GiveBetter x SF

Berkeley Free Clinic

Free medical, sexual-health, dental, counseling, benefits and outreach services

Research time: ~17 min on GPT-6 Astra Lite + GPT-5.6 Sol
  • Research — reviewed programs, finances and impact evidence.
  • Modeling — estimated costs, QALYs and uncertainty.
  • Source audit — checked claims, assumptions and calculations.

Published: 10 September 2026.

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Summary

What do they do? Berkeley Community Health Project, DBA Berkeley Free Clinic, is an independent volunteer-run clinic. FY2025 filing reports 2,007 clients, 3,153 encounters and $453,528 whole expense. More

Why this approach interests us

  • The clinic reports 2,007 clients and 3,153 encounters on $453,528 expense and delivers free testing/treatment with 150 volunteers. A March 2026 City record links a $196,809 renovation to expanded capacity and hours.

Our main reservations

  • Dental/TB are paused during a move, service-line outcomes are unpublished, public lab funding overlaps, and total net assets/fund balances have unreported restriction and availability.

What do you get for your dollar?

Our signed whole-organization model estimates $3.85 million donated per 10 Bay-resident QALYs after an assumed residence allocation, compared with $3.62 million per 10 modeled QALYs across all beneficiaries. Verified complete gross resources are unavailable; an all-beneficiary volunteer-inclusive proxy is $12.28 million. Inspect the model, assumptions and scenarios.

bay-resident estimate
$3.85M — donor cost per10 modeled Bay-resident QALYs; residence share is an analyst prior, not observed client geography
prior-weighted gift
$3.62M — donor cost per10 modeled QALYs across all beneficiaries;30% null,10% harm
central case
$4.78M — 0.20910 QALY per $100,000
verified gross
Unavailable — archival volunteer-hours proxy: $12.28M per 10
bay / sf residence
Unmeasured — subjective 80%–95% Bay and 3% SF; 100% Bay clinical service site
funding room
Unverified — $196,809 renovation is priced; added clinical throughput is not

1. What do they do?

Berkeley Community Health Project, DBA Berkeley Free Clinic, is an independent volunteer-run clinic. FY2025 filing reports 2,007 clients, 3,153 encounters and $453,528 whole expense.

Test and treat infections

Current STI testing/treatment plus HIV/hepatitis screening and referral; positivity/linkage not reported.

Provide medical and dental access

FY2025 includes acute/preventive care; dental and TB are currently paused during transition.

Offer counseling and navigation

Peer counseling, referrals and benefits enrollment receive no separate QALYs.

Mobilize volunteers

150 volunteers and seven employees are reported; current volunteer hours are unavailable.

Scope of this review. All FY2025 expense is charged against reported clinical clients. Nonclinical activity and transition costs reflected in that filing receive zero separate benefit; the accounting relationship of the separately reported $196,809 renovation is unknown. A general gift is not modeled as STI-only.

2. Monitoring and information sharing

Berkeley Free Clinic clients

Organization-reported FY2025 activity and finances. The Form 990 reports 2,007 clients and 3,153 encounters on $453,528 of annual expense. Current service disclosures indicate limited operations during transition, including paused dental and TB services.

Our assessment. These figures anchor costs and delivery scale, not causal health gains. No service-line outcome, treatment-linkage, or client-residence dataset was located. The model uses explicit priors rather than presenting encounters as QALYs.

High-risk women in an external chlamydia-screening trial

Randomized trial, Scholes and colleagues, 1996. Among 2,607 randomized women, verified pelvic inflammatory disease occurred in 9 of 1,009 assigned screening and 33 of 1,598 assigned usual care; reported relative risk was 0.44 (95% CI 0.20–0.90). Only 64% of the screening arm was screened; 7% of those screened tested positive and were treated.

Our assessment. This supports a plausible testing-to-treatment mechanism, but it does not estimate Berkeley Free Clinic's effect. Its patient mix, positivity, alternative care and completed treatment are unknown; the trial effect is not multiplied by every clinic client.

Low-income adults in the Oregon Medicaid experiment

Randomized access to insurance, two-year follow-up. The study found greater healthcare use and detection, fewer positive depression screens and less financial strain, without significant improvement in measured physical-health outcomes over two years.

Our assessment. Coverage expansion is not the same intervention as a volunteer clinic. This mixed evidence argues against assuming that additional access reliably produces large health gains; it is contextual evidence, not a clinic-specific QALY conversion.

3. Qualitative assessment

The clinic reports 2,007 clients and 3,153 encounters on $453,528 expense and delivers free testing/treatment with 150 volunteers. A March 2026 City record links a $196,809 renovation to expanded capacity and hours.

