Dr. WERES: Yes, I have some questions. As for collecting funds, what organiza¬
tional hat would that be done under? Would that be the Famine Commission collect¬
ing funds, or would that have to be Friends of the Famine Commission type unit or a
local famine commemoration committee?
Dr.MACE: It could be either. Certainly Commissioners could create a Friends of the Commission type organization or, you know, use their power to appoint three ad¬visors as a way of sort of creating a structure for this. That’s a question I think you should perhaps consider.
Dr. WERES: One specific question I was getting at is: is it legal and proper for a government agency to organize a fund-raising drive?
Dr. MACE: We are empowered by law to solicit and accept funds, goods, services. So my feeling would be that it is legal. One could go to the Comptroller General and ask for an opinion on that, but unless it is incorporated as a separate body, I really couldn’t see any problem in any fund-raising activities that we are legally empowered to carry out
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: I don’t think that we should have a separate body set up to collect funds. Why can’t this body collect the funds? Why empower another body? The checks can be made out to the Famine Commission and not confuse the general public with Friends of the Commission.
Dr. WERES: Okay. Well, a related question: in California, Southern California, the Los Angeles area, we still have a large and active famine commemoration commit¬tee, and because we are 3,000 miles away from Washington, I think in practice there that organization would do the fund-raising, and the question related to that is in this kind of situation, when we turn over or when they—I’m not a member of that body-but when they turn over funds to the Famine Commission, would that be an un¬restricted donation or could we ask that it be directed for specific activities?
Mr. FEDORAK: Maybe we are placing the horse before the cart a little bit. We are discussing the form of collecting the funds, but should we be discussing the budgetary needs first and to what purpose would those funds be collected or needed?
Mr. MARCHISHIN: I agree that it’s an open discussion now. I think we should consider how the funds are to be used, but I think the question that we’re discussing now is that there should be a fund-raising effort, hopefully spearheaded by the mem¬bers of the Commission, in the Ukrainian-American community, and the specifics of how the funds would be used, we have to see what develops in the future and how the monies would be turned over either to the Commission or spent in another way. These are very specific logistics that require a good deal of concentration.
Mr. FEDORAK: My point was that if you define the purpose, it may be easier to find the form to help you go about it That was the only point.
Dr. KUROPAS: And I think a year from now we’d be in a better position to know what still needs to be done and how much monies still need to be raised to complete our mission.
Ms.. MAZURKEVICH: And also if we raise a lot of money, then we can talk of big¬ger projects. We can’t just wait until next year and then see where we’re at. It will be too late.