After working with the NWRO, he left for Little Rock, Arkansas to found a new organization designed to unite poor and working-class families around a common agenda.
Wade learned of the problem when an employee of Citizens Consulting, the accounting firm for ACORN, told him an investigation uncovered inappropriate charges that led to his brother.
"Clearly, this was an uncomfortable, conflicting and humiliating situation as far as my family and I were concerned," Wade said, "and so the real decisions on how to handle it had to be made by others.
"[3] ACORN executives decided to handle it as an internal matter, and did not inform some of the board members, staff or law enforcement.
[11][12] According to the Times, Wade Rathke "said the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a 'weapon' into the hands of enemies of Acorn, a liberal group that is a frequent target of conservatives who object to ACORN's often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers."
On June 2, 2008, Dale Rathke was dismissed, and Wade resigned that same day as ACORN's chief organizer.
Rathke and Local 100 were most prominently in the news in the fall of 2017 when they filed charges with the NLRB to prevent Dallas Cowboys’ owner and general manager, Jerry Jones, from threatening his players if they refused to stand for the national anthem.