I heard about a certain family in Valley Village who donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Orthodox synagogue Shaarey Zedek. The shul took at least a decade to get near to breaking ground. The shul told the family, we’re going to use your money for our other needs. So the family said no, we want our money back. We didn’t give it to you to run the shul. We gave it to you to build a shul.
Shaarey Zedek said you are right. We will only use the funds for building.
Improper use of donations is a growing area of litigation. Courts are rarely happy with recipients of gifts who do not use the money as they have pledged.
Lawyer: "Courts have a real hard-on for giving donors back their money. Gifts come with strings attached."
"Suing here is low class. There are better ways of doing this than in open court. It’s a shanda for the goyim. They are going to see this and replace the phrase ‘Indian giver’ with ‘Jew giver.’
"The Graffs are obviously strong personalities and so are the rest of the people at YINBH. It’s pathetic that both sides couldn’t organize their affairs better and bring it to a lawsuit."
