Facebook page and our site is http://www.valhalla-project.com. Please feel free to contact for discussion either at [login to see] or [login to see] . We strongly advise anyone interested in such activities to spend time here and learn from our successes and our mistakes. No need to reinvent the wheel.

The Valhalla Project

Response by 1SG Perry Jefferies made Nov 5 at 2015 9:16 PM

2015-11-05T21:16:20-05:00

... Nooooooooo
Since this is all Soldiers and Veterans here, I will be a bit flip but please consider NOT starting another unfunded, unresponsive, unfocused non-profit that duplicates the services found in its area and confuses both Veterans and donors. I am a Texas Veteran, resident, and state employee that indexes community service organizations helping Veterans. Our contract manager likes to say that he is "the sheriff of don't start another non-profit" and I will play the deputy. Please do some research and focus your purpose and you may find that there are many, many great organizations that need volunteers, leadership, and mostly funding to be effective. Why obfuscate the playing field even further? When nation-wide organizations like the VFW Military Assistance Program, or Catholic Charities can't find enough funds, what is your plan to outdo them?
What "unmet need" are you going to meet? Most Veterans are better paid, employed, educated, and medically treated than their civilian counterparts. The ones that are not are often truly vulnerable, have bad discharges, and their symptoms of mental illness and injury manifest in substance abuse, minor criminal behavior, and difficulty in dealing with society. Most Veteran philanthropic organizations in the US take in less than $500k a year (check out the Journal of Philanthropy's Veteran Charity report). Are you going to be paid by the charity? At $50k, you will take 10% of your costs just in salary - what about a place to work from, marketing, lawyers, etc? Also check out the Bush Institute Aggregated Model of Institutional Effectiveness and you will see that there are very few top-tier charities supporting Vets. How is yours going to be so different? Will you become just another fund raising website that doesn't have good contact info and don't answer the phone on Friday evening when a Vet is calling for $300 to stay in a hotel for the weekend? If not, what need are you meeting?
Everyone will want to sell you something or fund raise for a cut but there are plenty of fancy websites that do nothing.
If you want to work with homelessness, then you need to learn about national standards, zoning, case management. Every big town has a Caritas, or a Salvation Army or Goodwill with a Veterans program that need case managers and outreach folks and space to put people in. Why not use their administrative expertise and get to helping, instead of designing a cool logo and running around confusing people about who to donate to?
If you want to prevent suicide a) learn about it - its complicated. Become an ASIST trainer and work for a peer organization or your state guard. Or start selling rings and thinking up ways to use #22 like about 1000 other small, ineffective organizations in the country. Heck, you could sell green lightbulbs for Wally World (what is that all about?).
If you want to see the largest unmet need - get a million dollars and a phone number that you will answer Thursday night to Monday morning and give that away to folks who have made really bad decisions through other Veteran organizations. That's what is needed. Not more spinning chairs.
My point is to do a real needs assessment, find the gaps, see who is already addressing them or trying and what their problems are. There are tens of thousands of dead websites, link farms, one-man or woman bands crying "we fix everything" when they can't. Vets are very frustrated when they can't talk to a human and the beautiful website promising bullshit only collects their info. When actual social workers and peer specialists call for help, the new CEO ain't there.
Where I work, we see them come and see them go. The Warrior Gateway lists over 10,000 Veterans helping organizations in Texas, as does the VA. About 80% of them are gone by listing time. We have verified through that list and have only about 1300 organizations and programs on TexVet - ones that actually pick up the phone or can be contacted. Almost all of those programs could use some help, volunteers, leadership, and most especially MONEY. Please try working in one of these before you try starting your own. We often ask - doesn't Google work there? since so many people start organizations that do the exact same thing as someone near them struggles to do. There are tools to do needs assessments, check population figures, ID what works. We don't need anymore Hamsters4Heroes (a pocket pet for every vet) - we need to strengthen the good organizations that are effective. I salute your goodwill but ask you to please think and (more importantly) research it though. Please. No.

Response by COL Dewell Cooper Jr made Nov 10 at 2015 7:32 AM

2015-11-10T07:32:27-05:00

We're establishing OPERATION DUSTOFF where we propose to help our Wounded Warriors by establishing an organization which would house, train and employ those who desire to improve their situation. We can't help those who won't be helped but, there are too many who feel abandoned as the VA system is set up to deny them at every turn unless they are "locked in" to an eligibility-level to receive benefits is irrefutable.

The VA's own internal documents prove they want to "wait out" the veterans' needing care by letting them die off and reduce the numbers they have to care for by attrition. In fact, they even want to better access death reports in order to increase the accuracy of their "lighter load." For those who have given up on help, we can establish a program which provides them care, training and opportunities without the needless bureaucracy and red-tape which exists to ensure the VA job-security and allows our Veterans to languish and wither away.

We even have a plan to become self-sustaining by creation of manufacturing and service companies which would employ our trainees to produce and support products. Our problem we have is getting this program up and running without too many prospective contributors wanting to control the operation and diverting the proceeds into their own pockets as opposed to dedicating the resources into meaningful results.

We're dedicated to:

- Providing an alternative to endless waiting at the whim of a faceless bureaucracy with no hope of seeing positive results.

- Establishing a broad-spectrum vocational/rehabilitation training institute which would train our Wounded Warriors to perform occupations which we could then employ them to perform. In essence, we would be able to produce products and services by translating their acquired skills into items which could be marketed in support of the program therefore creating a system which sustains itself.

- Creating an organization which is totally dedicated to supporting trainees by employing them in their fields of endeavor. Allowing them the basis to support themselves while providing access to the care and services they need (without relying on the VA's slow-moving process whose success is geared to them dying in order to say their responsibilities have been met).

Response by Capt Dennis Orr made Nov 12 at 2015 5:56 PM

2015-11-12T17:56:21-05:00

I formed Veterans Educational Services to assist veterans with their transition services by showing how to achieve meaningful careers by the use of VetPropulsion.