GiveBetter x SF

Bayview Hunters Point Foundation for Community Improvement

Behavioral health, methadone, housing, shelter, re-entry, and food services

Research time: ~3 min on GPT-6 Astra Lite + GPT-5.6 Sol
  • Research — reviewed programs, finances and impact evidence.
  • Source audit — checked claims, assumptions and calculations.

Published: 10 September 2026.

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Summary

What do they do? BVHPF operates behavioral health and opioid treatment, family residential recovery, shelter/navigation, supportive housing, jail/re-entry, and food programs in San Francisco. More

Why this approach interests us

  • BVHPF reports more than 400 annual behavioral-health clients and provides outpatient/jail methadone, therapy, psychiatry, crisis intervention, housing, shelter, and re-entry services in SF.

Our main reservations

  • No diagnosis mix, medication/retention person-years, validated before/after health utility, overdose or mortality follow-up, program overlap, or priced next-gift clinical use is public.

What do you get for your dollar?

A signed prior-weighted $100,000 illustration corresponds to $236.13 million per 10 modeled QALYs. Central is $178.12 million and favorable is $17.65 million. Known gross expense equals donor cash on the Form 990 boundary; true gross resources are higher but unknown. These are conditional priors, not empirical marginal estimates. Applying subjective resident shares of 90% Bay and 65% SF gives $262.37M per 10 modeled Bay-resident QALYs and $363.28M per 10 modeled SF-resident QALYs. Neither share is measured. Inspect the model, assumptions and scenarios.

modeled ordinary gift
$236.13M — signed prior-weighted donor and known-gross cost per 10 modeled QALYs
central
$178.12M — per 10 modeled QALYs; conditional, not observed
favorable
$17.65M — 5% prior weight; 66.9% of expected net QALYs
bay / sf share
90% / 65% modeled residents — Subjective allocation; measured residence unavailable. Service sites are 100% SF. Bay55–99% and SF25–90% sensitivities are not confidence bounds.
funding room
Fragility; marginal health unpriced — negative net assets and live donation route, but liquidity unestablished, large public contracts, and no priced capacity tranche

1. What do they do?

BVHPF operates behavioral health and opioid treatment, family residential recovery, shelter/navigation, supportive housing, jail/re-entry, and food programs in San Francisco.

Engage high-risk clients at SF service sites

Official pages report 400+ annual behavioral-health clients and over 1,500 people/families organization-wide; categories and periods are not reconciled.

Deliver treatment and stabilization

Services include therapy, psychiatry, crisis intervention, OMM/jail methadone, case management, shelter, and housing support.

Translate service into health

Only a finite behavioral-health utility pathway receives QALYs. Methadone mortality, housing, shelter, food, re-entry, and public savings receive zero direct credit without outcomes.

Scope of this review. The full FY2025 expense of $17,782,834 is charged. A $100,000 gift maps retrospectively to 2.249 of the reported 400 behavioral-health client-equivalents. The current service count is a floor without an explicit fiscal-year label, so the period match and unique-person denominator are approximate.

2. Monitoring and information sharing

SF City-monitored outpatient delivery

SF City-monitored outpatient delivery. FY2022-23 adult/child programs served 196/24; current contract targets 177/44 and City warns target counts are not unduplicated.

Our assessment. Moderate for service delivery; no causal health outcome

Psychotherapy health-utility anchor

Psychotherapy health-utility anchor. A health technology assessment estimated roughly 0.11–0.12 QALY for group/individual CBT versus usual care. The model uses smaller finite transferred gains.

Our assessment. Moderate external evidence; low transfer

BVHPF organization reporting

BVHPF organization reporting. Official pages report 400+ behavioral-health clients and describe direct methadone, therapy, psychiatry, housing and shelter mechanisms, but no comparative patient outcomes.

