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Charitable Contributions for September 11: Protecting against Fraud, Waste, and Abuse.
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Mr. Vincent Bollon
Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to appear before this subcommittee today. My name is Vincent J. Bollon. I am the General Secretary-Treasurer for the International Association of Fire Fighters (the "IAFF"), which represents more than 245,000 professional fire fighters and paramedics who protect 80 percent of our nation's population. I am also Secretary-Treasurer and a director for the New York Firefighters 9-11 Disaster Relief Fund, which was established by the IAFF to provide humanitarian assistance to the families of fire fighters and emergency medical services personnel who died in connection with the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. I have a deep personal interest in the subject of today's hearings, because I am, and always will be, a New York City fire fighter. Prior to serving as General Secretary-Treasurer for the IAFF, I was President of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association of New York City. I have also served as an officer for the New York City Uniformed Fire Fighters Association, and I was a member of the Fire Department of New York for 33 years. The second I saw the Twin Towers collapse, I knew I had lost personal friends. We know now that 344 fire fighters and emergency medical service personnel died in the line of duty on September 11. To put things in perspective, the most fire fighters ever lost due to one incident prior to September 11 was twenty-four, during an incident that occurred more than 100 years ago. We lost so many of our members on September 11 because they continued to enter the World Trade Center and climb the stairs as they were trained to do even after the second airplane struck. The number of fire fighter casualties was made even worse because fire fighters both coming off their shifts and coming on their shifts responded to the alarms. I am both proud and humbled to tell you that their rescue efforts saved thousands of civilian lives. For our New York fire fighters, it is still September 11. I cannot find the words to describe the impact that this event has had on the surviving members of our two New York locals and the hundreds of widows and fatherless children that our fallen heroes have left behind. But I can describe the enormous financial impact that this horrible tragedy will have on the fallen fire fighters' families. Years after the memorial services are held, hundreds of mortgages will still have to be paid, hundreds of dependents will still need to be fed and clothed, and hundreds of children will still need to be educated. And this only begins to describe part of the financial needs that will arise in the future for the families of the fallen fire fighters. The IAFF has always played a role in assisting the families of fire fighters who are lost in the line of duty. The sheer enormity of the events of September 11, however, called for something more than our traditional response. As early as the afternoon of September 11, when we began to receive inquiries from around the world about how to assist the fire fighter victims of this tragedy, it became apparent that we would play a major role in managing this assistance. We decided that, above all, we owed it to the memory of our fallen fire fighters to do it right. In conjunction with the Executive Boards of our two New York affiliates, we immediately established the New York Firefighters 9-11 Disaster Relief Fund. The purpose of this Fund is to provide humanitarian aid to the families of fire fighters and emergency medical services personnel who died in connection with the destruction of the World Trade Center. It is authorized to receive and distribute funds to provide financial aid to the families of the fallen fire fighters in meeting their living expenses, including food, housing, clothing, medical care, education of children, transportation and other similar expenses. These funds will go directly to the families of the fallen fire fighters.Working with the assistance of top-notch legal counsel from a prominent Washington DC law firm, who donated their services on a pro-bono basis to establish the Fund, we organized the Fund as a non-profit charitable corporation to be governed by a six-person Board of Directors. We were granted tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code on September 26, 2001, a remarkably short period of time. From the beginning, the Fund has abided by the highest ethical and legal standards governing charitable fund administration. I will give you a few examples. Out of respect for the New York fire fighters, the Fund's Board of Directors immediately decided that the Fund would not lend its name to any solicitation activity that even hinted at commercial exploitation of the Fund's name, and we have decided to employ no professional fund-raisers. As a testament to the care with which we set up the Fund, we were pleased to learn that it was included on several prominent internet web-sites devoted to channeling financial assistance for September 11 victims to credible charity funds. As soon we learned of our Fund's inclusion on these sites, we carefully reviewed the laws of all fifty states to determine our obligations under each state's charitable solicitation laws,and we have applied to register the Fund in each of the states that requires charitable solicitation registration. We also established contact with the New York Attorney General's Office regarding its efforts to both track down fraudulent fund raising efforts and to coordinate charitable assistance relief for the September 11 victims. All of our hard work has paid off. As of this morning, the New York Firefighters 9-11 Disaster Relief Fund has raised $63 million. We have been extremely sensitive to the need to distribute this money as soon as possible to the families on whose behalf these funds were donated. In fact, we have already made two distributions of $10,000 apiece to each of the 344 families (amounting to nearly $7 million) to help meet their immediate financial needs. We made the first of these two distributions more than a month ago. While the Fund continues to receive money, the Fund's Board of Directors is now developing criteria to govern how the balance of this money will be disbursed to ensure that the families' humanitarian needs will be met in a manner consistent with our fiduciary duty and applicable law, including the Internal Revenue Code. We have also been extremely careful to ensure that the money donated to the fire fighters' families is not wasted on unreasonable administrative expenses. I am proud to report to this subcommittee that, to date, less than two-thirds of one-percent of the money donated to this Fund has been committed to administrative costs. We have been able to keep this percentage low because so many people - both within and outside of the IAFF - have donated so much of their time and hard work to ensuring the integrity of this Fund. And as a 501(c)(3) organization and a registered charity, we will submit publicly available reports to the Internal Revenue Service and the states detailing the amounts we have raised and paid out. We also continue to work on a daily basis to ensure that no person or party is using the good name of our Fund, or the logo of the IAFF, to defraud the public in the name of our fallen New York fire fighters. For instance, we recently shut down one fund-raiser who was soliciting funds over the Internet in the name of our Fund into an account that had no connection with our Fund. Relying upon the constant vigilance of our Board of Directors, our 245,000 IAFF members, and the state attorneys general offices, we will continue to make every effort to ensure that no money is fraudulently raised in the name of our Fund. My testimony here today provides only a glimpse into the efforts that have been taken by the International Association of Fire Fighters to address the events of September 11. Like so many other organizations, the IAFF has worked tirelessly to respond to this horrible tragedy. As a result of the careful and meticulous efforts of everyone involved, the New York Firefighters 9-11 Disaster Relief Fund will strive to meet the humanitarian needs of the families of our fallen fire fighters with minimal administrative costs and in a straightforward and honest manner. No fire fighter should have to think about who will take care of his family when he is entering a burning building to save your life. I will be happy to entertain any questions from members of the subcommittee.
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