Phil Palmer is a Citadel ’05 Marine combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient. After his 2013 post-discharge PTSD/TBI diagnosis revealed that exercise, nutrition, and peer mentorship outperformed traditional VA care for him, he built WarriorWOD in 2020 to address what he calls the “invisible wounds of service” — a structured six-month recovery program with monthly PCL-5 and C-SSRS assessments and a Battle Buddy mentor network. He is the single full-time staff member. The program has served more than 350 veterans with an 85% completion rate; 80% of graduates report clinically significant PTS reductions, and 67% report a drop in suicidal ideation. When he signed up to Granted, the enrichment pipeline pulled his program’s clinical evidence base directly off warriorwod.org. He clicked "Generate LOI" on the Call of Duty Endowment funder profile and Granted produced a complete draft — the right epidemiology, the right ask of $380,000 for 200 additional veterans, the right closing. He never opened the chat-with-writing-assistant. He didn’t need to. His session is what taught Granted that evidence-rich founders need a richer one-shot LOI exporter — not a longer drafting loop.
Each day, more than 17 U.S. veterans die by suicide … the economic toll of lost productivity, health care, and social services amounts to over $25 billion annually.
