Lyon-Martin clinic avoids closure, looks toward the future

Three months ago, KALW News took you inside Lyon-Martin Health Services in San Francisco, just before the clinic was supposed to close – for good. After threatening to shut the clinic down, Lyon-Martin’s Board of Directors gave the staff one month to turn its finances around. The small health clinic was tasked with raising half-a-million dollars by May 1.

Without a dramatic fundraising campaign, Lyon-Martin would already be closed. But it’s not. By April 30, the clinic had raised $501,001 – half of which came from individual donors. KALW’s Ben Trefny dropped by the clinic to talk with spokeswoman Kara Desiderio, and asked her about the last few weeks of the campaign.

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KARA DESIDERIO: Yeah, the final few weeks were pretty exciting. We had a lot of things come together at the same time, so a big push from donors that have already given, some new donations coming in the door as well as some grant funding that came through. And that just pushed us over $500,000 just by the tiny amount, which was perfect, so all in all I think it was a great success.

BEN TREFNY: And how long will you guys then be solvent for?

DESIDERIO: Well, that money really allowed us to keep our doors open for the time being. That money has not gone to paying off any past debt. So, I think that we are still fundraising, we are still trying to move forward with some more longterm fundraising plans and trying to move away from crisis fundraising. But our goal is to raise another $300,000 by the end of the year – and that's going to come from a variety of sources, so not just from private donors but also foundations and city funding, and a variety of sources.

TREFNY: So one of the things that led to the financial crisis was, as I understand it, Medicare money wasn't coming in. So, has there been some financial restructuring for Lyon-Martin? Have you guys assessed how your business is working?

DESIDERIO: Well, we're currently reassessing how the business is working. We have some new board leadership, which is really exciting, and the board has really been trying to flesh out different business models and what we can do to change our business model to make it more sustainable. There's a lot of ideas on the table, and I'm not quite sure where we're going to move, but it's clear that the organization needs to move somewhere, and we can't continue to operate under our current business model.