DAV Responds to Criticism With Attacks on CharityWatch Rather Than Addressing the Substance of Financial Concerns
May 21, 2026
Disabled American Veterans (DAV) recently circulated an internal memo via email to leaders throughout its organization in response to criticism and questions raised by a former chapter leader and by CharityWatch’s recent reporting concerning DAV’s finances. Rather than meaningfully addressing many of the substantive concerns that CharityWatch raised in its reporting, DAV’s memo instead attempts to discredit CharityWatch itself.
CharityWatch believes that DAV’s stakeholders deserve transparency, factual analysis, and substantive responses, not personal attacks or paid propaganda disguised as independent journalism. Throughout this article we link to sources that can be used to fact check CharityWatch’s reporting so that veterans, donors, and other stakeholders can understand for themselves whether or not they align with how DAV chooses to use public dollars.
One issue of concern reported by CharityWatch is the fragmented nature of DAV’s financial reporting which makes it difficult for veterans, donors, and other stakeholders to understand its level of cash reserves and other assets. CharityWatch pointed out that DAV and its affiliated organizations, when their finances are viewed on a combined basis, could continue to operate at 2024 spending levels for approximately 4.41 years without raising another penny of contributions or other revenue.
DAV’s level of cash reserves and other assets is a relevant topic for veterans in need of financial assistance or other support. It is also relevant for donors who may want to consider how quickly their donations may be used if their goal is to support the immediate needs of veterans. Rather than addressing these concerns, DAV deflected by attacking CharityWatch’s credibility instead. CharityWatch’s credibility, however, is irrelevant to the issue given that the numbers speak for themselves and can be easily fact checked by reviewing publicly available tax filings and audits.
Another issue of concern CharityWatch’s article about DAV addressed was its financial efficiency; specifically, how much cash it expends to raise each $100 of cash support, and how much it spends on its programs relative to fundraising and other overhead. Based on our analysis of DAV’s audited financial statements and IRS tax Form 990 for its fiscal year ended 12/31/2024, CharityWatch found that DAV spent between $30 to $48 to raise each $100 in cash donations, and spent only between 51% to 68% on its programs, with the remainder going to fundraising and other overhead expenses.
The range of fundraising and program efficiency figures is due to DAV’s use of an accounting reporting method known as “Joint Costs,” which are expenses associated with communications that combine fundraising appeals with informational or programmatic content. In 2024 DAV reported spending $39,850,211 on fundraising and an additional $25,221,895 on Joint Costs, for a total of $65,072,106. Under accounting rules, charities can count much of the costs of direct mail letters, telemarketing calls, and other communications that include both requests for donations and educational information as program expenses even though many donors may interpret the intent of such communications as fundraising appeals.
CharityWatch provides the range of figures so that donors can decide for themselves if they consider Joint Costs to be legitimate program expenses, or if they rather interpret such communications as primarily designed to solicit donations from them. In the case of DAV, a donor who considers Joint Costs to be a legitimate program expense would want to refer to the $30 figure to understand how much the nonprofit spent in 2024 to raise each $100 in donations from the public. A donor who does not consider joint costs to be true program expenses would instead refer to the $48 figure. Similarly, if DAV’s 2024 Joint Costs are interpreted as legitimate program expenses, the nonprofit’s program percentage that year was 68%. For donors who consider these communications to be fundraising expenses, DAV spent only 51% of its cash expenses on its programs, with the remaining 49% spent on fundraising and other overhead.
Regulators, watchdog organizations, and other nonprofit experts have long raised concerns that the use of joint cost accounting can make fundraising expenses appear artificially lower while making program spending appear higher to donors. The California Attorney General has previously warned that Joint Costs can “be abused to reduce reported fundraising expenses.”
Importantly, communications that are purely educational and contain no fundraising appeal, such as informational phone calls, advocacy alerts, or educational mailings that do not request donations, are not joint costs because there is no fundraising component to allocate. CharityWatch closely scrutinizes joint cost allocations because veterans and donors deserve a clear understanding of how much money is truly being spent raising additional donations versus directly supporting charitable programs and services.
CharityWatch notes that DAV failed to report Joint Costs in its 2024 IRS tax Form 990 (Part IX, line 26), despite such costs being disclosed in its audited financial statements (Note 2, page 10) for the same financial reporting period.
