December 10, 2009 | Read Time: 7 minutes
Thirty years ago, Larry Jones founded Feed the Children as a tiny charity in a small Oklahoma City office where he ran what he called the Larry Jones International Ministries.
After building Feed the Children into one of the five most-successful fund-raising charities in the nation — and after years of controversy — Mr. Jones was fired as president last month by his organization’s board of directors.
Feed the Children — which provides food, clothing, medicine, books, and other supplies to needy children and families in the United States and overseas — raised more than $1-billion last year in donated goods and cash, according to its financial statements.
Now, as Mr. Jones takes his battle for his job to court, the high-profile group faces serious questions about its future.
A Year of Turmoil
The firing of Mr. Jones capped a year of bizarre events at Feed the Children, in which Mr. Jones tried to oust several board members; saw the trustees temporarily restored to office by a court; and then agreed to give up management powers and serve as a fund raiser and spokesman.
Adding to the drama: Just before he was let go, Mr. Jones acknowledged that he had sought to record his conversations with top charity executives last spring. He also went to court to stop board members from using charity money to pay legal fees incurred over the past year.
Mr. Jones’s wife, Frances Jones, who co-founded the organization, remains with the charity as its executive vice president and secretary.
The Joneses’ daughter, Larri Sue Jones, remains at the charity and serves as its vice president and general counsel, pitted against her father. She was fired a year ago, with her father’s acquiescence, and then later returned to her job.
What’s more, a lawsuit is pending in which two former accountants at the organization say they were fired for pointing out that the charity owes $1.1-million in back taxes to the state of Oklahoma.
“Scandal after scandal has rocked Feed the Children under Jones’s leadership, but revelation of these problems is likely not well known outside of the city in which the charity is based,” wrote The Oklahoman newspaper in an editorial last month that was titled “Feed the Ego: Charity’s Founder Refuses to Quit.”
However, in an interview, Mr. Jones says that he has always acted in good faith and has tried to work out solutions with the charity’s board. “Right now, there is so much confusion that it’s just very sad,” he says.
Mr. Jones says that his daughter has been a key figure in stirring turmoil at Feed the Children. “She was heir apparent, but she wanted it ‘now,’” says Mr. Jones. “She’s convinced the board she can do a better job than her mother and father can.”
He adds: “You work 30 years and all of a sudden someone starts dismantling things in front of your eyes, and it’s your own daughter. It’s very difficult.”
Tony Sellars, director of communications at Feed the Children, said Larri Sue Jones and other representatives of the organization declined to comment for this article.
Founder’s Syndrome?
To be sure, the saga unfolding at Feed the Children raises questions similar to ones that have arisen at other organizations in which the relationship between founders and their boards and supporters has grown contentious over time — so-called founder’s syndrome.
Many such groups start small, grow large, make efforts to be more professional in their management and operations, and end up alienating their founder who wants to keep control and is used to running the organization a certain way.
Members of the current board of Feed the Children have said Mr. Jones tried to remove them last December just before they were to meet to discuss placing him on sabbatical, in part, because of his “freewheeling dominance,” according to court documents.
Mr. Jones said at the time that he acted against some board members in part because he was concerned they had done nothing to rectify problems found by the charity’s outside auditors.
A somewhat similar tug-of-war played out five years ago when Habitat for Humanity, another of the nation’s biggest charities, fired its founder and president, Millard Fuller.
Habitat remains strong despite the contentious departure of Mr. Fuller, who died in February. The official reason for his firing was that he had been too outspoken about an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment. He said the real reason was that he did not get along with his board.
Giving Up Celebrity
The history of controversy at Feed the Children, combined with the fact that Mr. Jones had also been the charity’s top fund raiser, heightens the sense of peril at that organization.
Stephen R. Block, research professor in the school of public affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver, says the stakes are high for Mr. Jones and the charity.
“When you have your organization listed in the top 10 of the largest nonprofits and have an international presence, that puts a person in a position of celebrity,” says Mr. Block, who wrote a book, Why Nonprofits Fail: Overcoming Founder’s Syndrome, Fundphobia, and Other Obstacles to Success.
When it’s time to retire from an active management role, “you don’t want to go out as a celebrity with bad headlines, you want to turn over the reins as a hero,” says Mr. Block, who also is executive director of Denver Options, an organization that coordinates services for people with developmental disabilities.
“But as the person who spent 30 years building an organization, if you are engaged in founder’s syndrome, you don’t go easily. You want to remain in power; you want to be able to still call the shots,” he says.
Mr. Jones dismisses the notion that he has been reluctant to let go. He says he had long worked to build a staff that was attuned to an eventual future without him and had been planning to retool fund raising to depend less on informational-style television programs that he hosts and more on online appeals.
“We were already planning for what I would call the next wave,” he says. “I knew how to make that transition.”
If Mr. Jones does wind up permanently leaving Feed the Children, he says he would not now “rule in or out” later starting a new, competing charity. “All I can say today is that I’m living a day at a time — an hour at a time,” he says.
Difficult Fund Raising
Feed the Children’s most immediate problem may be that the group is in the crucial holiday fund-raising season without Mr. Jones, its famous-name supporter, who demanded that his name, likeness, and voice no longer be used by the organization in any way, including in fund-raising letters, in television appeals, and on the group’s Web site.
“You have to anticipate that it’s going to hurt the fund-raising activity” of Feed the Children, says Mark Hammons, a lawyer for Mr. Jones. “Larry Jones has been the face of Feed the Children for many, many years,” says Mr. Hammons.
Mr. Jones says that the charity has lost two cash gifts — one of $3-million and one of $500,000 — because of his departure. “The people said, If you are not there, we’re not going to give them,” he says.
However, The Oklahoman newspaper editorial said the charity can and should move on without Mr. Jones. “The tragedy is that this man simply can’t conceive of the organization continuing without him,” it wrote.
Continuing Questions
Meanwhile, Feed the Children faces questions from watchdog groups about whether it has inflated its fund-raising success by exaggerating the value of donated food and other items.
Minutes from an April 2008 board meeting show that “significant discussion” was held about a problem — called a material weakness — in the organization’s “Gift-in-Kind (GIK) Valuation Methodology” that was described in its auditor’s “management letter.”
In a new review of Feed the Children, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance said the board discussion raised concerns. “If the organization overvalued these [GIK] donations, it could affect the amount FTC spends on fund raising and/or other programs,” the BBB said.
Feed the Children did not explain the matter to the BBB’s satisfaction, the alliance said, leading the BBB to conclude that the charity may not meet some of its standards.
The BBB decided that Feed the Children failed to meet its standard on governance and oversight in part because it said board members were not given sufficient notice before a meeting a year ago at which several were removed.
In the end, Mr. Jones says he hopes board members will resolve their differences with him outside of court. “There’s not any charity that from time to time doesn’t have trouble,” he says. “I’m saying, Let’s work it out.”
