COLUMBUS, Ohio — The goal of the Better Business Bureau Military and Veterans Initiative is to help veterans, service members and their families navigate real-life financial situations.

What You Need To Know

  • Military personnel, veterans and their families are susceptible to a wide variety of targeted scams

  • The program takes a "train the trainer" approach where members of the BBB along with credit counselors learn how to solve and navigate problems specific to the military and veteran community 

  • The program has helped over 51,000 veteran and military personnel

Veterans, military personnel and their families are the target community for many scams and often struggle reacclimating to society or relocating to another community. The BBB partnered with Zelle and the Association of Military Banks of America, to launch the BBB Military and Veterans Initiative. The unique part about the program is the “train the trainer” approach. 

Community outreach professionals from the BBB along with credit counselors from the National Foundation for Credit Counseling and accredited financial counselors from the Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education are provided the knowledge and training to lead monthly in-person and virtual programs tailored to military and veteran communities. 

Financial readiness is one of the key components of the programs. The initiative is designed to help military personnel safely navigate the marketplace and make smart purchases. According to the 2023 BBB scam tracker report, active duty military, their spouses and veterans lost 46% more money when they were victims of scams compared to the non-military consumer.  

Military scams aim to take advantage of deployment and relocation to trick people into sending money. This might look like fake debt collectors with urgent notices, grant applications that look like they are sent from government agencies and/or donation requests from suspicious and often fraudulent organizations. Due to frequent moves, service members and their families are also targeted by employment scams. 

“Employment scams, which are really high susceptibility with some of the spouses of military members because they're traveling around and, you know, they need to have opportunities that are online or something,” said Judy Dollison, who serves as the president of BBB Central Ohio. “Whether they're in a new community and they don't know anyone and they're trying to look for these positions. So those are some things we talk about.”

Over 2,000 workshops have been led by participating BBBs across the U.S. with about 51,000 military and veteran participants. BBB Central Ohio, BBB Dayton Miami Valley and BBB Northwest/west all have community outreach professionals involved in the program. You can find more information by clicking here.