Open Letter: Addressing the Ongoing Misleading and Exploitative Practices of the Colorado Healing Fund
- VictimsFirst
- Sep 17
- 7 min read
Today, we sent this letter to Lori Poland, Executive Director of the Colorado Healing Fund.
****A PDF copy of the original letter (with links) is provided at the bottom of this post.****
VictimsFirst
195 Chino Hills Parkway #593
Chino Hills, CA 91709
September 17, 2025
Colorado Healing Fund
1330 Fox St.
Denver, CO 80204
Re: Ongoing Exploitation of Mass-Violence Victims and Misleading the Public
To Lori Poland, Executive Director of the Colorado Healing Fund,
We are writing to express our deep concern and outrage over the Colorado Healing Fund’s repeated exploitation of mass-violence victims’ families and survivors, most recently the Evergreen shooting victims. Your organization continues to use a funding model that not only capitalizes on tragedies but misleads donors.
After many years of complaints from Colorado mass shootings families across multiple mass shootings – the very victims your organization claims to serve – the Colorado Healing Fund simply refuses to listen to mass shooting victims’ families and survivors who have told you that the model you employ is re-victimizing and the language you use is misleading and, in some instances, completely false. Your organization remains far from transparent, despite its own self-proclaimed commitment to openness.
Why is the CHF refusing to open a Centralized Victims’ Fund so that 100% of donations in that fund can go in cash payments to victims’ families and survivors of shootings? CHF is collecting into one Fund for victims and community needs, according to your own website with no fund exclusively designated for victims. In doing this, the CHF is manipulating the situation so that all donations collected can be considered undesignated funds, which is wrong and highly unethical. With your fund set up this way, CHF can control where the money gets allocated, rather than giving every penny directly to victims.
In continuing your exploitation of victims’ families, earlier this year, you approached VictimsFirst seeking to feature our Best Practices for Mass Casualty Crime on your website. Our families categorically rejected this request because our principles are designed to prevent precisely the kind of victims exploitation CHF perpetuates. We will not lend credibility to an organization whose actions undermine the rights and dignity of the families of the deceased and survivors.
It has also become clear to us that, as you have revamped and edited your website, you have lifted language from our website, ignoring the fact that this newly-adopted language does not align with your organization’s practices or mission statement. Your mission statement on your website also does not match what you stated to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in your organization’s 990s. We believe the only reason you would strip “community” from the mission statement on your website—while leaving your official federal filing unchanged—is to deflect public scrutiny without making any real, substantive changes.
Purposely Misleading Language in Soliciting Donations After the Evergreen School Shooting
CHF is now soliciting donations for the Evergreen school shooting, which—critically—was not a mass-casualty crime, despite what your website claims.
Your current language used throughout your website is deceptive. For example, your mission statement states that you will “coordinate the disbursement of funds to victims” with no mention of community needs. But, on your fundraising site for your new Evergreen school shooting fund, you state: “Your donation will go directly to the victims and needs of the Evergreen community.”
You also state on your homepage that “100% of victim-directed donations go to those in need,” but this is not what you have done or what your organization says it intends to do. Money distributed for “community needs” is not the same as 100% going directly to victims.
These statements are not equivalent.
You are leading donors to believe their money goes as direct cash assistance to victims, yet CHF does not and cannot legally distribute funds directly to victims at all. Instead, you pass along a portion of donations to other nonprofits, while retaining control and obscuring how much is actually delivered and in what amounts.
This calculated ambiguity—switching between “directly to victims” and “victims and community” and “supporting victims”—is misleading and unethical.
So, we ask, will you give 100% of the donations you collected directly to victims? Or will you be giving to both victims and nonprofits that you are “working closely with… to determine how best to support those impacted by this tragedy, both now and in the weeks and months ahead.” These are, in fact, two very different methods.
More misleading language on your website is the “Giving Directly to Victims” header on your “Trusted Resources” page, when CHF does not, in fact, give directly to victims and falsely claims that funds set up for direct-to-victim distribution somehow automatically puts donors at an “increased risk of fraud.” This also sets up a false choice, where you falsely position yourself as the best place to donate to victims—when you are not.
Furthermore, CHP states that it is “transparent fund distribution and reporting.” But, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The lack of transparency has been a major point of contention among Coloradans who have been revictimized by your nonprofit.
