Parkland funds to be sent to victims

Donation oversight panel sets amounts from $400K to $1,000

Next of kin of the 17 people killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting will receive $400,000 each, under the allocation formula approved Monday by a committee overseeing distribution of a $10.5 million donation fund.

The steering committee met at the Gunster law firm’s Fort Lauderdale offices to make final decisions about how to allocate the fund, which was amassed from donations to a GoFundMe account started by the Broward Education Foundation on the day after the Feb. 14 tragedy in Parkland.

In April, the committee decided to make everyone who was on the campus during the Feb. 14 attack eligible for a share of the fund. The committee created four categories of severity, beginning with 17 designated survivors of the 17 deceased victims, who will split $6.8 million. Next, $1.63 million will be shared by 18 survivors approved in the category of gunshot victims. Eight victims who required outpatient treatment will get $35,000 each, and amounts given to the 10 others will depend on the lengths of their hospital stays, up to

$250,000 for a victim hospitalized more than 21 nights.

Anyone inside the 1200 building where the shootings took place will receive $2,500, splitting a $1.09 million allocation.

The largest number of applicants — 1,048 people who were on campus but not inside the 1200 building — will split $1.05 million and get $1,000 apiece. Checks and direct deposits are scheduled to go out beginning in mid-July.

More than 1,500 people qualified to receive portions of the fund, which are being given as gifts with no strings attached, fund stewards said.

George LeMieux, chairman of the steering committee, said the deliberations involved three public town hall meetings, two meetings between the Parkland families and the steering committee, and numerous individual communications with family members via emails and phone calls, as well as face-to-face meetings.

Many wanted to convey their personal stories, but conversations never focused on dollar amounts, he said. Ultimately the steering committee was left to figure out how to allot the money.

“You do the best you can as God gives you the light to see it,” he said.

The fund’s GoFundMe page stopped accepting donations on June 30, with $9,813,900 collected from 36,687 donors, ranging from individuals who pledged $5 to large corporations, which gave tens of thousands of dollars.

Maria Pierson, spokeswoman for the Broward Education Foundation, on Monday said the final fund total swelled to $10.5 million with the addition of donors who made “hard pledges” outside of the GoFundMe site.

The largest corporate donation listed on the fund’s GoFundMe page Monday was $500,000 from Ultimate Software, a Weston-based provider of human resources and payroll solutions. The largest overall contribution, $1.73 million, was donated by the March for Our Lives Action Fund, a fund set up to help Stoneman Douglas student activists travel to Washington, D.C., and stage an anti-gun rally on March 24.

Stoneman Douglas student Cameron Kasky, who set up the March for Our Lives Action Fund, had pledged to donate half of the money raised to the victims through the education foundation’s fund. The action fund is continuing to accept donations to support further activist events, including a “Road to Change” multicity voter registration tour.

Fred Guttenberg, father of slain student Jaime Guttenberg, said by phone that he was satisfied with how the committee distributed the donations.

“At the end of the day, they probably did the best they could,” he said. “I was concerned that the 17 [deceased] victims were not going to be taken care of and receive the portion that they did. They are struggling with working and so many other things. I’m pleased that was recognized.”

He added, “No matter what we receive or don’t receive, it doesn’t change what happened, the fact we don’t have our children. That’s the sin of it all.”