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ST. LOUIS — Endangered community radio station KDHX flatly rejected a proposal Thursday from a group of former volunteers to yield control of the station in exchange for an infusion of badly needed cash.

The informal proposal, in the form of a prospectus, offered to give $200,000 to the station, which recently admitted in court that it was “one or two steps away from bankruptcy.�

The proposal came from the League of Volunteer Enthusiasts of KDHX, a nonprofit organization composed of former volunteer DJs who were fired or left the station since 2023.

According to the prospectus, “The current leadership of KDHX should embrace the solutions brought to it by the new LOVE organization, which has qualified and motivated volunteers who have access to the financial and operational resources to stop the bleeding and reverse the downward spiral.�

The station’s board of directors dismissed the plan as being unserious and underfunded, with “untenable and ill-considered strings attached.�

In a statement, the board noted that the offered money is not nearly enough money to address the noncommercial station’s financial needs. The station has a budget of more than $1 million. In 2023, the most recent year for which financial records are available, it lost more than $325,000.

The prospectus offers to deposit $100,000 into an escrow account immediately, and make the other $100,000 available after the agreement is finalized. The board’s response assumes that the second $100,000 has been pledged but not raised, and that nonprofit organizations cannot count on money they don’t have in hand.

The board’s statement goes on to blame some of the station’s financial problems on members of LOVE, including former board president Andrew Scavotto and former station development director Caron House. The statement claims that House oversaw what it calls the “failed� $5 million capital campaign from 2012-2014, which raised less than half the money it was seeking.

Along with asking for a new leadership team including the board of directors, the prospectus calls for volunteers to be given a stronger voice in the station’s operations, bringing back the dismissed and departed disc jockeys who want to come back, hiring a station manager and program coordinator and launching a fundraising campaign that would tap a pent-up desire among former donors to support the station again.