PORTLAND – MaineLine Haiti was envisioned as a way for Maine companies to funnel aid to Haiti after last year’s disastrous earthquake, without having money cover the overhead and administrative costs of established relief organizations.

That may have been its undoing.

This week, the group sent off its remaining assets, in the form of a $33,000 check, to Konbit Sante. That Maine-based group has been working to improve health care in Cap-Haitien, a city in northern Haiti, since 2002.

MaineLine Haiti, founded by a half-dozen companies, is essentially in a state of suspension while its leadership decides what to do next, said Susan E. LoGuidice, a lawyer at Preti Flaherty and a member of the organization’s board.

MaineLine Haiti was the idea of Darcy Pierce, a consultant in Scarborough, who conceived it as a way to make a direct impact on the lives of Haitians after the earthquake in January 2010. He recruited Maine companies to donate money, raising $28,500 from the founders. Subsequent fundraising, including a charity golf tournament, brought in an additional $30,000.

On Friday, Pierce referred questions about MaineLine Haiti to LoGuidice.

The goal, LoGuidice said, was to build 10 small schools in Haiti, at a cost of about $50,000 per school.

She said MaineLine Haiti paid Pierce as a consultant, and paid for Pierce to make two trips to Haiti last year. As the seed money began to run low, Pierce worked on a voluntary basis, LoGuidice said. The total that was paid to him almost exactly matched the $28,500 the founding companies put into the organization.

LoGuidice said the group soon realized that it couldn’t operate independently in Haiti and had to work with an organization that already had people in the country. MaineLine Haiti chose Samaritan’s Purse, a school-building group led by Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham.

Samaritan’s Purse was presented as a “high quality” charity, LoGuidice said, but MaineLine Haiti was unaware that the group was heavily focused on evangelism in addition to school-building, which concerned some of MaineLine Haiti’s donors. Also, Franklin Graham came under fire for anti-Islamic remarks he made in the past couple of years. MaineLine Haiti decided to cut its ties to Samaritan’s Purse.

LoGuidice said MaineLine Haiti’s effort suffered because it was a startup organization that focused on a country that was chaotic even before the earthquake, and the group compounded its problems by choosing a partner that got embroiled in controversy.

“It was hard for well-meaning folks located in Portland, Maine to figure that out,” she said.

In the end, no schools were built with MaineLine Haiti’s money, she said, but the group was happy to turn over its assets to Konbit Sante. Although Konbit Sante operates in an area that didn’t suffer significant earthquake damage, a hospital that it supports did treat people who were injured in the quake.

Nate Nickerson, the head of Konbit Sante, was out of the country Friday and could not be reached for comment. A worker at Konbit Sante who declined to be identified said the money from MaineLine Haiti will be used for a water and sanitation project in Cap-Haitien.

LoGuidice said MaineLine Haiti was intended to be a model for future aid efforts and it hasn’t disbanded, although the board could decide to take that step.

“Obviously, it’s not the way anybody planned it,” she said. “We had great intentions and great plans.”

Staff Writer Edward D. Murphy can be contacted at 791-6465 or at:

emurphy@pressherald.com