<human>: First off, I'm a student. I volunteer for a youth leadership organization for which I'm the president of the alumni association. Our goal is to keep students involved after attending our organization's conferences. We are non-profit. The alumni executive is entirely student/volunteer run. We hold reunions and send out newsletters. 

The newsletters are the problem. We usually ask all the alumni for submissions for the newsletter which usually include inspirational quotes, poems, stories etc. One student submitted a poem that was apparently copyrighted, but she sent in the poem without the author's name. We sent it out in the newsletter and posted the newsletter on our website. 

We just got an email from the legal reps of author of the poem saying that we owe them $5000 for copyright infringement. They sent us a letter saying it didn't matter how we got the poem or how we used it; it was our responsibility to do a search for the poem to make sure it wasn't copyrighted.

What are my options here? (another possibly useful piece of information is that I am Canadian, as is the alumni association and the people who are trying to fine us are American (based in Texas.. could this be a scam?))

Needless to say we don't have the money. Any advice/references to copyright laws etc would be greatly appreciated.

Summarize the given text in a few sentences.
<bot>: volunteer for a non-profit, student-run youth organization, we're getting fined for copyright infringement for a poem we submitted in our newsletter. Help.