Support Our Mission

We are a 501(c)3 nonprofit counseling center with two main goals:

  • Provide Affordable Therapy to People Who Need Help

  • Train and Support Aspiring Therapists

Many people cannot afford the mental health treatment they need. Unfortunately, depression and anxiety and other symptoms often diminish a person’s financial resources. Many of our clients can barely support themselves. This means that the more one suffers, the less they may be able to get the help they need. That’s a tragedy.

But there is another problem we face. Intern therapists must undergo a long period of training to learn a difficult profession. They work very hard at both learning their craft and working on themselves, to make sure they can provide therapy with the maturity and wisdom necessary.

They don’t do it for the pay. It is not a “get rich” career. They do it from a deep desire to help heal the suffering of others. And unfortunately, they usually earn very little pay during the years they devote to training. Once they are licensed, they have a better chance of earning a livable income. But by then they are often saddled with debt. And it is hard for even a licensed therapist to get out of that hole.

The sadly ironic thing about our field is that the therapists who end up serving the most unresourced clients are the interns, the most unresourced therapists. Not only do they spend years not earning enough to live on, they serve the clients that the more established therapists turn away. We have go to do better for them.

Intern Support Endowment

Shine a Light is committed to helping interns earn a livable salary. We pay them as much as we can. But since we also serve low-fee clients with our sliding scale, we can’t pay them enough with just the fees we collect.

We need your help. We have established an Intern Support Endowment. It is a fund we hope to grow and sustain over the years. The endowment funds are safely invested with the goal of providing income to supplement the pay of our intern staff. The more the endowment grows through your contributions, them more we will be able to boost the salaries of our intern staff, year after year.

Please help us get to the point where therapists in training can earn a livable wage while they hone their skills in helping others.

Donate Now

Fully Tax Deductable!

Shine a Light ~ by the Numbers

  •  5 ~ The number of offices (Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley, Watsonville, Monterey, San Francisco)
  • 20 ~ The number of licensed supervisors contributing at least one hour of supervision to our interns
  • 40 ~ The number of counseling rooms in service

 

  • 73 ~ The number of intern therapists on staff
  • 6-22 ~ The number of clients each intern sees per week
  • $53,000 ~ The average annual intern part-time salary

 

  • 185 ~ The average number of clients seen each weekday
  • 3700 ~ The average number of clients sessions per month
  • 3825 ~ The number of new client inquiries in 2024

Meet the Director, Tim Hartnett, explaining the Shine a Light Counseling Center mission.