Our Metro area occasionally has an Officer die in the line of duty and, fundraiser spring up immediately for the family left behind. What typical benefits does the immediate family get for a work-related death in your area? Does all the fundraising by the Police Union make it to the family? Or, do they deduct expenses first? Related question: Do cops really benefit from Fallen Officer fundraising appeals through telemarketing?
Our Po-Po has a decent benefits package which includes basic as well as supplemental life insurance. And just like anyone else, cops can do the responsible family thing and buy sufficient life insurance to replace them if they don’t make it home. As for the charities, from what I gather 60% expense rates are pretty good. If they use telemarketers the expense rate can be as high as 85%. Meaning 15 cents of your dollar goes to the people intended to receive your donation.
IME, the fundraisers aren’t run my the police department, or any government entity. They’re typically run by local businesses and all the money donated is (directly or indirectly) handed right to the family. There’s no administration fees, no cut taken out for the helpers etc.
I’m not saying it’s not different where you are, but where I am, every time an officer is killed, it’s just local places helping out and the people come out in droves. At my store, we put out a little collection box on our counter for a fallen officer, mentioned it on facebook once or twice and we ended up collecting a few thousand dollars, which we deposited into an account set up for his family.
This seems to be the case. Each time it happens, a ton of local businesses do something similar. They’ll be all over facebook and the news and people will show up and donate. No telemarketing, no administrative fees or expenses.
With that, I’d suggest that if you want to donate money to a fallen officer, stay away from the professional fundraisers and look to the small local places. The bakery shop that’s donating 100% of all proceeds for a day, the mom and pop store with a donation box on the counter, the fast food place that has a car wash in the parking lot etc. In all those cases, the amount of money that makes it to the family is going to be considerably closer to 100% of what you give them since no one is earning a wage that needs to be paid from those donations.