The St. Louis nonprofit that operates community radio station KDHX plans to sell its license and tower to a Christian broadcaster, a decision that its board president blames on long-running financial problems and a campaign led by former volunteers.

Double Helix Corp., which declared bankruptcy earlier this month , announced Tuesday that it plans to sell the assets to K-Love, a Tennessee-based broadcaster with more than 600 stations across the U.S. It would use the proceeds to repay the $2 million it owes to creditors, according to Robert Eggmann, an attorney representing the organization.

In a post on its website announcing the sale , KDHX said its “future remains strong and community-driven. This sale is not the end of KDHX—it is a transformation that allows us to continue our mission in new and sustainable ways. While we don’t yet know all the ways we will do that, we look forward to a time of gathering input from volunteers, listeners, content creators, and industry leaders to help shape this future.”

A group of former KDHX volunteers who resigned or were dismissed say they will try to block the transaction in bankruptcy court.

“This board and this organization has tried to do the right thing in a very difficult situation,” Gary Pierson, president of Double Helix’s board, said Wednesday in a meeting with reporters. “We’ve tried to put the organization in a situation that it could have a future.”

Backlash leads to declining support

The announcement of the proposed sale, which a bankruptcy judge must still approve, comes about two years after KDHX leadership dismissed longtime host and station co-founder Tom “Papa” Ray, sparking backlash from station volunteers and community members. The board and KDHX Executive Director Kelly Wells said they dismissed Ray for “a long history of bullying, aggression and harassment.” Ray said he was taken off the air for criticizing Wells.

Station leaders then canceled 10 more shows and dismissed additional hosts who they said had hurt the station’s financial stability. At least 14 more DJs resigned in protest, and hundreds of volunteers, former hosts, local musicians and business owners signed letters and staged protests outside the station in an effort to oust Wells and Pierson.

In January, KDHX dismissed all volunteer DJs and content producers — who were also associate board members — and announced that the station would no longer air new programming.

Meanwhile, donations to the station plummeted. In 2022, the organization received $1.1 million in contributions and grants, according to a tax filing . In a February court filing , an attorney for the organization said it had less than $7,000 in cash. Station leaders have blamed the drop in financial support on “disparagement campaigns and senseless lawsuits.”

When asked whether he could have done anything differently to avoid the decline, Pierson, who became president in 2023, said the board could have provided more detail on why it dismissed DJs.

“We could have named more of the egregious behavior that the board was addressing in removing some of those people,” he said. “We’re talking about things that would not have been tolerated in any organization.”

The organization has faced financial troubles and internal conflicts for years. A station manager told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1992 that KDHX was programmed by “80 anarchists.” In 1997, amidst a search for the organization’s sixth general manager in 10 years, Ray told the Post-Dispatch that its behind-the-scenes culture was a “psychodrama snake pit.”

Since 2013, the organization has reported negative net income in all but two years, according to tax filings .

If a bankruptcy judge approves the sale, K-Love would purchase the license and tower for between $4.35 and $4.8 million, depending on how quickly the deal is completed, Eggmann said. That would leave Double Helix with a surplus, but Pierson said he expects the organization to incur other expenses.

Pierson said Double Helix still believes “there is a possibility of a future” for KDHX even if it no longer broadcasts. “The organization’s mission is to create community through media,” he said. “It doesn’t rely solely on a broadcast radio format.”

Challenge to sale

The League of Volunteer Enthusiasts (LOVE) of KDHX, a group of longtime volunteers, believes it can block the sale, said Roy Kasten, a spokesperson for the group and former volunteer host.

He pointed to Double Helix’s articles of incorporation, which predate KDHX’s founding in 1987. The articles state that the organization’s function is for the “operation exclusively for educational purposes of one or more noncommercial educational radio broadcasting stations” licensed by the FCC.

The proposed sale “is 100% contrary to that,” Kasten said. “A corporate conglomerate of radio stations having another outpost in the Midwest is not in the interest of the community.”

But that argument is unlikely to be enough to block the sale, particularly since the transaction would be between nonprofit radio groups, according to Keith Lundin, who was a U.S. bankruptcy court judge for more than three decades.

The concern that one group is a community nonprofit and the other is a large Christian broadcaster is “unlikely to overcome the interest of creditors,” Lundin said.

LOVE had offered to give Double Helix $200,000 if it agreed to leadership changes and to retain its broadcast license, but the board rejected the offer. The group does not plan to try to outbid K-Love, Kasten said.

The next bankruptcy court hearing is scheduled for April 16.

In the meantime, LOVE plans to hold a vigil March 31 outside KDHX’s offices.

“We believe in keeping KDHX live and local,” the group said in announcing the event. “We believe in preserving community radio — now and for generations to come.”