Non-profits, small businesses and Vermonters reminded that unclaimed money could be waiting for them
SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. —
Vermont Treasurer Mike Pieciak delivered a check to the United Way of Northwest Vermont on Friday at their office in South Burlington after they discovered more than $1,100 in unclaimed property.
“They had a thing saying check for your business too and I was like oh I wonder if anyone has ever checked for United Way,” United Way of Northwest Vermont CEO Jesse Bridges said.
Bridges said he saw the state’s unclaimed property initiative in February and was inspired to see if he had any. He decided to also check the non-profit’s status.
“The beauty of this is it gets reinvested right back into the community,” Bridges said. “Eleven hundred dollars can help with staffing retention, it can help with grant making in the community, it can help with stipends with older Vermonter volunteers to be able to get out there and get into our schools. There’s a lot of ways to split up $1,000.”
Vermont is currently hanging on to $120 million in unclaimed property. More than a thousand individuals or businesses have money with their name on it that they don’t know about.
Treasurer Pieciak said it’s easy for money to go missing.
“We really want to make sure we get it back to the rightful owner,” Pieciak said. “Even when you’re counting every penny, it’s really easy to overlook some sort of settlement that came your way, a check that arrived at an address after you left that address. Maybe they mailed it to the wrong address, it got lost in the mail, a whole host of things that prevents a payment from getting to a business or an individual.”