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AMVETS Post 181 amvets 181 amvets 181 amvets 181

Volunteer-Led

AMVETS or American Veterans is a volunteer-led organization formed by World War II veterans of the United States. It advocates for its members as well as for causes that it deems helpful to the nation at large. The group holds a congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code; it is a 501(c)19 organization.

As one of America’s vet­er­ans ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions, AMVETS (or Amer­i­can Vet­er­ans) has a proud his­tory of assist­ing vet­er­ans and spon­sor­ing numer­ous pro­grams that serve our coun­try and its cit­i­zens. The help­ing hand that AMVETS extends to vet­er­ans and their fam­i­lies takes many forms.

One of the most vis­i­ble is our net­work of trained national ser­vice offi­cers (NSOs) accred­ited by the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs. Funded by the AMVETS National Ser­vice Foun­da­tion, these ded­i­cated men and women can be found in close to 50 states, pro­vid­ing sound advice and prompt action on com­pen­sa­tion claims at no charge to the veteran.


Our Objectives

In one recent year alone, AMVETS national ser­vice offi­cers processed more than 24,000 claims that resulted in vet­er­ans receiv­ing some $400 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion. This com­mit­ment to ser­vice traces its roots back to 1948, when our NSOs first began help­ing vet­er­ans of World War II to obtain the ben­e­fits promised them by the fed­eral government.

Coin­ci­den­tally, it was these return­ing vet­er­ans who pro­vided the impe­tus for form­ing AMVETS in the first place. At the time, many of them belonged to vet­er­ans clubs on col­lege cam­puses. As the num­ber of returnees swelled into the mil­lions, it was evi­dent that some sort of nation­ally orga­nized assis­tance for them would be needed. The older estab­lished national groups wouldn’t do; the lead­ers of this new gen­er­a­tion of vet­er­ans wanted their own organization.

With that in mind, eigh­teen of them, rep­re­sent­ing nine vet­er­ans clubs, met in Kansas City, Mo., and founded The Amer­i­can Vet­er­ans of World War II on Dec. 10, 1944. Less than three years later, on July 23, 1947, Pres­i­dent Harry S. Tru­man signed Pub­lic Law 216, mak­ing AMVETS the first World War II orga­ni­za­tion to be char­tered by Congress.