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“НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛИСТОПАД 2017 WWW. UNWLA .ORG 1 5 DESIGNATED FUNDS Part IV of presentation compiled by the UNWLA Parliamentarian, retired U.S. Administrative Law Judg e Oksana Xenos, which was delivered on May 28, 2017, by Vera Andrushkiw (President of De- troit Regional Council) at the UNWLA XXXI Convention at Tampa, Florida. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the views of the Internal Revenue Service, the So- cial Security Administration, or the United States government. Questions have come up about certain existing restricted, or “frozen” funds, specifically how they can be employed in view of restrictions placed on their us e by donors. I cannot address these specific funds, be- cause they require a comprehensive scrutiny of their operative provisions by a New York state attorney experienced in trust matters, and that I am not. This is a complicated area of trust law, which dif fers from state to state. Suffice it to say that the violation or termination of a trust may require the involvement of a state attorney general’s office and sometimes even a court order. But prospectively speaking, it is important to understand how to pro perly handle the two types of restricted funds : solicited and unsolicited designa- tions. Solicited designations A solicitation means that we asked for donations for a particular cause. The solicitation can be by letter, email, website, or some other way. A donation given in response to a direct solicitation is permanently dedicated to that purpose. No matter how dire the circumstances, the money cannot be moved around if those funds are the result of a direct solicitation. You may recall that in the afterma th of 9/11, the director of a large, national charity was compelled to resign after it was revealed that he did just this very thing. Was it for a good reason? Yes. But was it legal? No. Unsolicited designations Sometimes a donor designates a specific pu rpose without having been solicited by the charity. For exam- ple, let’s say a donor contributes a sum of money to our Scholarship Fund, but decides on his own to “des- ignate” that those funds only be used to fund scholarships for students in Brazil. In this situation, can we legally divert that money to fund scholarships, say, in Poland? The answer is yes. There are, however, cer- tain times when it would be prudent to honor an unsolicited designation, but the key point is that only the charity itself can tie s trings to a donation that comes with an unsolicited designation. One more point about solicited designations. There are ways to avoid this problem. One way is to provide a disclaimer with the solicitation stating that we reserve the right to move money as we see fit. Or, the disclaimer may state that any funds received over and above the budget of the solicited purpose will be placed into the general fund. Finally, if it’s too late for a disclaimer, we can go back to the donor and ask permission to repurpo se the donation. Of course, the donor has the legal right to say no, though that is unlikely in most legitimate situations of need. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Correctio n. There was a discrepancy between the photo published on page 3 of the September 2017 issue of Our Life and the caption printed at the bottom of page 11. The photo was a group picture taken at the Branches - at - Large meeting held at the XXXI UNWLA Conventio n on Sunday, May 28, 2017. Line 4 of the caption should have read “Branches - at - Large East Co - L iaison Orysia Zinycz” (not O. Czerkas) with BAL East presidents, including Olha Sperkacz, newly elected Co - Liaison of BAL East, standing beside Ms. Zinycz. We apo logize for the confusion.
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