Recently, I became a conservator for my father in order to protect his finances after he fell victim to some scammers. Along the way, the lawyer who helped me with the conservatorship recommended I search for any unclaimed property in my father’s name.

Unclaimed property is money owed to an individual or business that the payor could not deliver because it could not locate the person or entity entitled to the funds. In such a situation, the payor delivers those funds to state-run unclaimed property offices, which hold them in case a claimant comes forward. On my father’s behalf, I found and claimed a small IRA he had set up in the 1980s and forgotten about, along with some residual funds from bank accounts that he had never closed.

After this success, I looked up my organization, the American Astronomical Society (AAS), on the DC Unclaimed Property website and found several entries. DC’s site, like those in many other jurisdictions, does not list exactly how much money is being held—it provides just an over or under amount (over $100, for example).

I completed a claim form for one of the amounts, which ended up being $778. That may not seem like much, but it is equal to about three members’ annual dues. To claim the funds, I had to provide evidence of our current and prior business addresses, prove my legal authority to act on behalf of AAS, and get a notarized signature to prove I was the person submitting the claim.

A Broader Search

I then got curious about other states. I picked New Mexico, where we’d held an annual meeting in the past. The state’s website directed me to Missingmoney.com, which allows searches across several, but not all, states and other government entities. A search there revealed four entries: two properties in DC, and one each in Tennessee and Texas.

Although the individual amounts may not seem large, in aggregate associations may have a significant amount of unclaimed funds available to be collected.

In Tennessee, I discovered $1,365 in unclaimed funds related to our scholarly publishing activities. After a few more state searches, I’m in the process of claiming all the amounts being held by DC, along with five other states that had significant amounts available.

A query to Virginia turned up an amount greater than $500, which I filed for. Our chief financial officer shortly received a check for more than $16,000, minus a small handling charge of $35. Needless to say, we were both happily surprised at this amount, which had been held by Virginia for more than a decade.

The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators provides an easy-to-use clickable map to take you directly to each state’s unclaimed-property website. The ease of claiming property depends on the state. Some states require mailed documentation, but most accept uploaded materials. Some allow multiple claims to be resolved at once with a single filing, while for others, this does not seem possible online.

Consider Your Own Search

Out of curiosity, I searched for societies where my friends served as CEOs or on staff and found hundreds of entries across many states for a wide range of member-based professional organizations. Most of the amounts were not significant, but some were several thousand dollars, and in a few cases, into the tens of thousands.

I was especially curious to see how many unclaimed funds were due to major charitable organizations, like the American Cancer Society. Having landed on the Texas unclaimed-property site, I found 88 entries that matched ACS’s name exactly totaling $24,440, including one $5,000 amount. There were many other entries with spelling errors, payments made to local chapters, and so on, so searching only for the exact name of the organization might not be enough.

Although the individual amounts may not seem large, in aggregate associations may have a significant amount of unclaimed funds available to be collected. You won’t know how much you could garner until you file, so it’s worth a small investment of time to check.