Distribution to start in June

By Dean Vaglia
Leader Staff Writer
The National Compassion Fund (NCF) released the draft protocol for the Oxford High School Survivors Fund on Tuesday, Feb. 15.
Created by the fund steering committee at its Feb. 8 Zoom meeting, the protocol describes who is eligible for funds, how they will receive funds and the timeline for the fund. The protocol is subject to change and the NCF takes public comments at the nationalcompassion.org/fund/oxford-hs-survivors-fund/ website and will host a 7 p.m. town hall about the protocol on March 21 at Oxford High School.
As of Feb. 16 the fund has raised around $2 million and is set to close on May 20, which Jeff Dion, NCF executive director, says is done to allow large business donations to come in and give accountants time to wrap up the account so the steering committee has a hard amount of funds to work with. All of the funds will be distributed to victims.

“Our experience is that businesses tend to give the most but take the longest to give, so we want to hold the fund open long enough to capture those donations,” Dion said. “But because we give out 100% of the money, we cannot make a distribution until we know how much money we have.”
One of the first details laid out in the protocol is where the area of eligibility is. The committee determined the affected area as the hallway the shooting occurred in, defined as “the restroom adjacent to room 258 down to rooms 215 and 216, and includes room 224 and the restrooms across from room 233.”
The decision to limit the scope of the fund is not lightly made, especially since the NCF takes psychological trauma into consideration.
“Including and recognizing psychological trauma is a foundation principle of the NCF,” Dion said. “One of the reasons that Aurora Theater [shooting] survivors did not like their original fund was because it did not include psychological trauma, it only included people who were killed and wounded. There were people in that theater whose loved ones died in their arms or died protecting them and to say that they did not count just did not feel right, so we always make an effort to include psychological trauma whenever possible.”
This is not the first time the NCF has limited eligibility based on proximity in order to maximize their ability to use funds. For the Parkland shooting with over $10 million available, NCF has to limit their scope to all the students in the building where the shooting took place; the school is spread out over several buildings.
And when having to determine who could receive funds for the Santa Fe, Texas high school shooting, the NCF gave the roughly $1.3 million donated only to the people who were in the targeted classroom.
“With every steering committee that administers a fund, I always tell them ‘For every decision you make there are three questions you have to ask yourself,’” Dion said. “Is it the right thing to do, is it fair and can we practically pull it off?”
There are three levels of eligible applicants to receive funds, each eligible victim receiving the same amount of funds per category. The first level is for the legal heirs of the dead, the second is for the injured and the third is for people who were present in the affected area experiencing psychological trauma. There may be more levels created for others like those who provided aid to victims or those who had long hospital stays, but the draft protocol only has three levels.
Protocol details will be finalized by March 29 and applications will be open from April 4 to 29. Application instructions will be sent to known and potential applicants. Applications will be reviewed from April 4 to May 29, which is a multi-step process.
The first step is a check by a paralegal to ensure everything is filled out correctly and all forms are included. The second step is presence validation, which involves checking with Oxford Community Schools to see if the victim was at school and in the affected area on Nov. 30. If an applicant was injured, a HIPAA information release must be submitted to the hospital. If a victim has psychological trauma, an affidavit must be submitted detailing their symptoms and counseling history. The final step is a review carried out by a law firm. The steering community will review and approve the fund distribution plan on June 8 and funds will start going out on June 13. Victims requiring advance payments can receive up to $25,000 for the deceased or $10,000 for injuries; the injury amount is limited due to Michigan law regarding financial gifts to minors.
All the funds granted to applicants are considered a gift, and the NCF has a history of voiding taxes that would be placed on gifted funds.
“For every fund we do, there is a member of Congress that writes a letter to the IRS commissioner asking about the taxability of these funds,” Dion said. “We always get back from the IRS commissioner an almost identical letter that says ‘This is a gift. Gifts are not taxable to the recipient of the gift, they are taxable to the giver of the gift.’ We are a nonprofit, we do not pay taxes.”