Our assessment. Moderate for broad scale; weak for outcomes

3. Qualitative assessment

BVHPF reports more than 400 annual behavioral-health clients and provides outpatient/jail methadone, therapy, psychiatry, crisis intervention, housing, shelter, and re-entry services in SF.

Key reservations

  • The 400-client figure is not explicitly assigned to FY2025 and may not be unique across behavioral-health programs.
  • Ordinary gifts may displace City/Medi-Cal funding or support working capital rather than add clients.
  • The psychotherapy QALY evidence does not identify BVHPF's diagnosis mix, treatment fidelity, or outcomes.
  • Negative net assets show balance-sheet fragility but do not establish liquidity or scalable clinical capacity; City fiscal/compliance monitoring adds execution risk.
  • Known gross resources exclude potentially large external medical, housing, public-service, client-time, and donated-service costs.

Benefits not included in our estimate

  • Methadone-attributable overdose and mortality benefit: medication mix, treatment person-years, retention and substitution unknown.
  • Housing/shelter mortality, emergency-use and utility effects: no causal bridge or resident outcome denominator.
  • Food security, jail/re-entry, family recovery, youth, crime, employment, caregiver and public-savings effects: no direct QALY credit.
  • Any statewide or non-SF spillover: no credit.

4. What do you get for your dollar?

Signed prior-weighted modeled gift: $236.13M per 10 QALYs; central: $178.12M.

The model applies unique-person reliability, gift funding additionality, finite utility gain and duration, and clinical applicability. It includes true null and signed harm cases and gives no mortality credit.

A better life is our comparison unit of 10 additional quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), potentially spread across people. These are uncertain estimates, not measured returns or verified donation offers.

How we calculate the estimate

CENTRAL MODELED GIFT COST: 10 × $100,000 ÷ [2.249 client-equivalents × 90% reliability × 15% funding additionality × (0.05 utility × 0.75 years ÷ midpoint discount) × 50% clinical applicability]
$178,116,283 per 10 modeled QALYs; 0.005614 gift-attributed QALY

Model inputs and assumptions
Reported behavioral-health client floor
400 annually (range: held fixed; reliability 75%–95%). Official current page says over 400 annually; FY2022-23 City data separately show 196 adult and 24 child outpatient clients. Moderate for stated scale; low for unique fiscal-year match.
Scenario prior weights
3% harm / 42% null / 25% cautious / 25% central / 5% favorable (range: fixed for illustration). Null is large because no marginal gift use or outcomes are observed; favorable requires several favorable judgments jointly. Subjective.
Ordinary-gift funding additionality
15% central (range: 0% null; 5% cautious; 15% central; 35% favorable; 10% harm). Negative net assets support need; public reimbursement/contracts and no priced clinical tranche support substantial displacement risk. Low.
Finite health gain
0.05 utility for 0.75 years (range: 0.02×0.5y to 0.11×1y). Bounded below a psychotherapy HTA's roughly 0.11–0.12 QALY gain; not a BVHPF outcome. Low transfer.
Clinical applicability
50% central (range: 25%–70% positive cases). Discounts diagnosis mix, engagement, completion, usual care, and mismatch between published psychotherapy and BVHPF's mixed services. Low.
Known gross resources
1.0× donor cash (range: true multiplier unknown). Form 990 expense is fully charged; induced outside care, public subsidies, client time, and unrecognized donated services are not priced. High for recognized expense; unknown for external resources.
Bay / SF share of credited QALY
90% Bay / 65% SF modeled residence (range: Bay55–99%; SF25–90%; verified service sites100%SF). SF service sites and the narrower SF-eligible contracted cohort inform a judgment, not measured residence. The nominal older 220/current400 client ratio is period-mismatched and not unduplicated; it is neither a valid share nor a lower bound. Subjective judgment; measured residence unavailable.

