Within hours of an American mass shooting, as tragic reports blaze across the nation, sympathetic Americans open up their wallets and send money to help.
In Uvalde, Tex., where 19 children and two teachers were slain last month, many GoFundMe and other accounts quickly sprang up — raising millions for the victims and their families, as well as other causes.
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Some survivors and families of victims in previous mass shootings say they are hardly aware of the fundraising as they cope with burying their loved ones. But in the weeks and months after a mass shooting, they begin to wonder about the donated millions. And the variety of different funds, they say, often leaves them frustrated and confused, with no easy way to track where it will go — or what it will be spent on.
“We’ve heard substantial numbers, millions that came flowing in to various people and organizations,” said Bob Weiss, whose daughter, 19-year-old Veronika Weiss, was among six people killed as she stood outside a sorority house near the University of California at Santa Barbara campus in 2014. “We never saw a dime. … I’m not looking to get rich, but with funeral expenses and all of that, $50,000 would have gone a long way.”
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Numerous victims’ relatives said they are frustrated that nonprofit groups often spend the donations on things that don’t directly benefit the victims or their survivors, fail to account for all the money collected and take a percentage of the donations as an administrative fee. But charities and those involved in raising money after mass shootings say their complaints speak to a philosophical divide in the nonprofit world.
Some believe all the funds should go directly to those wounded, or the family of those killed, to compensate for their losses. Others believe it should be spent on a broader set of goals — such as mental health treatment or resources for first responders. Defining who counts as a victim can be a fraught endeavor.
After each mass shooting, officials warn donors to be wary of fundraising scams, but there are few reports of fraud being documented and prosecuted.
Both their parents died in Uvalde. Now donors are raising millions.
The main fund after the shootings near the UCSB campus, in the community of Isla Vista, was administered by the university, and a spokeswoman said it was “prohibited from raising money for specific individuals due to the fact that it is a public institution.” Instead, it funded scholarships for future UCSB students.
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“The UC-Santa Barbara Community Fund was established to allow individuals to contribute to the endowment which honors our students who were victims and serves to memorialize their lasting contributions to our community,” said the spokeswoman, Kiki Reyes.
In Uvalde, Victims First, which routes donations exclusively to survivors and victims’ families, had collected more than $6.1 million by Wednesday. Other GoFundMe accounts, including one for each of the 19 victims, had raised another $7.1 million. The United Way established a “United with Uvalde Fund,” which will provide mental health services in the city, and donate to other nonprofit organizations “with experience and expertise in providing direct trauma services for communities impacted by trauma.”
Anita Busch, the founder of Victims First, said she believes that when people give money, they mean for it to go directly to those wounded or the family of those killed.
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“Our families over many years have been revictimized because the financial gifts given by a very generous and caring public have not reached the intended recipient,” said Busch, whose niece Micayla Medek was slain in 2012 in a mass shooting in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater. “The fact that it’s still going on, after all these years, when there is an established method now, born out of suffering and misery and grief, to help others, is unconscionable at this point.”
Groups that direct funds elsewhere say they are clear about the destination of donations. In Colorado, officials established the Colorado Healing Fund in 2018 as a permanent nonprofit to collect and distribute funds after mass shootings. Officials who work with the fund say they are transparent that the money is not going exclusively to those wounded, or to the survivors of those killed.
“We’re real clear with the people who donate to the Healing Fund, that money would go to people who lost loved ones, to people who were injured, and to the greater community … We feel perfectly comfortable with that,” said Nancy Lewis, executive director of the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance, which works with the Healing Fund to distribute money.
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She said other groups, such as Victims First and the National Compassion Fund, a subsidiary of the National Center for Victims of Crime, provide all their donations to the victims, but “that’s just not how we do it. It’s a philosophical difference.”
In Buffalo, where a gunman killed 10 people at a supermarket in May, officials enlisted the National Compassion Fund to collect and administer donations for the “Buffalo 5/14 Survivors Fund,” which will provide direct financial assistance to the survivors of the deceased and those directly affected. It has already raised more than $2.8 million.
A separate “Buffalo Together Community Response Fund” was launched to address community needs, long-term rebuilding and systemic issues for marginalized communities of color, the fund’s organizers have said. It is being coordinated by the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo and United Way of Buffalo & Erie County. The fund has said it is in its early stages, and will “develop specific guiding principles and processes for directing the fund’s resources.”
Busch said that after each shooting, her group reaches out to city leaders and corporate officials to offer guidance. Then they try to educate the public on the language used by various fundraisers, to be clear which ones are distributing to the survivors and victims’ families.
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In Virginia, the survivors of mass shootings at Virginia Tech and in Virginia Beach have proposed a permanent Virginia Mass Violence Care Fund, which would start with an initial state endowment of $10 million and be paid only to victims. The fund is still being considered by the Virginia General Assembly and Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R).
Victims of Va. Tech, Va. Beach mass shootings seek to create permanent fund for survivors, families
Jeffrey R. Dion, the executive director of the National Compassion Fund, said each community’s local committee is tasked with defining who is a victim in each case. In addition to those who are killed or wounded, those who were present and witnessed the event are typically included in the definition, Dion said. In Aurora, where 12 people were slain at a movie theater in 2012, those inside who watched others die were considered victims, Busch said. Those who were not in the immediate vicinity of an event are often excluded, Dion said.
