Criteria for Listed Organizations

DoD Community and Public Outreach & Listed Organizations

I.       MISSION OF DoD COMMUNITY AND PUBLIC OUTREACH

• To foster public awareness and understanding of Department of Defense missions, personnel, facilities, equipment and programs through community outreach opportunities and activities.

II.    OBJECTIVES OF OURMILITARY.MIL

• To educate external stakeholders on the state of our military and our military families.
• To communicate the wide range of resources available to the military community from non-profit organizations, veterans service organizations, businesses, community groups, individuals, and the Federal Government.

III. POLICY

• No product endorsements or preferential treatment is given to any organization, agency or program that is listed on the DoD Community Relations Web site.
• No payment of any kind is accepted in exchange for inclusion on the DoD Community and Public Outreach Web site.
• DoD Community and Public Outreach has standardized criteria for organizations, agencies and programs to be listed as Community Resources on OurMilitary.mil. These criteria reinforce the intent to communicate citizen support to service members, veterans, and their family members.
• Criteria for organizations to be listed as Community Resources on OurMilitary.mil include:
  • Tax exempt status as recognized by the IRS;
  • Non-partisanship;
  • Favorable vetting by at least two charity evaluators such as the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, Charity Navigator, Guidestar, or a similar independent charity evaluator, or be part of the Combined Federal Campaign and also have been vetted by at least one other independent evaluator;
  • No representations as being part of or endorsed by the DoD;
  • No improper use or abuse of personally identifiable information;
  • No publicity inconsistent with the mission of DoD, DoD Office of Community and Public Outreach, or www.OurMilitary.mil;
  • Does not exhibit hate, bias, or discrimination on the basis of age, gender, race, or disability, and
  • Are not on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terror Organizations
• The DoD Office of Community and Public Outreach reserves the right to deny or remove an organization from OurMilitary.mil for any reason, including when organizations:
  • Provide misleading information or unsubstantiated claims;
  • Conflict with the DoD Office of Community and Public Outreach mission and objectives, or violate any of its policies; or
  • Do not conform to the criteria used to  list organizations on OurMilitary.mil, including the above criteria.

While DoD does not endorse any specific charity evaluator, the following organizations provide a variety of different reviews and promote transparency for you, our visitors, as you seek to learn more about community-based support for our service members and their families. To learn more about a non-profit organization, visit the Web site of the charity evaluation organizations noted in parenthesis next to the group, and use the search function by typing in the group’s name. Please note that although the CFC is not a charity evaluator, and does not have an organization search function on its site, it does vet charities against regulatory standards. Check your local CFC charity brochure for a list of participating organizations.

A Few Independent Evaluators

Key: Combined Federal Campaign (CFC); Better Business Bureau (BBB); Charity Navigator (CN); GuideStar (GS)