• Love INC 2006 tax return

• Love INC 2007 tax return

• Love INC 2008 tax return

FAIRBANKS — When Tammie Wilson names her proudest accomplishments in Fairbanks, her work with Love In the Name of Christ tops the list. The Fairbanks North Star Borough mayoral candidate helped lead the charitable organization in 2006 and 2007, first as a board member and later as its manager.

Those were unquestionably rough times for the faith-based organization, which helps the needy through a network of about 60 church affiliates. Love INC was on the brink of financial collapse while simultaneously working to construct a new 5,300-square-foot building in South Fairbanks.

During the course of a few months in 2007, the executive director quit; the entire paid staff resigned, was laid off or was fired; and a controversial $1 million federal grant was relinquished.

At the heart of it all was a philosophical rift among the board members that in some ways resembled the debate over the future of the borough. Wilson and others felt the organization had forgotten its roots while becoming distracted by the lure and influence of federal money. Local government acceptance of federal dollars has become one of Wilson’s campaign issues heading into Tuesday’s mayoral runoff.

“I think that’s always something you struggle with,” Wilson said on Monday, remembering the Love INC debate. “What do we want to be?”

Grant Shimanek, the executive director for Love INC at the time, said the issue divided the board, leaving the organization without clear support or direction. He resigned in early 2007, along with half the board of directors.

“It just came to the point where I felt we couldn’t do any more,” said Shimanek, who now works as an outreach pastor in Anchorage.

The Fatherhood Grant

At the heart of the debate was the Fatherhood Grant, which created a mentoring program paid for with federal funds. The five-year grant was renewable for $205,000 annually.

The Fatherhood Grant, which had been in place for slightly more than a year, was the largest grant Love INC had ever received. It allowed the organization to roughly double in size to about eight employees.

But it also became a source of concern among the board. The mentoring program started slowly, and it required a secular approach — no Christian proselytizing was allowed when federal funds were used.

Wilson also attributed some of Love INC’s financial mess to a heavy reliance on federal grant money. She said the imbalance of federal money to local contributions was an unhealthy mix.

At the request of the divided board, the grant was relinquished after slightly more than a year. Wilson characterized the move as a step toward getting Love INC back on the right path.

“It’s easy now to look back and say it had to happen. … For Love INC (to succeed) we had to go through the pains and get back to the true focus of the organization,” Wilson said.

But others involved in the debate saw the issue as more of a philosophical question than a financial one. The organization’s core role — a dispatch center for a wide variety of aid programs run by local churches — was still being funded through individual contributions and monthly $8,000 donations from its members.

“The philosophy was clearly, should this Christian organization be taking money with possible restrictions on what we could do with it?” said Martin Klein, the former treasurer who spent six years on the Love INC board.

Shimanek described Wilson as the leader of a board faction that wanted to limit Love INC’s scope to strictly working as a clearinghouse agency. He said the faction was adamantly opposed to accepting government grants or adding new programs.

From 2006 to 2008, Love INC’s revenue dropped from nearly $700,000 to less than $200,000, according to publicly available Internal Revenue Service records, largely because of the diminishing role of government assistance.

“She had an agenda, and that’s something she was able to accomplish,” Shimanek said of Wilson. “That’s all I’m able to say — she had her way.”

Others in the debate said the divisions weren’t quite so rigidly drawn. Former board president Alan Corrick said everyone wondered how much outreach to provide, while arriving at somewhat different conclusions.

Corrick, the pastor at Door of Hope Church, said all board members were concerned about becoming a broad-based social-service agency — “the Christian version of Tanana Chiefs Conference.”

Tough financial times

The debate occurred during a bleak financial stretch for Love INC, when it was struggling to make insurance payments or pay staff wages.

Layoffs came the week before Thanksgiving in 2007.

Terry Reichardt, a founding member of the 24-year-old organization, was part of an advisory committee that was formed to support Love INC. She said the organization was spending more money than it was collecting, and discord among its leadership prevented a solution.

“I don’t think the divided board led to the financial problems,” Reichardt said. “I think the divided board couldn’t figure out how to deal with the financial problems.”

The cause of the financial problems was complex, said Klein and Brad Johnston, the previous and current board treasurers. A downturn in local giving, the construction of a new building and a bickering board all contributed.

Both said the Fatherhood Grant probably wasn’t a big factor.

The organization was also dealing with an unfortunate mix-up among some donors. Another faith-based organization, Love Social Services, spent 2007 under scrutiny for fraudulently using $450,000 in federal funds. Murilda “Chris” Hayes and former Fairbanks city Mayor Jim Hayes, who led Love Social Services, were ultimately convicted of misusing the grants and sent to prison.

Johnston said Love INC was tarnished simply because it had a similar name.

“That did not help,” Johnston said. “That exacerbated the problem.”

Love INC ultimately climbed out of the hole by becoming an all-volunteer organization. Wilson resigned from the board to become a manager — first as a volunteer and briefly in a paid role — while philanthropists and community donors stepped in to help.

The organization offered referrals for about 900 people in each of the past two years, down about 10 percent from its average earlier in the decade.

A new executive director, Judy Dellinger, was hired a year ago. Love INC completed its new building last summer and sold its old headquarters a few months ago.

Johnston and Klein both credited Wilson for her volunteer work that helped keep Love INC afloat.

“She passionately believed in Love INC,” Klein said. “Even though we were diametrically opposed in our beliefs of what it should do.”

Contact staff writer Jeff Richardson at 459-7518.