In 1976, missionary Ralph Winter began work to turn Pasadena into a staging ground for worldwide efforts to bring Christianity to unreached communities.

He purchased a roughly $25 million, 15-acre campus on the northern end of the city with the goal of awakening “1 million evangelicals to the plight of these hidden peoples,” according to the organization he founded, Frontier Ventures, formerly the U.S. Center for World Missions.

The campus, Winter believed, would serve as a headquarters to train missionaries and collaborate with other faith-based organizations on their common goal.

But as Frontier Ventures and William Carey International University, a college created by Winter, move to sell the land to fund smaller satellites in other countries and continents, a group of former donors and employees have accused the organizations of working against Winter’s vision. Some are even demanding their money back.

If the sale goes through, they fear it will unravel Winter’s work and potentially displace nonprofits renting space on the campus and residents living in the 147 homes owned by the university.

Kevin Higgins, the president of William Carey, confirmed the property is on the market. The organizations intend to retain an office building and an unspecified number of the homes, but the large campus is no longer needed as Frontier has employees working across the globe, and William Carey is focused on distance learning, he said.

“I don’t think Southern California is the center of the mission universe,” Higgins said. “The whole thing we existed to birth is a mission movement that would be global.”

Globalization and technology make it possible to create hubs closer to the missionary work in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Meanwhile, rising costs in Southern California have become restrictive and have forced other organizations they partnered with to move out of the state, he said.

According to Higgins, Winter’s widow, his second wife, is supporting the new focus. He believes the organization’s founder would also back the move. Winter died in 2009 after a battle with multiple myeloma and lymphoma. The first discussions about selling the property began roughly a year later.

Technically, William Carey owns all of the land and the organizations’ board has the final say, but each year, the bulk of revenue, largely from renting campus space and homes, is given to Frontier Ventures to further its mission. The two organizations have several overlapping leadership positions and have a symbiotic relationship by all accounts.

The money from a sale would allow Frontier Venture to become decentralized, Higgins said. The funds would be placed in an endowment and invested.

Higgins said his board has no intention of selling to a developer and is looking specifically for a like-minded organization that would minimize disruptions as much as possible. Employees who fill service roles on the campus may lose their jobs if the new buyers decide not to keep them on, Higgins acknowledged.

No deals have been finalized, but Higgins noted they are in talks with several potential buyers. Those buyers differ on which pieces of the property they want, making it hard to say exactly what would be part of the deal. Some want the campus buildings, others have expressed interest in only the houses.

“We’re trying to be pretty upfront with all of this,” Higgins said. “We don’t want anybody to wake up one day and go, ‘Oh, they sold and we’re out.’ That’s not going to happen.”

Some opposed to the sale say the organizations must return donations made in 1987 to pay off the original loan. Winter initially collected $15.95 from his followers to put toward the bill. Bob Coleman, a former board member, started the “Last $1,000 Campaign” and successfully raised the remainder.

“If anyone had thought they were going to sell the campus 30 years from then, they wouldn’t have given the money,” said David Clancy, a co-founder of “Save the Campus,” the group opposing the sale. “This is an incredible move away from the original mission and vision.”

Companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft are doubling down on large campuses, despite advances in technologies, Clancy argued.

“They know that real collaboration is really hard to get on Face Time, or Skype, or in meetings like that,” he said. “There’s so much that can be done with this campus in a lot of amazing ways.”

Coleman, the founder of the Last $1,000 Campaign and now a leader in Save the Campus, said William Carey and Frontier have a fiduciary duty to keep to the promises made to donors.

“The way forward is to return the U.S. Center for World Mission back to its original purpose, by inviting back the team of Mission agencies and other collaborators, who have all been unceremoniously pressured to leave over time,” he said in a statement.

Clancy said the leadership in 1987 pledged to return money to donors if they lost the property. In a Facebook post, Save the Campus threatened to challenge the sale if it moves forward.

William Carey’s legal counsel believes Save the Campus has an indefensible position in court, according to Higgins. He said he hasn’t heard from anyone, besides Coleman, who donated and wants their money back. Still, Francis Patt, Frontier’s general director, has committed “try to find a way” to pay back donations to anyone who wants a refund, Higgins said. He added he isn’t sure the nonprofit will legally be allowed to do that, but officials there will investigate it.

For now, there’s still no guarantee a sale will happen, Higgins said. But, even if the organizations’ board members decide to keep all of the land, Frontier will still move toward its goal of decentralization.

“This isn’t out of financial necessity, this is out of a strategic focus on what makes the most sense,” he said.