By Ana Rodriguez Soto - Florida Catholic newspaper
MIAMI | Over the past few months, Katie Blanco has been talking to a lot of Archbishop Curley-Notre Dame alumni.
That’s because, as president of the Archdiocese of Miami Development Corporation, Blanco must account for any donations that were intended exclusively for the high school.
“If you make a donation, and it’s restricted for a particular purpose, it has to be used for that purpose,” she explained. The archdiocese cannot simply take that money and use it elsewhere without the donor’s consent.
ACND had three restricted funds. The largest had a little over $600,000 in it.
“I reached out to every single donor that we had contact information for and I gave them all the options available,” she said.
The options were: repurpose it for another archdiocesan entity or program; use the funds to provide scholarship assistance; re-designate the funds for ABCD; or return the money to the donor.
“It was a long process,” she said, providing reasonable, and even extended, donor response time to ensure she reached as many donors to the restricted funds as possible.
What most impressed her, she said, is the “emotional attachment” so many alumni, especially ones from long ago, have with their school.
“Whatever they were doing when those students were attending school there is amazing,” she said. “It’s amazing.”
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