DAV Attacks CharityWatch
One particularly troubling aspect of DAV’s memo is its reliance on ad hominem attacks against CharityWatch itself rather than substantive engagement with the underlying issues raised. The memo describes CharityWatch as “a fringe evaluator that raises funds by making shocking attacks on charities.”
An ad hominem attack is a well-known logical fallacy in which a person responds to criticism or an argument by attacking the character, motives, reputation, or personal traits of the critic rather than addressing the substance of the underlying claims or evidence. The phrase “ad hominem” is Latin for “to the person.”
Instead of rebutting facts, documentation, or reasoning directly, the focus shifts toward discrediting the individual raising the concerns. The purpose of this tactic is often to divert attention away from uncomfortable issues, undermine the perceived credibility of the messenger, emotionally influence the audience, or discourage further scrutiny. In the context of nonprofit accountability, ad hominem attacks can distract donors from evaluating the actual financial data, governance practices, or public filings that are at issue.
Specifically, D.E.L.T.A. Rescue’s bankruptcy filings reflect that it paid blogger Frank Parlato, publisher of the online blogs, The Frank Report and Artvoice, a total of $80,000 for “contract services” and “consulting” between June and August of 2025. Those payments coincided with a series of articles attacking CharityWatch, its CEO Laurie Styron, and Adriana Duarte, a former employee of D.E.L.T.A. Rescue who had recently won a discrimination lawsuit against the charity resulting in a $6.7 million legal judgment.
DAV cited such reporting to substantiate its claim that CharityWatch lacks “accountability and transparency,” according to its May 15, 2025 memo.
CharityWatch believes that DAV’s decision to rely on paid content published by a convicted felon with a documented adversarial relationship with CharityWatch raises legitimate questions about the judgment of DAV’s leadership and its due diligence standards. In doing so, DAV circulated demonstrably false information about CharityWatch and its leadership as a means of deflecting attention away from concerns over DAV’s use of public dollars. Rather than addressing or disputing CharityWatch’s underlying financial analysis of DAV’s finances on its merits, DAV instead amplified material originating from a source whose credibility, objectivity, and methods have themselves been the subject of serious public concern.
CharityWatch is a Watchdog, Not a Trade Association or Charity Marketing Company
DAV’s memo criticizes CharityWatch for focusing heavily on financial efficiency and overhead analysis. But this is not a revelation. Financial stewardship, governance, transparency, and fundraising efficiency are precisely the areas CharityWatch exists to analyze. CharityWatch has consistently communicated to donors that overhead ratios alone should never be the sole basis for giving decisions, but that financial stewardship still matters greatly. This is particularly true for a nonprofit like DAV, which raised more than $134 million in cash contributions from the public in 2024 (once grants from other DAV organizations are excluded), according to its tax filing of the same year.
DAV’s memo cites its favorable ratings from the nonprofit trade association BBB Wise Giving Alliance and the online data aggregator Charity Navigator, and contrasts them with that of a watchdog organization, CharityWatch. CharityWatch’s role is not to function as a promotional arm for charities the way that nonprofit trade associations and online data aggregators often do. It is to independently analyze how donated funds are raised, managed, spent, and disclosed.
“Financial efficiency may not guarantee any specific outcome for any individual charity, but neither does financial inefficiency…citing the success of an extreme outlier (such as a charity with high overhead curing cancer) and suggesting that this outlier is statistically representative of the success that will occur for the entire data set (all charities) is an extrapolation error. A charity achieving an impact goal that drastically improves life as we know it is an outlier event, so suggesting that all charities can justify unreasonably high overhead costs on the basis that such an event might occur is logically flawed.” —CharityWatch CEO, Laurie Styron as quoted in her 2021 article “Busting the Myths of ‘The Overhead Myth,'” published in Taxation of Exempts, a Thomson Reuters journal.
Donors should understand that these organizations operate under very different models and standards than CharityWatch. Charity Navigator largely relies on charities’ own unaudited IRS Forms 990, which are documents that can contain aggressive accounting allocations, inconsistent classifications, and highly subjective reporting decisions, without independently reconciling them to audited financial statements or rigorously evaluating whether the filings are comparable, consistent, or even materially reflective of how donor funds are actually being used.
