After a Catastrophic Fire in The Bronx, Nearly $400,000 in Donations Remains Unspent

When a devastating fire ripped through the Twin Parks apartment complex in the Bronx three years ago, leaving 17 dead and dozens injured and homeless, the Bronx Community Foundation sprang into action.

By the end of the day, the organization, which was founded in 2017 to support social services nonprofits in the Bronx, had started a fundraising drive for the fire’s victims. The foundation said it was “working with community members, partners and local elected officials to mobilize resources as quickly as possible.” Both Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul’s offices promoted the foundation’s effort, which raised hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Two years later, internal financial audits show, almost all of that money was still sitting in the bank. The foundation had spent only a small fraction actually helping the fire’s victims: In 2022, it sent $30,120 to two charities supporting Gambian immigrants, who made up most of the fire’s victims; the next year, the foundation spent an additional $26,340 on fire relief — though it’s not clear what specifically those funds went to.

At the end of 2023, more than $389,000 in fire relief funding remained unspent. The foundation declined to say whether they had spent money to support fire victims in 2024, and Henry Robins, a foundation spokesperson, declined to comment or make any representatives of the foundation available for an interview.

Meisha Porter, who served as president and CEO of the foundation from 2022 to 2024, said that she was “not aware of anywhere near $400,000 that was raised to support the Twin Parks fire” victims.“

Porter joined the foundation shortly after the fire and the launch of the relief effort. She said she’d seen the foundation’s internal audit of its finances in 2022 but assumed the $415,352 line item — labeled “fire relief” — was for “our ongoing relief lines that we were working on ensuring that we had.”