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...

TO READ THE FULL STORY
SUBSCRIBE SIGN IN

Should You Donate to Wreaths Across America? A Lesson in Charitable Giving

Money Talks News
Stacy Johnson, Money Talks News•December 14, 2015

{snip}

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?

{snip}

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.

{snip}

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.

{snip}

(2) Up to No Good at Goodwill Omaha: Related Party Contract Conflicts Abound

{snip}

(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.

{snip}

Pandemic Nixes Holiday Wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery

ARLnow.com November 16, 2020 at 10:10pm

The annual holiday wreath-laying event at Arlington National Cemetery has been cancelled this year due to the pandemic.

“Due to the current COVID-19 situation across the nation and within the [National Capital Region], it is with great regret that ANC is cancelling Wreaths Across America,” the cemetery said in a tweet Monday night.

The average daily case rate hit a new all-time high in Arlington and across Virginia today. Nationwide, the number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 reached a new peak today.

The wreath event attracts tens of thousand of volunteers, who lay wreaths at the cemetery’s hundreds of thousands of graves a week or two before Christmas. More crowds of volunteers then help to “retire” the wreaths after the holiday.

{snip}

Smiley456 8 hours ago edited

Fine with me. WAA is a con job and people that buy their wreaths are unwitting suckers.

The same family that controls the charity also runs Worcester Wreath, the company that supplies and profits from the wreaths. Revenues in 2017 exceeded fourteen million dollars. This is the essence of self-dealing.

The charity could buy wreaths from local businesses close to the cemeteries on which they will be laid. But, nooooooo. This is a profit making endeavor....

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/wreaths-across-america-is-a-nonprofit-built-on-conflict-of-interest-still-a-nonprofit/

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Wreaths Across America: Is a Nonprofit Built on Conflict of Interest Still a Nonprofit?

Ruth McCambridge
December 11, 2018

December 10, 2018; Times Record

If one were to look at organizational scaling as success, Wreaths Across America would definitely be a model; it has seen phenomenal growth in contributions from $227,000 in 2011 to $14.6 million last year to support its work of laying wreaths at the graves of veterans. The only problem is that the same family that controls the charity also runs Worcester Wreath, the company that supplies and profits from the wreaths. This, of course, is the essence of self-dealing, though after being challenged the nonprofit now discloses this relationship on its website and in all of its reporting.

{snip}

Understanding How Wreaths Across America Works

The Difference Between Worcester Wreath Company & Wreaths Across America, the 501(c)3

The donation of wreaths from the Worcester Wreath Co. began as a personal tribute from the Worcester family to military veterans who gave their lives for this country. The family quietly made these wreath donations to Arlington National Cemetery for nearly 15 years before a photo set them on a path they hadn’t dreamed about. The photo — of the company’s wreaths at Arlington covered in snow — went viral in 2006. Shortly thereafter, the Worcester Wreath Co. began receiving unsolicited money from people who were touched by the wreaths and what they represented, and who wanted to participate by sponsoring wreaths themselves. This money was returned to donors because there was no mechanism in place for the family to accept the donations at that time.

In 2006, the family continued to give and at the requests made to them through thousands of emails, sent wreaths to well over 100 locations — seven ceremonial wreaths — one for each branch of the military plus POW/MIA. The Worcester family still donates those ceremonial wreaths to any location that wants to hold a Wreaths Across America ceremony. There is no requirement by the Worcester’s or the WAA organization to sponsor wreaths to participate.

In 2007, spurred by thousands of requests to help with wreath donations, the family gathered those who had been involved at Arlington National Cemetery to set up a 501(c)3, Wreaths Across America, to accommodate and honor the spirit of the donations. After forming WAA as a 501c3, Worcester Wreath continued its tradition of donating wreaths (and remains one of the largest donors to the organization to date) and producing the sponsored wreaths at a discounted market price.

At its conception, Wreaths Across America set a conflict of interest policy requiring any Worcester-related Board Members to recuse themselves from decisions related to the wreath procurement contract. All business relationships between Wreaths Across America and Worcester Wreath Company were disclosed to the IRS prior to its designation as a 501(c)3 status in 2007. Wreaths Across America has since been audited and its 501 (c)3 status was approved. All required information is disclosed annually.

In 2016, the WAA although not legally required to do so, implemented a Request For Proposals (RFP) process for the provision of wreaths in 2016. The process was developed under advisement of legal and procurement professionals and is being executed by a WAA Board RFP Committee. The process is described on the WAA website under Vendor Inquires and will be open to other bids again at the end of the current contract. To date, Wreaths Across America has not yet received interest from other vendors who are able to meet current contract demands.

The story of the formation of the nonprofit is a story that the family and the organization are proud to share regularly as part of its shared history. Wreaths Across America is proud of its commitment to its mission and offers full transparency with donors. To date, each opinion piece where the relationship and integrity of the organization and Worcester family is brought into question is based on misinformation and innuendo.

About Wreaths Across America's Executive Director

WAA’s executive director is the wife of the president of Worcester Wreath Co. She is a non-voting WAA board member and along with other executives on the board and its Chairman, receives no salary for her efforts, despite full time work and a deep commitment to the mission.

In Summary

For Wreaths Across America, wreath quality is important. Symbolically, wreaths represent everlasting life. These seemingly simple evergreens are so much more than a decoration placed on a grave. Wreaths Across America exists because hundreds of thousands of people across the United States and abroad responded to the emotional power of these wreaths and their simple ability to honor military members and their families. To this day, the outpouring of donations from thankful Americans humbles the Worcester family and makes them proud to be a part of something they never foresaw or intended.

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.

{snip}