A decline in grant dollars for mental health, now that COVID funding streams are drying up, has put ARROW Project, a mental-health initiative providing services to people in Augusta County, Staunton and Waynesboro, on the brink of financial peril.
“Often what we see is lots of dollars going into/toward a specific mental health initiative such as COVID-19, and then decreasing as the community needs shift and change. And that can make it hard to find consistent revenue streams,” said Sabrina Burress, the executive director and co-founder of ARROW Project, which launched in 2019.
ARROW Project opened with one office and two staff members, and has grown in the last five years to three offices and 35 staff and student clinicians, offering 13 unique programs, and an average of 350 clinical hours per week.
The nonprofit takes a multi-pronged approach to addressing issues surrounding mental-health access and participation, with a focus on supporting individuals and families limited by systemic pressures – poverty, race, gender, sexual orientation, lack of transportation, lack of housing – working to connect them to quality mental-health services.
This all comes at a cost, obviously. ARROW Project’s funding model has changed over the last several years. Beginning in 2019, all of the work was grant-funded. Between 2019 and 2022, ARROW Project received more than $500,000 in grant dollars from local and state agencies.
In 2020 specifically, the organization saw a significant increase in grant funding related to the situational uptick in mental-health instability as community members processed the depression and anxiety that were the result of COVID-19, and the myriad ways it impacted lives.
Those funding dollars have decreased over time.
How you can help
The ARROW Project relies on the generosity of donors to continue to provide low-cost, accessible mental health services to the community. Click here to learn more about how you can support our mission through a tax-deductible donation.
The financial crisis is not just about decreased grant funding, though, according to Burress. It is also about rising operational costs, the barriers and loopholes of insurance billing, and a growing need for services in a time of economic uncertainty.
Burress, who has a business degree, said “it is not that we don’t have the skills and understanding to manage the business, specifically financial, side of ARROW Project.”
She believes it’s that capacity building and clinical work took precedence, and now “we are all stretched thin and wearing out.”
The organization is now coming to terms with a haunting reality: without a significant injection of community support, the organization may be required to significantly reduce capacity, or in a worst-case scenario “begin to imagine what it would mean to close our doors,” said Burress.
“It often feels like the wind is being knocked out of me,” Burress said. “We worked so hard in 2024 to get ahead, but even as we were successfully overcoming previous roadblocks, it was clear the financial gap wasn’t narrowing.”
The focus in the here and now is on increasing donor engagement, management and fundraising in the new year, which Burress believes in only possible with more community support now.
This will allow them “some breathing room,” she said, while ARROW Project works to ensure all strategies identified in 2024 for financial growth can be appropriately implemented and managed in the new year and beyond.
For now, though, “every phone call seeking assistance, every plea for help, cuts deep, knowing we may not be able to answer the call,” Burress said. “We are not asking for charity; we are asking for a chance to continue the work that has transformed countless lives. Every dollar donated is not just a contribution, but a lifeline that could mean the difference between stability and despair for those who rely on us.
“Seeing the desperation in the eyes of clients, the raw fear of what might happen if ARROW Project can no longer provide the support that community members so desperately need can be overwhelming too, like at times even more than the financial concerns” Burress said. “Our clients’ struggles are not abstract numbers on a spreadsheet; they are the faces of mothers who are struggling to support the mental health of their children, the stories of adults that feel they have no real safe haven in the world, the underrepresented among us finding and feeling representation, affirmation, and support.”
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Chris Graham
