Angel Food Ministries rethinking its mission

MONROE, Ga. - Over the past few months, Angel Food Ministries has tried to get back to its roots - reshaping itself into a Christian ministry first, a discount food supplier second.

After a year of turmoil and legal troubles, the nonprofit, which distributes discounted groceries through churches across the country, is reorganizing itself to put more emphasis on its Christian mission to share the Gospel and serve the poor.

"It's realizing that we're not just a grocery store," said Juda Englemeyer, Angel Food Ministries' spokesman. "When we talk to a customer on the phone, it's not just, 'Did you like your chicken this week?' It's more, 'When you went to the church, did you find that they were warm and welcoming there? Did someone bless you while you were there? Did they make you feel like part of a community while you were there?'

"It's making them feel like they're part of a community, part of a faith and part of a more religious organization."

The Monroe-based ministry has been under a cloud for 18 months, ever since FBI agents raided its headquarters in February 2009, carting away boxes of files and paperwork in an investigation that continues.

A few weeks later, two former employees and board members sued the charity's founders, Joe and Linda Wingo, claiming the Wingos used the nonprofit to enrich themselves and demanding their ouster and an audit of the organization's books.

Angel Food leaders launched the rebirth effort while the FBI probe and bickering still hang over the organization and at a time when sales of the group's discount food boxes have plateaued.

Angel Food Ministries buys food in bulk from national suppliers, repackages it and then sells boxes of groceries for $30 each - about half of what the food would cost retail, according to the nonprofit's website. The organization started providing reduced-price groceries to 34 families from Atlanta to Athens in 1994. Angel Food now serves hundreds of thousands of families in more than 44 states, according to Englemeyer.

Nonprofit leaders recently laid off a quarter of the charity's work force, about 50 part- and full-time employees, to reduce the price of a box of discounted groceries from $30 to between $25 and $28, Englemeyer said.

In conjunction with the layoffs, officers restructured management to put more effort into improving relationships with the pastors and churches that distribute their groceries, Englemeyer said.

"We're a ministry, and ministry development wants to be more involved with every activity rather than just preaching to host sites," he said. "They want to be involved in talking to host sites about sales and their customer base and how they deal with their customers, not just giving them food, but how they minister to them."

It has been harder to maintain those relationships with the black cloud of scandal hanging over the ministry.

"It's not dire, but I would say that a perfect storm hit us with the economy the way it is, the lawsuit and the FBI thing," Englemeyer said. "It's all contributed to chiseling away at our credibility - not our ability to deliver, but our credibility. Rebuilding credibility is a hard thing to do.

"Even though we live in a world where you're innocent until proven guilty, in certain circles - especially church circles - it's the opposite. You're guilty until proven innocent."

The FBI has not filed any charges against the Wingos since searching the nonprofit's offices 18 months ago, and the agency won't comment on the case.

The Wingos settled the lawsuit the two former board members filed against them last year accusing them of siphoning off about $2.7 million from the organization.

A year later, though, former board members Craig Atnip and David A. Prather feel Angel Food has violated the settlement, and they have filed a contempt motion against the Wingos.

The June 19, 2009, settlement stipulated that the Wingos allow an outside audit of the ministry's books, cancel their corporate credit cards, sign over ownership of a private jet to the nonprofit and pay Prather and Atnip a severance package that was part of their original employment contracts.

All of the parties agreed the audit would be given to Prather and Atnip's attorneys and submitted to the court under a seal, so the general public could not see it.

Prather's attorney, Thomas Rogers of Athens, sent numerous e-mails between September and November asking the accounting group responsible for the audit - North Carolina firm Dixon Hughes - to turn the completed audit over to the attorneys and the court.

The firm eventually filed an accounting report, but Prather and Rogers refused to acknowledge it as a full audit because it did not address the amount of money the Wingos needed to repay the charity for the personal use of their corporate credit cards and other compensation they took without the board's approval.

They filed a motion in Walton County Superior Court in December asking Judge John Ott to find the Wingos in contempt.

The motion still is pending, and Ott has not set another hearing date, according to court documents.