ALEF Fund, Inc. (“ALEF Fund”) is pleased to announce it has successfully resolved recent issues related to the submission of pledges to the Department of Revenue this year. This resolution will provide full funding to ensure that all donations pledged to ALEF Fund for 2023 will be fulfilled and allocated to ALEF Fund’s partner schools for use in the upcoming school year. To help answer questions about these issues and the resolution achieved, ALEF Fund has prepared this statement.
During the ALEF Fund annual fundraising process this year, upload errors with the Georgia Department of Revenue resulted in denials or under approvals of some tax credit applications. Without these approvals, ALEF Fund would not have received all pledged amounts from donors and therefore would not be able to disburse those funds to its partner schools to fund student scholarships under the Qualified Education Donation Tax Credit program (now referred to as the PEACH Education Tax Credit).
Working together, ALEF Fund and its technology vendor that worked on the submission of pledges have reached an agreement for the recovery of $2.6 million that will fully and completely fund every dollar potentially lost as a result of these issues. This means that all donations pledged to ALEF Fund will be fulfilled and disbursed to partner schools in support of Jewish education scholarships, exactly as if the upload of tax credit applications been completely successful! We are continuing to work out final details, and more information will be provided soon about the distribution of funds, but this is a tremendous outcome that reflects the hard work and dedication of many people.
ALEF Fund wishes to acknowledge that this outcome would not have been possible without the full support of its technology vendor, and ALEF Fund thanks it for its efforts to reach a resolution and is grateful for its support of ALEF Fund’s mission to improve the affordability and accessibility of Jewish education. ALEF Fund is also very grateful for the support of Greenberg Traurig, including shareholders Ted Blum and Justin Victor, who partnered with ALEF Fund and invested significant resources to achieve this outcome.
ALEF Fund would like to thank the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, owner and operator of ALEF Fund, which provided the financial support to guarantee that schools would receive their funds no matter the outcome, enabling schools to continue to offer scholarships for next year while we worked to reach this resolution. The Federation’s dedication to their mission of strengthening our Jewish Atlanta community made it possible for us to continue our support for this community and our children during this time.
Lastly, ALEF Fund’s most important “thank yous” are to its valued donors, its partner schools, and to its leadership for their continued commitment to Jewish education. We have taken significant steps to ensure smooth operation of the ALEF Fund moving forward, and we look forward to being in touch early this summer with information on how you can make your 2024 pledges. Thank you for your partnership.