For example, in its 2022 IRS tax Form 990, Boy Scouts of America (Scouting America) reported $2.2 billion of “insurance claims” expenses, the majority of which were related to sexual abuse claims, as a “program” expense. Taking this reporting at face value, Charity Navigator reported that Boy Scouts of America spent 95.4% of its expenses on its programs in 2022, and incorporated this variable into its 3 out of 4 stars rating. Meaning, Charity Navigator treated the charity’s sexual abuse claims expenses as “the programs and services it exists to deliver” when computing its rating.
Meanwhile, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance charges nonprofits fees associated with use of its accreditation seal, as is a typical business model for trade associations. Nonprofit trade associations and sector-support organizations can play a useful role in providing guidance, networking, education, and industry standards for charities, but donors should understand that such organizations exist primarily to represent, support, and promote the nonprofit sector itself, not to function as independent watchdogs scrutinizing charities on behalf of donors.
To illustrate, according to the BBB Wise Giving Alliance’s 2024 IRS Form 990 (Part VII, Schedule J, & Schedule O), its president and CEO resigned from his position in March of 2025. He is “now President and CEO of The Association of Fundraising Professionals,” an industry trade/professional association whose purpose is to support and advance the fundraising profession, including within the nonprofit sector.
CharityWatch has repeatedly assigned “F” ratings to organizations that simultaneously receive glowing reviews, seals, or accreditations elsewhere because CharityWatch’s degreed accountants conduct deeper manual analysis of audited financial statements, fundraising practices, governance issues, reserve levels, related-party transactions, and other accounting techniques. Donors should always consider a rater’s independence and the rigor of its methodology before relying on its ratings of nonprofit organizations.
The chart above contains select examples of nonprofits to which CharityWatch (CW) has assigned “D” or “F” ratings as of April 24th, 2026 based on our criteria. Charity Navigator’s (CN) ratings and Candid’s (Guidestar’s) seals were retrieved from those websites in March 2026 and reflect each charity’s current rating or transparency seal as of the date retrieved. Visit charitywatch.org, charitynavigator.org, and (Candid) guidestar.org to view the most currently published ratings and profiles. NOTE: Candid’s seals are based on charities’ self-assessments and do not include a financial measurement of how efficiently a charity uses the donations it receives. Charity Navigator’s ratings are automated using data pulled from unaudited charity tax Forms 990.
*When more than one rating is listed in the above chart, it means that the organization’s rating was downgraded due to high asset reserves. The first listed grade reflects the organization’s financial efficiency rating. The second listed grade reflects the organization’s final rating once downgraded for high assets.
**Paws For Purple Hearts recently changed its financial reporting year. As a result, the charity’s 2024 IRS Form 990 is for a 6-month period beginning in January 1st, 2024 and ending in June 30th, 2024. CharityWatch will complete our updated financial analysis of Paws For Purple Hearts once its fiscal 2025 audited financial statements and IRS tax Form 990 become available.
DAV Salaries & Other Compensation
One of DAV’s oddest, and perhaps most ironic criticisms of CharityWatch in its recent memo is that “salaries and wages make up 67.7 percent of its total expenses.” First off, this figure is incorrect. CharityWatch spent $390,513 of its total 2024 expenses of $613,010 compensating its entire staff, which computes to 63.7%. Secondly, CharityWatch is a watchdog organization that carries out its mission by conducting research and financial analysis and publishing the results of those findings. The compensation of the people performing this work are primarily program expenses. And given that CharityWatch is a small organization, it logically, as a percentage of its total budget, spends a significant portion of annual expenses paying its financial analysts and other program staff and very little by comparison on things like rent, insurance, utilities, travel, or printing, postage, and mailing costs.
DAV on the other hand, in 2024, paid one person, its National Adjutant and CEO, Barry A. Jesinoski, more than CharityWatch’s entire annual budget that year. And he wasn’t the only staff member whose compensation amounted to multiple six-figures (See IRS Form 990, Part VII, & Schedule J):
Name
Title
Compensation
1
Barry A. Jesinoski
National Adjutant / CEO
$675,009
2
Edward R. Reese
Executive Director Natl LHQ
$594,952
3
Theresa L. Burgoon
Chief Development Officer
$561,58
Mr. Jesinoski’s 2024 compensation consisted of $261,608 in base compensation; $49,900 in bonus and incentive compensation; $1,389 in other reportable compensation; $309,025 in retirement and other deferred compensation; and $53,087 in nontaxable benefits, according to Schedule J of DAV’s 2024 IRS Form 990.
