OnePulse Donors Have Little Chance Of Being Refunded: Watchdog
thegailygrind.comJust two weeks after the onePulse Foundation Board of Directors voted to dissolve the nonprofit organization, the head of a charity watchdog organization says donors stand little chance of ever seeing their donations reimbursed.
After spending seven-and-a-half years working to create a memorial honoring the 49 people killed in the Pulse Nightclub shooting on June 12, 2016, the onePulse Foundation never broke ground on the project. “To see this money essentially wasted and these promises not fulfilled – it’s a real tragedy,” said Laurie Styron, CEO of CharityWatch, a charity watchdog organization based in Chicago.
Styron told News 6 it is unlikely that donors who wrote a $20 or $100 check will see any refunds as a result of the organization dissolving. “When it comes to small individual donations – generally speaking, people are out of luck,” she said. “There are a lot of rules and laws in place that dictate that charities have pretty narrow choices when it comes to how to distribute restricted funds or unrestricted funds, even when they’re a nonprofit organization.” A restricted fund is a donation made for a specific program or budget item, like the memorial project.
An unrestricted fund is a donation made to the organization with no note detailing a specific program. “A lot of times that money is long gone,” Styron said. “It’s been spent on other things, whether it’s other programs or on overhead.
