New Director Hopes to Restore Reputation of Scandal-Ridden Charity

Tour buses stop every 15 minutes outside of the Hale House Center’s landmark brownstone — a ritual Randolph McLaughlin, the organization’s new executive director, sees as a testament to the symbolic value of a building that has been a center of hope in a Harlem neighborhood plagued by poverty, crime, and drugs.

Clara Hale, better known as Mother Hale, turned the building into a home for children whose mothers had lost battles with addiction or who needed a refuge while their parents served jail sentences. Ms. Hale’s compassion gained a national reputation, earning her a seat at President Ronald Reagan’s 1985 State of the Union address and his praise of her as “an American hero.”

But less than a decade after Ms. Hale’s death, in 1992, Hale House’s pristine image was tarnished. In 2001, Lorraine E. Hale — Clara’s daughter and the organization’s president — was fired after she was accused of embezzlement. A year later she and her husband pleaded guilty to stealing thousands of dollars from the organization.

Mr. McLaughlin, a civil-rights lawyer who had defeated the Ku Klux Klan in a 1982 lawsuit, became one of Hale House’s few friends during that turbulent period. He was hired as the organization’s lawyer, offering his legal expertise and helping craft its course through its darkest days.

Hale House has yet to fully emerge from the 2001 scandal, but Mr. McLaughlin, who left his law practice in December to take over as the organization’s executive director, says it is well down the path to recovery.

Mr. McLaughlin, 51, became Hale House’s interim director in April 2004 following the departure of Lawrence Davenport, who had been brought in to help clean up the charity’s finances. After several months of guiding the organization and helping search for a full-time successor, Mr. McLaughlin was offered the full-time job, which carries a $190,000 salary.

“He brings a lot to the mix,” says Zachary W. Carter, a New York lawyer who is chairman of the Hale House board. “He has had a real passion throughout his career for serving the underserved.”

That passion started early for Mr. McLaughlin, the son of immigrant parents from Honduras and Jamaica. His parents, who were both active in labor unions, instilled a progressive philosophy in their son, who says that at an early age he began delivering Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech before anyone who would listen.

His family’s dinner-table discussions helped shape an adult who has been committed to social causes. In addition to taking on the Ku Klux Klan, Mr. McLaughlin won a series of cases in New York State that eliminated hurdles for black and Latino voters. He was founding director of Pace University Law School’s Social Justice Center.

Hale House has become Mr. McLaughlin’s latest cause. Among his next tasks is drafting a five-year plan that will spell out Hale House’s goal for new programs to complement its traditional residential programs. He is also working closely with the city of New York on a new program to provide transitional housing to homeless families with children.

The moves, he says, are part of a larger goal of returning the organization to its roots, while also extending Mother Hale’s vision into new locales.

“To me, she’s the Mother Teresa of Harlem,” Mr. McLaughlin says. “She brought in the untouched and the unwanted. The question I ask whenever I start a new program is ‘What would Mother Hale have done?’ This isn’t my office. It’s her office. I’m just a caretaker.”

In an interview, Mr. McLaughlin talked about his new role.

How did practicing law prepare you for running a nonprofit organization?

As a lawyer — and I was primarily a trial lawyer — you take a problem, think it through, create a plan, and take it from point A to point B. You have to be tremendously self-motivated.

In the not-for-profit sector, the process is similar. You have a problem, which is how you develop programs; you create a plan; and then you operationalize it. You move the plan forward. The ultimate goal is to create a stable organization that serves the larger community.

Which do you enjoy more, law or nonprofit management?

In some ways, I enjoy this work more. Judges can be arbitrary and capricious. Juries can be arbitrary and capricious. With this, I have a mission and a goal and I can see it moving forward every day.

What has Hale House done to re-establish its reputation in the wake of its scandal?

What was critical was to make sure the residential-care program was run in the best way it could be. We brought in folks who were skilled as professionals to make sure the children were well cared for. On the administrative side, we needed to make sure the controls were there. We needed consistently clean audits. No questions and no issues.

We’ve become a 35-year-old institution with a three-year institutional memory. I’m the longest serving one on the administrative side. We cleaned house from top to bottom. Our job has been to refocus and rebuild the organization from the ground up. We had to rebuild trust. That’s very important for a nonprofit like Hale House, where you depend on the kindness of strangers and friends.

How much further does Hale House have to go to fully regain that trust?

We’re 30 percent there. It takes time. We’re a lot further along the road than we were two years ago or six months ago. The clearest example of that is the city of New York has renamed our street Mother Hale Way. The other example of that was getting the contract signed with the city of New York. I consider that a Good Housekeeping seal.

What are the next steps in Hale House’s rehabilitation?

We’ve turned a corner. What I’d like to do is make us a financially stable organization where we have an endowment and a steady financial stream. It’s just a matter of capitalizing on the work that’s been done already.

We have a feel-good mission. But whether it’s Hale House or any nonprofit, doing good work is not enough. You have to run it in a professional way and provide service in a professional way. As folks learn who we are, what we’re doing, and what we have done, Hale House will re-emerge from the ashes like a phoenix.

ABOUT RANDOLPH MCLAUGHLIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HALE HOUSE CENTER

Education: Earned his bachelor’s degree at Columbia University in 1975 and his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1978.

Previous employment: Worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, then became a partner in a small firm specializing in constitutional and civil rights. Gave up his law practice in 2004 to work as Hale House’s executive director, but remains a law professor at New York’s Pace University.

What he’s been reading: Mr. McLaughlin faithfully totes books on his hourlong train commute from Westchester to New York City. Two of his recent favorites have been Peter F. Drucker’s Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Principles and Practices and Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America: a Novel.