Location: Washington State
I am a volunteer at an Alpaca/Llama rescue. We are completely run by volunteers and donations. Our former executive director has an extremely volatile personality. She has been making bad decisions for a while, but she owns the property that the rescue operates on and she’s been holding that over us for a while. She finally agreed to step down yesterday. Today she is saying that the rescue owes her $20k and that she is going to take that from the rescues assets. We don’t have much in the bank account, but she is the only name on the account and says she is going to take all the money and close the account (we need that money to pay for food in a couple days). The other assets we have are physical structures built with donated materials and labor. They are on her property, so it will be easy for her to prevent us from taking them. She’s quadrupling the rent that the rescue pays her starting June 1.
She also took out a small business loan of $29k in the rescue’s name that no one knew about until a few days ago. I’m not sure what the status of that money is.
There’s a whole bunch of other stuff I could go into. But for now I’m wondering what type of lawyer we need? and whether there might be low cost legal assistance for non-profits or animal welfare organizations?
Thanks
Comments
You need a business lawyer/corporate attorney and a certified public accountant. She can’t just take 20k in money and take out loans without clearly documenting what it’s for in the books, that’s called embezzlement. She can’t suddenly quadruple the rent, unless the lease terms and state real estate law allow for that.
And you may also need an ally from the public. I’m sure your local news organization would be very interested in something like this — but be warned, once open that box it can’t be closed.