Pandemic Nixes Holiday Wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery

[mahatmakanejeeves]

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.

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The first commenter beat me to it:

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.

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NEW: There will be no holiday wreath event at Arlington National Cemetery this year

Link to tweet

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Wreaths Across America Has Family Ties to Its Supplier

Thu May 14, 2020: Wreaths Across America Has Family Ties to Its Supplier

I'm clearing out old newspapers. This article in The Wall Street Journal. caught my eye. It's from 2015. I don't know if the financial ties are still in place.

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...

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

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

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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?

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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.

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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.

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

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(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.

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[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. Pandemic halts Wreaths Across America event at Arlington National cemetery

Home / News / U.S.

Pandemic halts Wreaths Across America event at Arlington National cemetery

By STARS AND STRIPES
Published: November 16, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in yet another cancellation, and this one affects one of the Washington, D.C. area's beloved holiday traditions.

Arlington National Cemetery announced Monday afternoon that it would not take part in this year's Wreaths Across America, a Maine-based charity event in which volunteers place Christmas wreaths on graves at cemeteries around the world. The Soldiers and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery is also affected. ... This year's Wreaths Across America event at Arlington had been scheduled for Dec. 19.

According to an ANC press release, "Following a thorough analysis of the annual Wreaths Across America Wreaths-In event this year, and in close collaboration with the Joint Task Force, National Capital Region, ANC determined that it could not implement sufficient controls to mitigate the risks associated with hosting an event of this size under current and forecasted infection and transmission rates, while still conducting a respectful and honorable public event.

"This decision applies only to Arlington National Cemetery and Soldiers and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery."

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[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. BREAKING: Holiday Wreath Event Back on at Arlington National Cemetery

UPDATE: The president now says he reversed the cancellation of the annual holiday wreath event https://arlnow.com/2020/11/16/pandemic-cancels-holiday-wreaths-at-arlington-national-cemetery/

Link to tweet

BREAKING: Holiday Wreath Event Back on at Arlington National Cemetery

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

Update at 2:20 p.m. — Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy has directed Arlington National Cemetery to host the Wreaths Across America event this year, despite the worsening pandemic, per a tweet Tuesday afternoon. McCarthy said the event will be held safely, but it was not immediately clear how.

I have directed Arlington National Cemetery to safely host Wreaths Across America. We appreciate the families and visitors who take time to honor and remember those who are laid to rest at our nation’s most hallowed ground.

Link to tweet

Update at 3:50 p.m. — President Trump now says that he reversed the decision to cancel the annual holiday wreath event this year.

Link to tweet

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