War veterans’ associations hurry to spend remaining funds

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By Juhani Saarinen
     
      Finland’s various war veterans’ associations plan to spend a significant portion of their funds to support surviving war veterans in the next few years.
      All are prepared to spend their remaining funds before the last man or woman serving at the front has passed away.
     
The wealthiest of the groups, the Disabled War Veterans' Association of Finland, decided last spring to accelerate their spending. In the next three years the organisation plans to use at least half of its assets for helping disabled veterans.
      The Union of Front Veteran Soldiers in Finland plans to distribute the funds in its foundation during a period of just over two years. The Union itself has decided to disband in 2015.
     
Finland still has 61,000 living war veterans, but the number is declining rapidly, as the youngest to have been called up for service in the Continuation War are turning 84 this year.
      The Social Insurance Institution (KELA) calculates that five years from now there will be only 29,000 living war veterans, and at the end of 2020 there will be only 6,700.
      The most important organisations and foundations report having EUR 42 million worth of property.
      The most significant source of income is the veterans’ fund-raising drive, which brought in nearly three million euros in 2008.
     
The Disabled War Veterans' Association of Finland has nearly EUR 40 million, or about EUR 1,500 per member. Some of the holdings are already being sold. The property includes stocks and bonds, about 15 apartments, and three forest holdings.
      The other organisations still need to raise funds. The largest of them, the War Veterans’ Union of Finland, reports that its property is less than a million euros, or EUR 24 per veteran member.
      The organisations have faced criticism recently for being slow in using their funds.
     
“We are not holding back our funds, because we don’t have them”, says Markku Seppä, executive director of the War Veterans’ Union of Finland.
      "A greater concern is how to raise the money for our activities in the future.”
      The Union of Front Veteran Soldiers in Finland, representing 10,000 veterans, reports that its assets are less than EUR 100,000.
      “We’ve been living hand to mouth all the time”, says the group’s executive director Onni Toljamo.
      The organisations say that their funds have been low compared with support from the state. The state assists veterans to the tune of EUR 370 million this year.
      “We wouldn’t be able to run [the veteran support activities] for very many weeks with our 40 million”, says Markku Honkasalo, secretary-general of the Disabled War Veterans' Association of Finland.
     
When the last war veteran has passed away, a few foundations will remain in Finland which were founded to help repair the destruction caused by war.
      The Foundation for the Memory of the War Dead and the War Damage Foundation administer combined property worth tens of millions of euros. They are not veterans organisations, and they have not received donations from any fund-raising campaign. The Foundation for the Memory of the War Dead distributes income from its investments to veterans, but it has not wanted to change its rules to allow it to spend its capital assets.
      The foundation’s chairman of the board Ahti Sirkiä says that the foundation was set up to keep the memory of the war dead alive, and there are no intentions to make any changes.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 6.1.2010


Links:
  Disabled War Veterans´ Association of Finland
  The Union of Front Veteran Soldiers in Finland

JUHANI SAARINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
juhani.saarinen@hs.fi