How we verify 144,900+ veteran resources

1. Data sources

Records are aggregated from authoritative federal, state, and nonprofit sources. We never accept payment for inclusion. Original-source attribution is preserved in each record's data_source field.

2. Verification cadence

Records are maintained by automated pipelines plus a community-feedback review loop. Stale data is flagged + auto-demoted; broken URLs trigger Wayback Machine snapshots; contact details are ingested from authoritative federal and state directories and corrected when visitors report errors. We do not independently call-verify every phone number — see Phone accuracy below.

3. Completeness-score formula

The completeness_score (0-100, integer) is a deterministic function of which fields are populated + verification status + ProPublica match. No manual curation, no payment for placement. Recomputed nightly. Full formula:

Score is exposed in every /resource/{slug}-{id} page header (gold pill on /best-of/* pages) and in the /api/resources/bulk JSON. Reproducible — run our SQL against your own snapshot of /api/export/snapshot to get identical scores.

4. Geocoding pipeline

Records with a postal address are geocoded to FIPS-tract level via the US Census Geocoder (Single-Address One-Line API) wherever the address resolves to a census tract — most records, not all. Tract-level granularity (median ~4,000 residents per tract) lets us join records to ACS demographics + CDC PLACES health data + ACS housing burden — surfacing service deserts for grant proposals.

Pipeline:

1. Address normalized (USPS-compliant case + abbreviations)
2. POST to Census Geocoder Locations API benchmark Public_AR_Census2020
3. If match, capture lat/lng + FIPS state (2-digit) + FIPS county (3-digit) + FIPS tract (6-digit) + FIPS block group (1-digit) + match-type confidence
4. If no match, retry with address fuzz (drop apt#, normalize street suffixes); if still no match, mark geocode_source = 'failed' for manual review
5. Store + index FIPS columns for fast tract-level joins

Current FIPS-tract assignment: 75% of records (live count on /dashboard). Records without a tract match are mostly newer rows not yet run through the geocoder, PO Box addresses, or military APO/FPO.

5. Quality assurance

• URL health: HEAD probes on a rolling weekly schedule + on-demand. Google Safe Browsing API check (free tier 10K URLs/day). Records with broken URLs get website_status = 'broken' and a Wayback snapshot link.
• Phone accuracy: Phone numbers are ingested from authoritative federal and state directories (CMS, VA, HRSA, HUD, SAMHSA, state DVAs). We do not independently call-verify every number; accuracy is maintained through the community-feedback auto-triage loop — visitor reports of wrong or disconnected numbers escalate the record for correction. phone_verified + phone_type are reserved for records confirmed against an authoritative live source.
• EIN verification: 501(c)(3) records cross-referenced against ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Mismatched EINs flagged.
• Duplicate detection: dedup_candidates table holds suspected duplicates (same address + same name fuzz match) for staff review.
• Veteran relevance tier: Three tiers (veteran_primary = built for veterans; veteran_serving = veterans named target population; vet_accepting = general healthcare). Default search filters to first two tiers.
• Editorial review: Tier-1 (high-traffic, high-stakes) records get manual quarterly review. Editorial flags surface in verification_runs table.

6. Correction workflows

Anyone — including the listed organization, a veteran, a journalist, or a researcher — can submit a correction or addition. Workflow:

1. Submit via POST /api/feedback or email info@warriorsfund.org
2. Review queue at resource_feedback table
3. Staff review within 5 business days
4. Verified corrections committed; original-state archived in resource_history for full audit trail
5. If the change came from the listed organization, reply with confirmation + commit timestamp

7. Open-data license

All Wounded Warriors datasets are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0). Free to share, adapt, and build upon for any purpose (commercial included), provided you credit "Wounded Warriors (EIN 86-1336741)" and link back to https://warriorsfund.org/.

Bulk data: CSV · JSON · SHA-256 integrity-stamped snapshot · Project Open Data v1.1 / DCAT 1.1 catalog

8. Hash integrity + reproducibility

Every full-database snapshot ships with a SHA-256 hash so you can verify integrity. The snapshot is reproducible: given the same verified_date as-of-time + the same source-data state, our scoring formula returns identical scores. We publish the snapshot generator + scoring SQL for full reproducibility.

How to verify:

1. Fetch /api/export/snapshot → response includes {snapshot_hash, generated_at, ...}
2. Compute SHA-256 of the canonicalized JSON body (sorted keys, no whitespace)
3. Compare against snapshot_hash
4. If match, you have a tamper-evident copy of the directory as-of generated_at

About this disclosure

This methodology page is the canonical reference for our data pipeline. It's updated whenever the pipeline changes — see Git history at github.com/EmperorMew/WWF for the audit trail. Foundation officers + academic reviewers + journalists doing source-evaluation: this page should answer your "how do you verify?" question definitively. If anything is unclear, email info@warriorsfund.org.