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Light of Life Ministries denies accusations
Saturday, August 18, 2001 By Tom Barnes and Steve Levin, Post-Gazette Staff Writers
Light of Life Ministries launched a counterattack on its critics yesterday, denying that the rescue mission inflates the number of meals it serves to the homeless or spends too much on fund raising, as some former employees have claimed.
"This is an effective ministry, one that's reaching out to the people of Pittsburgh in an important way," said Tunch Ilkin, the former Steelers lineman who is board chairman of North Side-based Light of Life.
"It's a question of integrity," he said in an interview at the group's main shelter for homeless men at 10 E. North Ave. "We thought these charges were wrong but we wanted to make sure."
Ilkin said that after joint Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/KDKA-TV reports on the allegations in July, the board requested an investigation by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, a Virginia-based association that oversees finances and operations of more than 1,000 Christian nonprofit social service organizations around the nation.
"We take these charges seriously," said Ilkin, longtime volunteer and board member at Light of Life. "We don't want a cloud hanging over the ministry."
Since 1989, Light of Life has been a member of the Evangelical Council, whose first executive director, Olan Hendrix, now works as a paid management consultant for Light of Life.
The council's report acknowledged -- as the PG/KD reports detailed -- that Light of Life "will show a deficit for the year ended June 30, 2001, and could face tight cash periods in the next several months."
Ilkin said that summers are always a slow time in fund raising, but that Light of Life had made its August payroll and did not anticipate layoffs. He said the major fund-raising periods are around Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.
The evangelical council's report blamed "some of the senior staff that have recently left the organization, including the immediate past [chief financial officer's] failure to provide timely and complete internal financial statements."
The senior staff included Bobby Burke, Light of Life's former controller, who resigned in early July, and Jerry Wrzosek, the mission's former development director and coordinator of volunteers, who was fired in June after bringing complaints to the board.
Burke and Wrzosek alleged that the mission had so poorly managed its money that it was in danger of missing its August payroll and faced a $500,000 deficit by September.
Additional complaints were raised by current and former employees about inadequate oversight of client programs and the termination of employees who raised questions about the mission's fiscal management.
The council's report did not answer allegations about employee firings. The report blamed "zoning limitations" for the low client capacity in the mission's programs.
Ilkin said his biggest concerns were allegations Wrzosek made that Light of Life "padded" the number of meals it claimed to serve. In its report, the council said it had reviewed the meal counts and "found them to fall in [the] range of providing 17,000 to 25,000 meals per month, consistent with the range reported to donors in the mission's newsletter."
The report did not say how it computed the number of meals served.
Contacted yesterday, Wrzosek said he stood by his allegations. "It's physically impossible, given the size of the dining room [at 10 E. North Ave.], to serve that many meals," he said. He estimated the number of meals at no more than 400 a day or 12,000 a month.
Ilkin said Wrzosek wasn't considering the meals served off site, for example to nearby senior citizen high-rises. Wrzosek said that happens only on a few holidays, like Christmas, Thanksgiving and Good Friday.
The council's report said that for fiscal year 2000, Light of Life's California-based fund-raising firm, Russ Reid Co. in Pasadena, raised nearly $3.3 million through direct mail appeals. For that work, Light of Life paid Russ Reid $772,444, or 23.4 percent.
Burke had claimed that Russ Reid kept as much as 46 cents of each dollar it raised through direct-mail solicitations during the 2001 fiscal year.
The evangelical council report did not answer that claim.
Contacted yesterday, Burke said he stood by his previous statements.
For the fiscal year ending in June 2001 and projections for the current year, Russ Reid raised about $2.2 million and kept more than $1 million, Burke said.
Burke also disputed the report's statement that appeared to blame him for many of Light of Life's problems.
Burke said he "inherited a mess" with Light of Life's financial records when he was hired in January.
He said the evangelical council's report was merely an attempt to "circle the wagons" and protect one of its member organizations.
The council's report agreed with criticisms of Light of Life's thrift store on Western Avenue, and Ilkin said better inventory control is needed there.
The council's report said the thrift store was "lacking adequate organization, with inadequate space and staffing to handle the level of donated used goods arriving."
Ilkin said that effectively immediately, no more donations would be accepted by the thrift store and those on hand would be given away. He said the board would look at inventory-control procedures used at similar homeless missions.
Ilkin said that he did not know when Light of Life's longtime executive director, Duane Gartland, who was placed on paid administrative leave last month, would return.
Also yesterday, Ilkin released a site-review report from the regional office of the U.S. Department of Labor on Light of Life's Employment Plus program. The program seeks to provide job training for the homeless in three fields: cooking, building trades and computer skills.
Light of Life received a two-year federal grant of $675,000, which was supposed to be spent by March 2002. So far, only $138,000 has been spent. It was supposed to be used to train up to 120 people, but Light of Life officials said that only about 20 people have been trained.
The report said the program has been hurt by the resignation of the original group of instructors and recommended that Light of Life seek a six-month extension and reduce the target number of graduates to 90 to 100.
The report said a new director, Debra Michaels, was named in March to run the program and she has resolved "several program and fiscal problems."
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