For a charity supposedly devoted to helping veterans, the Wounded Warrior Project spends an enormous amount of time suing or threatening to sue small non-profits—spending resources on litigation that could otherwise be spent on the vets they profess to serve.

At issue is the Wounded Warrior Project’s brand: the charity has become particularly litigious over the use of the phrase ‘wounded warrior’ or logos that involve silhouetted soldiers. At least seven such charities have discussed their legal problems with The Daily Beast.

The Wounded Warrior Project has become, in the words of those they’ve targeted for legal action, a “bully,” more concerned about their image and increasing the size of the organization than actually providing services to wounded warriors.

“They do try to bully smaller organizations like ourselves... They get really territorial about fundraising,” said the president of one charity with the name “wounded warrior” in their title.

He asked to remain anonymous out of fear that the Wounded Warrior Project would launch legal action against his group if he spoke out. His group hasn’t been sued, but he said individuals from the WWP had pressured him to change their name. “They’re so huge. We don’t have the staying power if they come after us—you just can’t fight them.”

The Wounded Warrior Project’s latest target is the Keystone Wounded Warriors, a small, all-volunteer charity based in Pennsylvania.

How small? Keystone Wounded Warriors had a total annual revenue of just over $200,000 as recently as 2013. That’s less than the $375,000 that Wounded Warrior Project executive director Steven Nardizzi was personally paid in 2013.

The Keystone group was forced to spend more than two years and some $72,000 in legal fees to defend themselves from the legal actions of the Wounded Warrior Project, which brings in annual revenues of close to $235 million, according to the outfit’s most recent tax forms.

“That’s money that we could have used to pick up some homes in foreclosure, remodel them, and give them back to warriors. We spent that money on defending ourselves instead,” said Keystone Wounded Warriors executive director Paul Spurgin, a Marine Corps Vietnam War veteran.

“The lawsuit was just the coup de grâce,” he added. “They want us gone.”  At issue is their similar logo and names—Wounded Warrior Project complained that they will “suffer irreparable damage to its business, goodwill, reputation and profits.”  

The Wounded Warrior Project did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But in an interview with local Virginia news channel WTKR, Nardizzi said that most organizations simply change their names when asked.

The Wounded Warrior Project has a history of legal attacks against those they perceive to be infringing on their brand. However, the term “wounded warrior” is a generic term in the military community for an injured service member. The Army has a Wounded Warrior Program. A band at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is called the MusiCorps Wounded Warrior Band. 

And “the Marine Corps’ own battalion… their unit for service members who have been wounded is called the Wounded Warrior Regiment,” pointed out Ann Barnwell, a spokeswoman for Hope for the Warriors, a veterans charity that was threatened for five years between 2007 and 2012 by the Wounded Warriors Project over their logo.   

At the time, both organizations had logos featuring the silhouettes of servicemembers. Hope for the Warriors eventually did change their emblem. They say that was not in response to legal threats, but rather the modernize their image.

Wounded Warrior Project is a gigantic organization that has yielded a plethora of complaints from the veterans community. Many vets have been critical, that despite hundreds of millions in revenue, the Wounded Warrior Project does not effectively spend their money to help veterans. The group has received mixed results from charity watchdogs: Charity Watch gave Wounded Warrior a C+ in 2013, up from a D two years prior. Charity Navigator gave it three out of four stars.

“Have you seen their 990 [tax form]? We often get confused with them—they’re not looked upon very highly by [the veterans community],” said David Brog, executive director of the Air Warrior Courage Foundation, which has not been threatened with litigation by the Wounded Warrior Project.

Many of the charities that Wounded Warrior Project threatens are more highly rated. Three of the charities interviewed for this story, for example, received four stars from Charity Navigator. The others were either not large enough or had not been around long enough to be rated by the charity watchdog.