This page explains the commercial relationships behind Veterans Alliance, so you can weigh what you read here knowing how it is funded.
It follows the Federal Trade Commission’s guidance that material connections be disclosed clearly and conspicuously, close to the claim they affect.
Section 4 describes how the directory orders results. It is generated from the same rules the site applies, so it cannot describe an order we do not use.
1. What is advertising, and what is not
The benefit corpus — every state and county record, its value, its eligibility rule and its statutory citation — is editorial. No organisation pays to appear in it, to be described in a particular way, or to be ranked above another.
Where a commercial relationship exists, it is labelled where it appears. Compared products are marked as such and are advertising, not recommendations.
2. The tools take no lead and pay no referral fee
The calculators on this site — the benefits checkup, the disability rating estimator, the home loan eligibility wizard, the BAH calculator and the loan rate estimator — return their full result immediately. Nothing is held back pending a form, an account, or a phone number.
None of them sells your details to a lender, a law firm, or a claims agent.
Veterans Alliance does not prepare, present, or prosecute VA claims. Where you need representation we point you to a VA-accredited representative at no cost, and take no part of any fee. Charging an unaccredited fee to prepare a claim is prohibited by 38 U.S.C. §5901.
3. How partner relationships work
Organisations can apply to appear in the Veterans Alliance partner directory. A partner profile is a listing, not an endorsement, and appearing in the directory does not affect how a benefit is described anywhere on this site.
Partners are reviewed before publication. We may receive compensation from some partner relationships; where that is true of something you are looking at, it is labelled.
4. How the directory orders results
The directory lists government agencies, nonprofits and companies that help veterans. Some companies pay for placement in it. This is exactly how the order is decided, in the order the rules are applied.
1. Who they are comes first
Government agencies are listed first, then nonprofits, then companies. No payment changes that order. A sponsored company is never shown above a nonprofit or a government office, whatever it has paid.
2. Paid placement exists, and only among companies
Within the company section only, sponsors appear before unpaid companies. Every sponsored result is labelled as an ad. Sponsorship is sold per category and per state, in a fixed number of seats, and buying one moves a company up only among other companies.
3. Everything else is ordered by fit, not by money
Unpaid results — and sponsors against each other — are ordered by how well they match what you searched for, then by whether serving veterans is their focus, then by how strongly their credentials are verified, then by distance from you, then by how complete their record is, then alphabetically.
4. You only see who can actually help you
A listing appears for your state only if it serves your state — because it works nationally, because your state is in its service area, or because you are inside the distance it travels.
Sponsorship is sold as a fixed number of seats per category and per state, at a published price, and buying one moves a company up only among other companies. Nothing in the government or nonprofit sections can be bought — that is enforced by the database, not by a policy. Free and official help is listed first on every page of the directory, always.
Every sponsored result carries an "Ad" label in the same place on every card, and a sponsor’s link to their own site is marked as paid. We do not publish ratings or reviews of any organisation, and no organisation can pay to change how a benefit is described anywhere on this site.
6. Questions
If you think something on this site reads as a recommendation when it is advertising, tell us: info@va.org. That is a defect and we will fix it.
Veterans Alliance is privately owned and operated to serve veterans. We are not affiliated with the Department of Veterans Affairs.