Recently Community Capital Alliance (CCA) celebrated the culmination of their program year by presenting a grant of $5,000 to the Walk-In Counseling Center. As I have shared before (check out this post), CCA is a partner of The Minneapolis Foundation and provides an experiential learning opportunity for young professionals about philanthropy.
For the last nine months CCA members focused on the topic of health care access. Members were charged with discovering and meeting a variety of nonprofit organizations that work in the health care field throughout the Twin Cities. Through a process of research, proposal review, site visits and much deliberation, members selected the Walk-In Counseling Center as this year’s grant recipient.
Walk-In Counseling Center is based in South Minneapolis and is the only counseling center in the nation to use large numbers of volunteer professionals working in teams to deliver immediate counseling to people in urgent need – free of charge. Any individual who enters the center is guaranteed to be seen – there are no barriers of price, paperwork or process. They utilize nearly 150 volunteer social workers and psychologists to provide services to over 1500 clients. This equates to over 5,000 counseling sessions and 2,000 phone consultations. The Center is believed to have the largest number of mental health volunteer professionals working under one roof in the world. Thanks to their skilled volunteer base, the Center operates with a talented, yet lean staff. At their own admission, they also have been operating with an outdated phone system. The $5,000 from CCA will pay for an upgrade to their phone system which will allow them to improve their communications to their valued volunteers and clients. Staff and Board members of the Walk-In Counseling Center graciously accepted the grant and expressed their gratitude to CCA not just for the funds, but also for their interest in learning about health care and the mental health field.
CCA presented the grant at a reception hosted by last year’s grant recipient, African Development Center.
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