Illustrative $100,000 unrestricted gift

  • Harm (3%): −0.001912 QALY. Signed stress, not observed BVHPF harm; no positive cost ratio.
  • Null (42%): No incremental QALY. No additional clinical capacity; donor/gross ratios and geography shares are null.
  • Cautious (25%): $4.492B per 10 QALYs. 0.000223 QALY; very small finite health gain and 5% funding additionality.
  • Central (25%): $178.12M per 10 QALYs. 0.005614 QALY; 15% funding additionality and 50% clinical applicability.
  • Favorable (5%): $17.65M per 10 QALYs. 0.056661 QALY; 35% funding additionality and favorable finite utility bridge.
  • Signed prior-weighted: $236.13M per 10 QALYs. 0.004235 net QALY. Favorable case supplies 66.9%; positive-only ratio is $232.98M.
  • Resident allocation, holding total health fixed: $363.28M per 10 modeled SF-resident QALYs. Subjective SF65%/Bay90% central. SF25–90% yields $944.53M–$262.37M; Bay55–99% yields $429.33M–$238.52M. Measured residence unavailable; not confidence bounds.

Uncertainty. All scenario values and weights are analyst priors, not confidence intervals. Verified marginal donor and gross costs remain unknown. The headline is favorable-tail-sensitive and excludes unmeasured benefits rather than assuming they are zero in reality.

5. Funding and previous grants

Obtain a unique fiscal-year client table, clinical outcomes and counterfactual access, OMM retention and medication mix, payer displacement, current waitlists/vacancies, and a costed next-$100,000 plan.

FY2025 revenue $17.833M, expense $17.783M, surplus $50,426 and net assets −$1.408M show balance-sheet fragility, not established cash liquidity. Enacted Amendment5 authorized $18,079,996 through December2026; later Amendment6 authorized exactly $25,611,719 through June2028. The earlier May2025 $25,711,090 proposal was superseded. Large public contracts and no costed clinical expansion make health-producing marginal room unverified and unpriced.

This review does not establish a verified marginal funding offer or a complete history of grants.

Donate

Opens the organization’s giving page. A general donation may not fund the specific activity modeled here; confirm allocation with the recipient.

6. Sources

  1. Official behavioral health services. Bayview Hunters Point Foundation. current scope and 400+ annual clients; accessed 2026-09-10. Published: Undated/current; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  2. Official whole-organization programs. Bayview Hunters Point Foundation. program counts and mechanisms; accessed 2026-09-10. Published: Undated/current; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  3. Official history/current scale. Bayview Hunters Point Foundation. 1,500+ SF people/families and OMM history; accessed 2026-09-10. Published: Undated/current; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  4. Official giving and economic statement. Bayview Hunters Point Foundation. donation route and EIN; accessed 2026-09-10. Published: Undated/current; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  5. FY2025 IRS-derived filing. IRS via ProPublica. filed 2026-05-15. Published: FY2025; filed2026-05-15; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  6. SF Board/DPH contract packet. San Francisco Board of Supervisors. dated 2025-05-14; counts, scope, monitoring, superseded proposed terms. Published: 2025-05-14; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  7. Enacted Amendment 6, File 251133. San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Resolution 609-25; $25,611,719 through 2028-06-30, enacted 2025-12-23. Published: 2025-12-23; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  8. Psychotherapy health technology assessment. Health Quality Ontario. external 0.11–0.12 QALY upper anchor; accessed 2026-09-10. Published: 2017; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  9. Distinct Bayview Senior Services entity. Bayview Senior Services. EIN 94-2186268; accessed 2026-09-10. Published: Undated/current; retrieved: 2026-09-10.

Annual expenses: years and sources

Average annual expenses (three consecutive fiscal years): $18,508,212. Organization size is separate from the modeled cost-effectiveness of a donation.

Bayview Hunters Point Foundation for Community Improvement Inc

IRS Form 990 whole-entity total expenses, Part I line 18; fiscal years ending June 30

FY2023 from prior-year column of FY2024 return. EIN and July-June fiscal year also verified on official https://www.bayviewci.org/get-involved .