“Great Job, Poor Optics” would be a good descriptive title for an article on the fall from grace of the veteran’s charity “ Wounded Warrior Project ” (WWP). By which I mean that WWP as run by its former Chief Executive Officer Steve Nardizzi and Chief Operations Officer Al Giordano, was wonderfully successful at helping many vets, but Nardizzi’s management style, while undeniably successful, left WWP open to charges of playing fast and loose with donor’s money.

In a period of little more than two days in January 2016, the outlook and public impression of the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP), one of the nation’s most venerable charities, was transformed from substantially positive to substantially negative. During those two days – January 26 and 27, 2016 – CBS News and The New York Times aired and published reports that heavily criticized the way WWP conducted itself. …CBS News and The New York Times did the public no favors with [their] inadequate and unnecessarily damaging journalism.—Doug White “ The First Casualty: A Report Addressing the Allegations Made Against the Wounded Warrior Project ”

As charity specialist Doug White puts it: “While Nardizzi led WWP as a modern, national charity, he overlooked a crucial, if cosmetic, aspect of any modern-day organization: how things look have a bearing on how things are.”

Which is to say that it behooves a charity organization to look like a charity organization, and not a glamorous and financially flush NGO. The thing is, under Nardizzi and Giordano’s leadership WWP was flush with funds, and if it was not a glamorous NGO, it was certainly one of the country’s most recognizable and successful charity brands. And then came tag-team exposés by the “The New York Times” and “CBS News” in early 2016.

As a result of the two exposés WWP’s board at the time put out a report denying any wrongdoing on the part of WWP – and then cut their own throat by firing Nardizzi and Giordano (if WWP was innocent of any wrongdoing why fire their CEO and COO?). It was after the firing of Nardizzi and Giordano that the real damage to WWP occurred, and contributions plummeted.

Firing Nardizzi and Giordano was a huge mistake IMO. By all accounts they did an excellent job of running WWP, and the charity is still suffering from their loss. As White puts it: “The tenor of the post-allegation and post-firing news reports smack of how things under Nardizzi and Giordano went terribly wrong, how it’s time to clean things up and become more efficient, and how to make WWP the charity it is supposed to be.” White continues: