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"Failing to Serve America’s Heroes on the Home Front" seriously distorts the intent and services provided by the Air Force Aid Society. The Society has been in existence since 1942 and for the past 65 years has been providing emergency assistance to America’s Airmen. In 2006 we provided direct assistance to over 33,000 Air Force members and their families thru emergency assistance loans and grants, education grants and thru many additional AFAS sponsored community assistance programs The facts are the Air Force Aid Society last year spent $11.2 million in direct support and an additional $8.1 million in no-interest loans to support Airmen and their families. Our donations for the year totaled $6.4 million. Air Force Aid in fact provided $3 in support for every $1 donated. This three for one spending is only possible thanks to our endowment which generates sufficient funds from prudent long term investments to cover all our operating expenses and ensures that we can continue to provide the current level of support to airmen around the world. The mainstream charity rating organizations such as Charity Navigator and Guidestar all give the Air Force Aid Society as well as our sister military relief agency, Army Emergency Relief, consistently high ratings. The "F" for us by the American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP) is based upon the size of our endowment. AIP makes the assumption that endowments are bad and that the only reserves that a charity should maintain would be approximately three years of reserves. Yet it is through our endowment, that our investments provide the major source of funds for on-going support to our airmen and their families. If you refer back to the AIP website you will see they caveat their grades when they state "...if you agree with these charities that reserves greater than three year’s budget are necessary to enhance their long-term stability, you may wish to disregard the lower grades that AIP assigns based on the basis of high assets."
At the Air Force Aid Society we take the long view that America will always have an Air Force and there will always be Airmen that need our help. We take pride in keeping a very lean organization with only 23 paid staff members despite worldwide responsibilities. We take pride that the great majority of our donations come from the very Airmen we serve. We are proud of our motto - - "Airmen helping Airmen." We have a long history of helping our wounded veterans; but, just as we have in the past, we are also ready to help active duty Airmen, Guardsmen, Reservists, their dependents and widows during the next Katrina or Mount Pinatubo. ABC News' failure to present "the rest of the story" will not deter us, but make no mistake - - it will make our work more difficult.
John D. Hopper Jr.
CEO, Air Force Aid Society
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