Sunday: Interest on bombing fund used for other purposes, records show
BY ZIVA BRANSTETTER World Enterprise Editor
Saturday, November 10, 2012
11/10/12 at 7:54 PM
A foundation overseeing $10 million in funds for survivors of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing set aside $4.4 million in interest earnings for other purposes while allocating less to the victims’ long-term medical needs, records show.
The nonprofit Oklahoma City Community Foundation spent $1.1 million to help 166 survivors of the bombing in the last three fiscal years, slightly more than it earned from investing the money during that time, records show. It spent a total of $60,000 on medical care for survivors and charged $487,000 to the fund during the last three years to pay for staff salaries, records show.
Foundation officials say they charged no administrative fees to the Oklahoma City Disaster Relief Fund during the first decade after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The staff salaries are for two case workers who provide direct services to bombing survivors, they say.
The Murrah fund has no paid staff and is overseen by a board of five volunteer trustees.
Steve Mason, a trustee of the foundation, said dividing the remaining donations among survivors of the April 19, 1995, tragedy — as some survivors have called for — is not what donors intended.
“The donor intent in 1995 was, ‘Take care of these people. Take care of their need,’ versus taking it and dividing it according to need,” Mason said in an interview with the World and The Oklahoman.
Read more in Sunday's World.
Associated Images:
The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is shown following the April 19, 1995, bomb blast that killed 168 people and injured scores of others. Tulsa World file
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