Dion, whose older sister was slain by a serial killer in 1982, said the National Compassion Fund has distributed more than $110 million in 21 incidents since its founding in 2014.
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“The decisions have to be informed by local community values and local community experience,” Dion said.
The complaints from victims and their family members about how donations are disbursed date back to the 1999 Columbine High School mass shooting in Colorado.
In Newtown, Conn., about 77 different charities popped up after the 2012 slayings of 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The state attorney general monitored the donations and reported about $28 million was collected by the various charities. The largest collector of funds was the United Way of Western Connecticut, which helped operate the Newtown-Sandy Hook Foundation. The foundation collected more than $12 million in the months immediately after the shooting, distributed about $7.7 million to 40 families of the victims and survivors, and retained $4.3 million for “long term community needs,” according to an investigation by George Jepsen, then Connecticut’s attorney general.
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Four other funds that which raised about $1 million each told the attorney general they intended to use the money they raised for scholarships, mental health and medical needs, monuments and memorials, cultural events and support for at-risk youths. One group, the My Sandy Hook Family Fund, raised more than $1.6 million and disbursed more than 99 percent of those funds directly to the 26 families whose children or relatives were slain in the tragedy, the report said.
Neil Heslin, whose son Jesse Lewis was killed in the school, said in an interview, “The majority of the money, I don’t believe, goes to the victims.”
Jepsen’s investigation found that of the $28 million collected, only $9.3 million went directly to victims or their families. Much of the rest, according to his report, was reserved for future needs, such as mental health services. He also examined the work of the United Way of Western Connecticut and said in a 2013 letter that the “decision to retain $4 million” for “support services to the Newtown/Sandy Hook community” was “fully compliant with donor intent.”
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Heslin said he asked Jepsen to do more to verify the information provided by the charities, and Jepsen declined. “Here I was, somebody directly affected by that tragedy, asking for clarification, how it was being allocated. He should have been a little more explanatory. At that point we knew it wasn’t going anywhere,” Heslin said.
Jepsen said he had two lawyers and a paralegal assigned full time to monitor the charities, and “we found very little fraud,” and none with the United Way, which took in the majority of public donations. He issued a report after the money was disbursed and said in an interview, “I tried to serve as an honest broker of what went on.” Kim Morgan, CEO of the United Way of Western Connecticut, issued a statement in 2013 after Jepsen’s findings, saying it “validates that the United Way of Western Connecticut consistently honored the intent of donors” to provide funding for groups other than the direct victims.
The United Way declined repeated requests recently to discuss how they handle donations after mass killings. Some victims in Waukesha, Wis., where a man killed six people by driving through a crowd at a Christmas parade last November, criticized the United Way for distributing funds to groups other than victims. Nicole Angresano, vice president of community impact for the United Way of Greater Milwaukee and Waukesha County, told Fox 6 in Milwaukee, “Nowhere on our website does it say direct payments to families. It says ‘support’ for families. We consider the nonprofit sector to be part of that support.”
John Mackenzie, whose wife, 62-year-old Lynn Murray, was one of 10 people killed in a supermarket in Boulder, Colo., last year, strongly criticized the Colorado Healing Fund for its handling of nearly $5 million in public donations. “In no way, shape or form did they provide an accurate account of what they collected. I think they diverted a lot of funds to their own use,” he said. He said he could not document the diversion, but noted that the amount the fund declared to be collected had repeatedly changed, including in quarterly reports in which the amount collected decreased $70,000 from one report to the next.
Jordan Finegan, the executive director of the Healing Fund, said the amounts changed because some donations were wrongly counted twice, and that the fund for the Boulder shooting was being audited.
Both Mackenzie and Starr Bartkowiak, whose daughter was slain in the same incident, criticized the Healing Fund for keeping 5 percent of donations for administrative costs, and allotting more than $950,000 to the Boulder Strong Resource Center, dedicated to helping victims of the shooting over the long term. Bartkowiak doesn’t live in Boulder and can’t use the center.
Lewis said the Colorado Healing Fund had learned from Columbine and Aurora that some victims have long-term needs that aren’t known immediately after the trauma. She said a trial for the Boulder shooter could come soon. “We will see trauma come back up for people who were in that store,” Lewis said. “If we gave it [donated funds] all away on March 23 [immediately after the shooting], do we have the ability to deal with the trauma long term? No, we don’t. … We learned from Columbine and Aurora and Sandy Hook. How do you do it in a way that’s most helpful to people?”
Finegan said the Healing Fund had disbursed money totaling over $3 million to families of the 10 deceased and to 28 others present that day, $959,000 to the Boulder Strong Resource Center, and still had $570,000 to address long-term needs. “Healing from this trauma is a marathon and not a sprint,” Finegan said. She said victims from Columbine in 1999 and Aurora in 2012 “are just now reaching out for services to help support their recovery. … CHF was created so we can begin to plan for that now through the guidance of many experts, survivors and partners. … Our donors know that, as it is in our charter and on our website.”
Busch said there was no need to divert money to other social resources because “community nonprofits receive millions in grants from the state and federal governments every time after a mass shooting.” She has documented the influx of such grants after shootings, including $5 million from the state of Texas to El Paso agencies after a shooting there in 2019, and $2.2 million from the federal government to Dayton, Ohio, mental health and domestic violence groups after a shooting there in 2019.
“Victims can’t get grants,” she said. “This is it for them. It’s very difficult for them.”