CHF also has never distributed funds in a fair, equitable, or transparent way.
A Documented Pattern of Exploitation
From the outset, CHF diverted 5 percent of every dollar donated to “sustain” your organization—skimming funds that the public believed were going directly to victims’ families. This includes money collected in response to the Boulder Supermarket Shooting in 2021, which was wasted and spent on various services victims/survivors never used rather than being given directly to those who needed it most; surviving family members who are still struggling after the violent murder of their loved ones.
Despite the public outcry and your own General Protocol for Response, CHF attempted to increase the skim to 10 percent in the aftermath of the Club Q shooting in 2022, again capitalizing off of mass murder. In an effort to force the CHF to give 100% directly to victims, Club Q survivors, rather than trying to heal from their physical injuries and trauma, were forced on the public stage to fight against your organization and raise public awareness for the harms you were doing to them through your misleading and sketchy operation.
Survivors and victims’ families from other mass shootings in Colorado, like the Sol Tribe shooting and Boulder shootings, have described the CHF process as slow, opaque, and retraumatizing—confirming that your “model” repeatedly causes harm. The very people you claim to serve are telling you that what you are doing is harming them, yet you and your organization continue it so who are you really serving? Aurora mass shooting families also know the harm this model causes and have also spoken out against your organization repeatedly.
CHF has never issued an apology, but has instead made tweaks to the language it uses to mislead the public into thinking you are doing the right thing. Despite these half-ass attempts, this history makes clear that CHF has done more harm than good.
It’s worth noting that in 2022 your organization increased transaction fees from 2.0 percent to 3.99 percent during Colorado Gives Day, nearly doubling the cost to donors while claiming “better functionality.” Now, you are promising donors, “Colorado Gives Foundation will grant back any fees above the 2.05% payment processing fee to the Colorado Healing Fund to ensure your donation goes where you intend.”
Conflicts of Interest Continue, Despite Changes
Conflicts have abounded at the Colorado Healing Fund since its inception. It was set up by Attorney General Cynthia Coffman using $1M in Consumer Fraud Settlement money. Why did those funds not go back to the consumers in Colorado who were actually defrauded?
Instead, Coffman diverted that $1M to seed the Colorado Healing Fund and became chair of it after a failed political career. The Attorney General’s office is one of the government entities tasked with policing nonprofits, not creating new ones.
Furthermore, the Colorado Healing Fund’s first executive director was Jordan Finegan, whose father was U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan and was involved in the prosecution of the Club Q shooter, forcing victims to interact with him despite feeling harmed by his daughter. Cole Finegan’s wife and Jordan Finegan’s mother, Robin Finegan, was also involved with the Colorado Healing Fund. It is well known that the Finegan family are friends of Cynthia Coffman’s. This kind of nepotism and cronyism is unacceptable in any government.
Even though Cole Finegan resigned in 2024 as U.S. Attorney and Jordan Finegan resigned as Executive Director of CHF, irreparable harm has already been done.
VictimsFirst Demands that the Colorado Healing Fund:
Cease all misleading public statements suggesting that 100% of all donations are delivered “directly to victims” when CHF routes donations through third parties or uses them for organizational expenses.
End the practice of withholding any percentage of victim-designated donations for “long-term” needs, as well as excessive transaction fees, “sustainability” fees, and fees for operational costs. CHF must stop these exploitative fundraising practices.
Provide a full public accounting of every fundraising campaign, including Evergreen, detailing the exact percentage of each donation that reaches individual victims as cash assistance. Also, publish each annual audit. CHP has never provided these records to the public for any fiscal year or after distributions to any victim base.
End all Conflicts of Interest to ensure transparency and accountability.
VictimsFirst will continue to warn the families of victims, survivors, the public, policymakers, and the press about CHF’s ongoing exploitative practices. We will continue tracking the harms your organization does to victims and we will continue speaking out publicly to protect both donors and victims’ families/survivors from exploitation and revictimization.
We will never stop educating the public on your organization’s past and ongoing harms.
The Colorado Healing Fund’s current approach not only betrays donors’ trust but also retraumatizes the very people it falsely claims to provide direct financial payments to at their greatest time of need—donations that are already intended for them.
Sincerely,
The Board
VictimsFirst
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