The television commercials, usually seen at night, powerfully combine empathy and patriotism. The ads produced by the Wounded Warrior Project tell emotional stories of veterans struggling to adapt to life after combat, often suffering with physical and emotional trauma caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The charitable organization has helped thousands of wounded veterans through a variety of programs, but a recent report based on interviews with former employees has raised questions about how the charity spends money.

One troubling sign is that 40 percent of every donated dollar is spent on overhead, rather than on direct services to wounded veterans. The charity-rating group Charity Navigator reported that figure based on Wounded Warrior financial statements from 2014. For comparison, another group benefiting veterans, Semper Fi Fund, reportedly spent only 8 percent of its funds on overhead.

Former Wounded Warrior employees have told of lavish spending on travel, dinners, hotels and conferences.

Reports that Wounded Warrior does not look like a typical charity, meaning modest salaries and frugal spending on travel and hotels, is not accidental. The CEO of the organization has said he sees Starbucks and other for-profit companies as a model, and he has been aggressive in growing the charity.

The charity raised $372 million in 2015, while also growing its staff dramatically.

Former employees recalled flying across the country for meetings that were not particularly important and noted that they often booked business-class seats and stayed at $500-a-night hotels.

A recent New York Times article outlining spending at Wounded Warrior described a 2014 meeting when the charity flew all of its 500 employees to Colorado and put them up in a five-star hotel.

This kind of spending might not raise eyebrows at a Fortune 500 company or Wall Street bank. But when most people think of charitable organizations, they don’t think of business class seats or five-star hotels — they think of frugal spending on overhead with limited travel budgets, modest hotels.

The Wounded Warrior organization now operates 22 locations with programs helping wounded veterans reintegrate into civilian life, attend college and find work.

The charity’s work does help veterans, but more veterans could be helped if more of the donated dollars went to benefit veterans, rather than to marketing, management compensation and public relations.

The record-setting fundraising in 2015 came mostly in small donations and from people over 65.

That’s not hard to believe, because the ads pull at the heart strings. The image of veterans struggling with physical, emotional and mental challenges are powerful. The reaction to the ads is compassion mixed with patriotism — and that combination opens wallets.

While not discounting the value of the work being done by Wounded Warrior Project, donors to know how much of their gift will go to veterans and how much goes to pay overhead, including salaries and travel.

Charity Watch, which monitors spending by charities across the country, took notice of Wounded Warrior’s rapid growth and aggressive marketing and has been rating the charity since 2011, when it earned a “D” grade. Since then, Wounded Warrier has never been graded higher than a “C,” no doubt because of its spending practices.

Many people making donations to Wounded Warrior still support the charity even if they knew that only 60 percent of their donation would be used to directly benefit wounded veterans. But people should know how efficiently their donations are being spent — and should also know that other charities do similar work, but keep spending down so that 90 percent of all donated funds go directly to benefit wounded veterans.