http://www.nypost.com/seven/09092007/news/regionalnews/9_11_fund_has_no_class.htm?page=29/11 FUND HAS NO CLASS KIN STIFFED BY $125M SCHOLARSHIP CHARITY
By SUSAN EDELMAN
EXCLUSIVE:
September 9, 2007 -- A charity that tapped the influence of former President Bill Clinton and ex-Sen. Bob Dole and raised more than $125 million to send the children of 9/11 to college is stiffing families it promised to help, The Post has learned.
Clinton and Dole spearheaded a campaign for Scholarship America that raked in millions to "guarantee a college education to the children and spouses of everyone who was killed or disabled on Sept. 11," as Clinton vowed on the Larry King show in September 2002.
Major corporations, including Citigroup, DaimlerChrysler and Major League Baseball, gave $5 million or more. Hundreds of other companies and individuals pitched in $10,000 and up.
In the six years since, the Minnesota-based charity, which launched its "Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund" days after the terror attacks, has doled out only $19 million in college aid to 731 recipients.
But the fund is sitting on $133 million as donations continue to flow in and the money is invested.
Yet the charity has refused or slashed aid to families that earn interest from their 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund payments, saying that's taxable income that reduces their need.
The fund says its goal is to distribute all the money to 9/11 victims by the year 2030 - but will use leftover funds as it pleases for other college scholarships that are not 9/11-related.
Such policies trouble not just 9/11 families, but Clinton, who is seriously disturbed by the way the fund has operated.
"He's adamantly against - and was never informed about or approved - the policy that interest earned from the Victim Compensation Fund be counted against the scholarships," spokesman Ben Yarrow told The Post said Friday from Clinton's Harlem office.
That policy "unfairly penalizes . . . people who tragically lost their loved ones" on 9/11, Clinton believes.
"Many ordinary Americans responded to Sen. Dole's and President Clinton's fund-raising appeal based on their desire to help the families of 9/11 victims," Clinton's chief of staff, Laura Graham, wrote to the charity Thursday in a letter shared with The Post.
Clinton also wants to eliminate the charity's decision to keep 9/11 money it doesn't give to victims. He calls that a "potentially serious conflict of interest."
Dole told the Post he was unaware of the problems but said, "If there's any mismanagement or something wrong with the policies, I'd want to look into it."
Scholarship America's president, Clifford Stanley, is paid more than $250,000 a year, plus benefits.
The charity says it deducts about 4 percent of the total distributed to 9/11 families each year for staff and overhead to administer the fund.
It requires families to apply for aid twice a year - proving their need each semester.
About 3,100 children, spouses, and domestic partners of killed or injured victims and rescue workers - who became ill from searching for survivors - have registered to apply in coming years, the charity says.
Families deemed "financially needy" have received as much as $49,500 a year for Ivy League schools, it says.
Those who don't need the money, according to the charity, get at least $1,000 as an "honorarium."
The charity does not count the victim's compensation money in its need formulas, only the interest earned. "You're not eligible for a full ride to college just because you were a victim," said Donald Lassere, the charity's vice president for scholarship management. "You have to demonstrate financial need."
The charity gives the most money to families with lower incomes or the steepest college costs. But many families contend the fund has failed them.
"It was very frustrating and disappointing," said Ailish Coughlin, of Brooklyn, who was 24 when her dad, Martin, a carpenter, died in the World Trade Center.
After a two-year runaround from Scholarship America, it gave her just $4,000 for a grad program in art therapy at NYU - which cost her $25,000 a year in tuition.
Coughlin said the charity told her she was too old for more. She worked while studying, and still owes $70,000 in student loans.
Widows who invested their federal compensation money - and live on the interest - say they are being penalized for being prudent.
"That's the money I live off to raise my kids," said Debra Roberts of Kinnelon, N.J., who was left with four children after her husband, Leo, 44, a broker at Cantor Fitzgerald, was killed.
When her 18-year-old son got into Montclair State University this year, Families of Freedom gave him just $1,000 a year for a school that costs more than $17,000 in annual tuition, room, board and expenses.
Kathy Wisniewski, of Howell, N.J, a mother of three whose husband, Alan, was a computer programmer in the WTC, said her eldest daughter's first year at Monmouth University, which costs $28,000, was covered by several foundations. Scholarship America gave nothing.
The next year, Scholarship America gave the girl close to $15,000, but only $500 in her junior year.
Now the family owes the college $18,000. Mother and daughter each work two jobs.
April Gallop and her then-2-month-old son, Elisha, both suffered brain injuries in the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, where she brought him to her office before day care.
Families of Freedom refused to help the boy, now 6, with special educational needs, saying only college students qualify. After inquiries by The Post, the fund says it will look for a way to assist Elisha.
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