Our mission is to transform lives and communities in the Name of Christ. Love INC (In the Name of Christ) is a faith based non-profit devoted to connecting the congregations of Charlottesville and Albemarle with the needy and linking people with specific services they require. Love INC is also meant to inspire church members to get involved with the community outside their denomination and accomplish philanthropic work on a larger scale. Love INC is based on a clearinghouse model that processes individual requests for aid, reviews the need, connects the need to the most appropriate church ministry or local organization, and then reviews the outcome. Thus Love Inc creates a structure between the needy and aid using this unique strategy to provide more people with adequate help. Dr. Virgil Gulker, a social worker and writer of Helping You is Helping Me: How a New Breed of Volunteers Can Make a Difference, created this program in the late 1970’s to combat urban decay and the inefficiency of governmental programs at the time. Love INC was based on Vigil Gulker’s commitment to helping people trapped in poverty without the organizational problems that so plagued the ministries and programs before Love INC. Virgil Gulker taught churches to assess their capabilities, unify local congregations, work together, and more effectively help their neighbors on a grander scale than just by denomination or single churches. This is Love INC’s true worth and mission, to integrate churches into one ministry and by doing so, fight poverty with more force possible than by each trying alone. Love INC’s unique clearinghouse model quickly began to spread across deprived communities in the United States and by the end of the 1980’s had 50 affiliates in 14 states. Through the clearinghouse model, Love INC identifies gaps in services between the community and local agencies or the government, and helps churches develop ministries to “fill in the gaps” not being met. Love INC networks include many Gap Ministries dedicated to single purposes or needs, including food pantries, clothes closets, health care and prescription medication advocacy, senior care, transportation, home repair, auto repair, hair cut services, laundry services, sewing ministries, school supplies, furniture, baby supplies, bedding and blankets, personal care items, and many more. Today Love INC has over 150 affiliates in 30 states and gaps the divide between churches and their community more than a million times a year. Locally, Al McCauley from First Baptist Church in 1989 saw a great need for organization in church services and began the first Love INC in all of Virginia. Some in the community did not see the need for an intermediary between the needy and their church but others saw the worth that Love INC could provide by organizing and distributing aid more evenly and efficiently. On February 18, 1991, Love INC formally opened and began taking requests for assistance with seven churches devoted to the spiritual and humanitarian cause of Love INC. By 1996 the number had quadrupled to thirty-six churches giving charity and comfort to those in need. Currently, LOVE INC is connected with over one hundred churches in Albemarle, Charlottesville, and the surrounding counties, Love INC provides support to more than 2,500 people a year, continues on its mission to better the lives of those in need, and does it all “In the Name of Christ. “