Key reservations

  • Current limited-service mix differs from FY2025 throughput.
  • No service-line count, positivity, treatment completion or achieved health outcomes were found.
  • The favorable 5% case supplies 79.84% of signed benefit.
  • Volunteer-inclusive resources use an undated, approximately 2013 archival hours proxy and are not verified complete gross.
  • The $196,809 renovation is not reconciled to FY2025 expense and has no added-throughput denominator.
  • Bay/SF residence is unmeasured; displayed local shares are priors.
  • Total net assets/fund balances have unreported restriction/availability; cash/investments and public lab support make marginal funding additionality uncertain.

Benefits not included in our estimate

  • Benefits enrollment and financial protection
  • Peer counseling and referral utility
  • Homeless outreach
  • Volunteer learning/community effects
  • Dental/TB benefits while paused
  • Avoided transmission, deaths or lifetime tails not captured by finite blended prior

4. What do you get for your dollar?

Prior-weighted $3.62M per 10 QALYs; central $4.78M.

A $100,000 gift is scaled against whole expense and the 2,007-client denominator, then separately discounted for funding additionality, current capacity, uniqueness and material health realization. Finite signed QALYs are applied only after those gates.

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

PRIOR-WEIGHTED COST: 10 × $100,000 ÷ 0.27643778 signed expected QALY
$3,617,451 per 10 modeled QALYs

Model inputs and assumptions
Whole expense/client unit
$453,528 / 2,007 = $225.97 (range: fixed FY2025). Form 990; clients not explicitly labeled unduplicated. High accounting; moderate client semantics.
Funding additionality
15% central (range: 3%–35%). Deficit and current renovation funding request versus public funding and substantial cash/investments of unreported restriction/availability. Very low.
Current-service transfer
70% (range: 40%–100%). Limited operation; dental/TB paused during move; City says renovated facility will expand capacity/hours but does not quantify them. Low.
Unique-client factor
90% (range: 80%–95%). Filing says clients but does not publish deduplication method. Low–moderate.
Clients with material health gain
25% (range: 0%–50%). Unknown service mix, positivity, treatment and linkage. Very low.
QALY per health-benefiting client
0.02 (range: −0.002 to 0.06). Explicit finite acute/morbidity priors: central0.04 utility gain for0.5year=.02 QALY; cautious0.02 for0.5year=.01; favorable0.06 for1year=.06; harm−0.004 for0.5year=−.002. These are illustrative utility-duration packages, not measured effects; no mortality extrapolation. Very low.
Volunteer-inclusive resource proxy
3.286× cash (range: 3.286×–4×). Undated archival listing indexed at approximately 2013: 31,000 hours/180 volunteers, scaled to current 150 under an unchanged-hours-per-volunteer assumption and valued at $40.14/hour; not current measured gross. Very low; incomplete.
Scenario weights
10% harm / 30% null / 30% cautious / 25% central / 5% favorable (range: fixed illustration). Direct current outcomes and marginal capacity absent. Subjective.

$100,000 general whole-organization gift

  • Harm (10%): −0.01062 QALY. Cost not defined.
  • Null (30%): 0 QALY. Cost not defined.
  • Cautious (30%): $66.46M per 10. 0.01505 QALY; volunteer proxy $218.42M.
  • Central (25%): $4.78M per 10. 0.20910 QALY; volunteer proxy $15.72M.
  • Favorable stress (5%): $0.227M per 10. 4.41424 QALYs; volunteer proxy $0.906M.
  • Prior-weighted: $3.62M per 10. 0.27644 QALY; 79.84% from favorable tail; volunteer proxy $12.28M.

Uncertainty. Without the favorable case, donor cost is $17.05M per 10 QALYs. Every health input is a prior rather than a BFC-measured effect.

5. Funding and previous grants

Obtain the added clients/hours attributable to the renovated facility, a restored-service timeline, unduplicated service-line counts, positivity/treatment/linkage and current volunteer/resource requirements.

FY2025 deficit $81,552; total net assets/fund balances $1.193M with restriction/availability unreported; cash/investments $1.049M. The $196,809 renovation was already undertaken and is linked to capacity/hours, but added clinical throughput and its accounting relationship to FY2025 expense are unreported. City lab contract is up to $150,000 over three years; actual draw and marginal private gap remain unverified.

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. Current services. Berkeley Free Clinic. Official service status. Published: Current 2026; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  2. Donate Now. Berkeley Free Clinic. Official donation route. Published: Current 2026; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  3. Berkeley Community Health Project FY2025 Form 990. IRS filing via Candid. Primary financial/output filing. Published: FY ended 2025-06-30; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  4. Laboratory-services contract authorization. City of Berkeley. Official public funding baseline. Published: 2024-01-30; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  5. Berkeley Free Clinic critical renovations funding item. City of Berkeley. Official current capital cost, capacity claim and funding request. Published: 2026-03-10; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  6. Prevention of PID by chlamydia screening. Scholes et al.. Randomized trial. Published: 1996-05-23; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  7. