DodogamaRayBrst posted...
Okay, but I'm not going to watch it, so tell me what it says.
I'm in the middle of it, but basically here is what happened (according to Jirard)
He was a Board Member of The Open Hand along with other members of his family and other people who wanted to help out. For a number of years his only real interaction with it was essentially Indie-Land and donating through his personal company. There was internal disagreements with the board as to who to donate to, in particular most members wanted the donation to be "Restricted", which ensured that the money was actually spent on research and not anything else.
That proved difficult as apparently even 6-figures was not considered "enough" by a lot of potential benefactors to allow that donation to be Restricted. Jirard did not know the entire amount that Open Hand was sitting on until like 2022 or so? Jirard realized how bad this looked, given that a lot of the fundraising efforts were from his company (despite not having any control as to when the money would be donated). He admits that he chose not to be transparent about all this as he didn't know how to explain it, still wanted that money to go to Dementia research, and didn't want to stop the momentum of what his company started with Indieland. He admits that was entirely wrong, it was selfish of him, and not an excuse. He started to become more involved in the negotiations with potential benefactors as it was largely his company that was getting the donations.
He basically lived in a constant state of fear at that point, mostly hoping that the Open Hand would find a proper benefactor before everything was found it. It was found out before it happened, and then most of the benefactors he was negotiating with basically told them to fuck off cause they didn't want the bad press. Thankfully there was a group that took a lump sum donation (like 650k?) that was matched 200k more by another group, and allowed it to be Restricted, which meant The Open Hand would legally be given progress reports on how the money was spent.