Most VFW members simply attend their Post meeting and remain fairly oblivious to the hierarchy of VFW which is fine since our involvement is primarily in our local community. However, each Post is a member of a District. Post 8870 is a member of District 1 and Washington state has 16 Districts in total.
An oddity is that there is a District 17 but no District 8. The Districts are there simply to assist the Posts in their tasks. At the state level, the VFW organization is described as a “Department” and the District Commanders together with the Department line officers form a group known as the “Council of Administration” whose job it is to govern the state organization. Beyond the state level, you have a National organization made up of the various Department Commanders and line officers elected at the National Convention. Like the military, you work within your chain of command so a Post member who has a grievance about a Post Commander would first approach his Judge Advocate who in turn refers the issue to the District Commander. That’s a very quick description of the organizational chart.
