The Flathead County Library Board of Trustees voted last week to break with its nonprofit fundraising arm, the Flathead Library Foundation, as it prepares to launch a campaign to build a new Kalispell branch.

The 4-1 decision, which came as a shock to foundation officials, was made after board Chair Dave Ingram expressed frustration with how slow the process was of signing a fundraising agreement. He also accused the foundation of acting improperly and being “coercive” after the organization asked the board to agree to three conditions for its support in the endeavor.  

The conditions included unanimous support from the board on a capital campaign agreement, a commitment of capital improvement project funds from the county and a commitment from the county to support the library in the future. 

Foundation leadership, which disputed Ingram’s characterizations of the conditions, said the organization needed a signed agreement that ensured support before it approached donors. It's normal for a document like this to go through several revisions, according to the foundation. 

“There is no coercion, only basic requests for the sort of assurances that any donor deserves,” said foundation Executive Director Sara Busse after the meeting. 

The memo that included the conditions was sent to the board the day before its April meeting. The timing rankled Ingram, he told fellow trustees.   

“To me these actions raise serious issues regarding overstepping operational authority by inserting themselves in negotiations, repeated breakdowns in communication, a lack of transparency and the attempt to influence or control the decisions of a public governing body,” Ingram said at the board’s May meeting. 

Trustee Carmen Cuthbertson echoed Ingram, stating that the library needs a “reliable, dependable, honest, trustworthy fundraising entity.”  

“We do not have it right now,” she said.  

Ingram stated that possible fundraising avenues include reducing the earnest money down payment, possible owner financing and potentially renegotiating the purchase price with a better understanding of “what we bring to the table" for the property owners of the future home of the Kalispell branch. 

During the public comment period, Flathead Library Foundation Board president Erica Wirtala responded to the criticisms. 

“How is it possible to go to a donor ... when it looks like the Board of Trustees is not all on board and we don't have very solid assurances from the county commissioners that they are behind this project as well?” Wirtala said. 

Flathead County commissioners publicly expressed support for the project in early May but cautioned that their focus was on the completion of a new jail.  

Work to purchase property at the Kalispell Center Mall for the library’s future location officially began last summer. In August, the board sent its initial letter of intent to SHOP Companies, the Texas developer that bought the mall last year, and began negotiations.  

At the time, Ingram said, the board was working on two documents: a capital campaign agreement with the foundation and the buy-sell agreement with the landowner.  

The former document is an agreement between the library and foundation that outlines the first phase of the project: acquisition of the property.  

After multiple revisions and the document going back and forth between the two entities, the agreement was officially approved by the board on a 3-2 vote on March 27. The split decision left foundation leaders concerned. 

“We want the same thing the Board of Trustees wants. We would love to have a new library. We would love to help you with that. But to go to fundraisers, hold events, and to ask people for money, you have to show that everybody is on board with the project. A 3-2 vote doesn’t do that,” Wirtala said. 

The foundation sent the three requirements after that vote, stating that they would not sign the agreement until those three conditions were met. 

Cuthbertson said that the inclusion of guarantees was irrelevant given the limited amount of money going toward libraries overall.  

“What I need is a foundation that understands that conditions are not ideal, and we just have to work with what we have,” she said. “If the foundation needs ideal conditions in order to be able to fundraise for us, then the foundation should consider this project a lost cause."  

Trustee Jane Wheeler, the only board member to vote against separating from the Foundation, made a motion at the meeting to return the agreement to the Board of Trustee's facilities committee for further review before ending the relationship. The motion failed.  

Moving forward, Ingram stated that the library is willing to work with the foundation on the project but that they aren’t associating the project with the foundation’s ability to fundraise. Foundation members are concerned that without a clear path forward, fundraising will be difficult.  

“We’ve been told there are entities and people who could potentially make this happen,” Ingram said after the meeting. “Rather than being bogged down with further contract language, we decided to open it up.” 

The Flathead Library Foundation was created to support the Flathead County library through philanthropy, collaboration and advocacy. Their fundraising work helped complete the new branch of the library in Bigfork last year.  

Reporter Kate Heston may be reached at 758-4459 or [email protected].