A Note from the Board

The Board of Directors of the Stronghold Freedom Foundation would like to release this statement to address the questions posed in our FB community:

Our Financial Director completed our Annual Financial Report and sent it to every board member on January 3rd. Current board members received and acknowledged the receipt of the Annual Financial Report. In accordance with the foundation’s bylaws, this information is available upon individual request - for privacy reasons. Please keep in mind that the full report has the names and amounts of money that we give to various K2 Veterans throughout the year. The full Annual Financial Report (with names redacted) is available upon request. While we strive for transparency, we must also protect those that we help. We were not required to file an IRS Form 990 with the IRS for 2019 and therefore have no tax information to post at this time. When we complete and file the 2020 IRS Form 990, we will post it publicly on the website.

We had planned many things, including glossy annual reports, membership swag, and new initiatives to care for K2 Veterans. But these plans were waylaid in December because the Board was forced in December to spend several months investigating, addressing, and resolving complaints of inappropriate behavior by a board member. While we cannot and will not go into the details, it was immediately apparent that this Board Member's conduct would become detrimental to the movement as a whole. The process was painful and frustrating; the Board was forced to investigate a person we all loved and trusted and deal with them acting out because of the actions we were forced to take. Unfortunately, this behavior continues today, and it continues to hurt not just SFF and its mission but also K2 Veterans and their families alike.
In this era of "cancel culture," if this person's behavior had come to light, SFF and the mere mention of Karshi Khanabad Veterans could have been immediately linked to this behavior, and we could not risk jeopardizing our ability to fight for you. The shake-up forced SFF to reorganize; the Board, the staff, and in some cases, our very processes required change.

Because of the harmful and hurtful things that this person continues to do, we have had to regularly stop our work to deal with their attempts to undermine this organization and our overall mission to help K2 Veterans.

We have finally regrouped somewhat, and our mission has continued in the interim. But unfortunately, some of the "polished" things we hoped to have done lost priority to things like partnerships to get discounted nexus letters, training to help K2 Veterans with their claims, and assisting individual K2 Vets with issues. We will be posting our 2021 and beyond goals on the website. In a nutshell, they are to continue to find partnerships that help K2 Veterans and their families, improve our systems to help K2 Veterans and their families, be the voice of K2 Veterans and their families where they had no voice before, and continue making connections that help K2 Veterans and their families in DC. We will put a link to these in the group and on our FB page. The Board of Directors is confident that our current team can meet our goals and all the challenges that we face. We also hope to grow that team in the coming months to face new challenges. Thanks for your understanding.

Mark Jackson our Board Chair and Sarah Puerner our Executive Director are always available via email or DM to answer any questions that you have.

Signed the Board of Directors – SFF

Mark Jackson
Kim Brooks
David Puerner
Natalie White
Paul Caltagirone
Sarah Puerner