IRS Form 990 Schedule J, Column C (“Retirement and Other Deferred Compensation”) reports compensation that is not necessarily paid to an executive as current cash salary during the reporting year. Instead, it generally includes items such as employer contributions to retirement plans, pension accruals, supplemental executive retirement plans (SERPs), deferred compensation arrangements, and increases in actuarial pension values that accounting and IRS reporting rules require charities to disclose even if the executive has not yet received those amounts. Certain pension accruals may ultimately depend on vesting requirements, future years of service, market performance, continued employment, or the long-term financial condition of the organization.
However, from a watchdog perspective, these figures remain highly relevant to donors because they reflect compensation commitments, benefits structures, and potential future financial obligations undertaken by the nonprofit on behalf of executives, even if the exact amounts ultimately realized could differ from what is reported in a given year. (See Form IRS Form 990, Schedule J Instructions for additional information that may impact the amount of retirement benefits fully realized by the recipient for which they were accrued).
DAV’s 2024 Form 990, Schedule J, also expounds upon incidents of first-class air travel, companion air travel, discretionary spending accounts, and a “leadership incentive program,” primarily for “key executives, directors and managers” which pays “an additional percentage of annual base salary to about 60 employees.”
According to the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) 2024 tax filing, Compensation, Officers, Directors, Trustees, Key Employees, and Highest Compensated Employees (IRS Form 990, Schedule J, Part II):
DAV reports providing “bonus & incentive compensation” during 2024 to eight individuals. Megan B. Hall, General Counsel, received $65,104 in bonus and incentive compensation with total reported compensation of $362,349. The remaining seven individuals received $22,891 to $53,892 with total compensation ranging from $353,694 to $675,009.
CharityWatch’s Credibility
CharityWatch has spent decades investigating and analyzing some of the nonprofit sector’s most controversial organizations and practices, including accountability and stewardship concerns involving veterans charities. CharityWatch founder, Daniel Borochoff, testified before the U.S. House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs regarding misleading fundraising practices, excessive reserves, aggressive joint cost accounting, and the ways some veterans charities can appear highly efficient to donors while spending very little on their programs.
CharityWatch’s ratings and perspectives are regularly cited by major national media outlets and by donors who value independent scrutiny of nonprofit financial practices. Unlike many ratings organizations that rely heavily on charities’ own unaudited IRS Forms 990 and automated scoring systems, CharityWatch’s degreed accountants perform manual analyses of audited financial statements, governance issues, related-party transactions, financial reserves, fundraising practices, and accounting classifications in order to provide donors with deeper investigative oversight of the nonprofit sector.
CharityWatch has also participated directly in important legal matters affecting the nonprofit sector. In 2021, CharityWatch filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court related to a major case involving donor privacy and the flow of dark money within the nonprofit sector. The brief reflected CharityWatch’s longstanding involvement in broader issues affecting charitable accountability, transparency, donor rights, and public trust.
CharityWatch’s independence is central to its mission and methodology. CharityWatch is not funded by the nonprofits it evaluates or by corporate sponsors connected to the nonprofit industry. Rather, CharityWatch is funded primarily through small donations from individual members of the general public, with average donations typically under $100. Its board of directors does not include representatives of the nonprofit industry or executives from the charities being rated. CharityWatch has long prioritized maintaining its independence and watchdog role over maximizing revenue, because meaningful oversight requires the ability to investigate and critique charitable organizations without financial pressure from the very institutions being scrutinized.
Independent Oversight Is Essential To Donor Trust
DAV correctly notes in its memo that it performs significant services for veterans and their families. CharityWatch has never disputed that many veterans organizations, including DAV, perform important work.
But nonprofit impact and financial accountability are not mutually exclusive concepts, and donors are capable of understanding both simultaneously. In fact, strong transparency and governance help strengthen public trust in charitable missions.
The nonprofit sector depends heavily on donor confidence. That confidence is best protected not by discouraging scrutiny, but by responding substantively and transparently to questions about financial stewardship and governance.
CharityWatch believes donors benefit most when nonprofits address concerns directly with facts, documentation, and transparency rather than relying on personal attacks against critics or paid propaganda presented as independent reporting.
Reasonable people can disagree about how to interpret DAV’s financial reporting, cash reserves, and spending decisions. But analyzing publicly filed financial information is not an attack on veterans. It is part of nonprofit accountability aimed at protecting veterans and the donating public so that more of what people have to give ends up doing good.
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