Several San Antonio health care and biotech organizations have received significant relief through the Paycheck Protection Program, and that loan process has extended the life of at least one critical provider.
Clarity Child Guidance Center, an Alamo City nonprofit that provides mental health care for patients ages 3 to 17, received $3.5 million in PPP funding.
“It kept us open,” Clarity President and CEO Jessica Knudsen said. “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say it was lifesaving.”
In 2018, outgoing Clarity CEO Fred Hines warned that the funding needed to provide mental health treatment in the region — especially for adolescents — had become more difficult to secure, while the demand for such services was likely to continue rising.
“I don’t want to say it’s the perfect storm brewing, but it’s not a pretty picture,” he said.
Those concerns were exacerbated when United Way of San Antonio and Bexar County restructured its giving strategy, cutting its funding to Clarity from $922,000 for fiscal 2019 to less than $340,000 for fiscal 2020.
Clarity has taken a roughly million-dollar hit in revenue due to suspending some care resulting from Covid-19. The organization had cut every employee’s hours to reduce expenses and to avoid having to permanently lay off staff.
Given such losses, the nonprofit was looking at being unable to make payroll by June, Knudsen said.
The PPP loan, coupled with some special Covid funding from the Texas Hospital Association, enabled Clarity to suspend the furlough and gave it additional time — "about six months of runway now," Knudsen said.
“I think PPP bought us enough cushion that we can get on the other side of this,” she said.
Clarity has already spent essentially all of the PPP money, and Knudsen is hopeful the SBA will forgive the loan.
There are more challenges ahead. Knudsen believes Clarity will see demand for care spike once more students return to classrooms.
“I don’t think we know what’s out there right now,” Knudsen said. “With the fact that school has not been in session, there are probably a ton of kids out there suffering right now that we just don’t know about.”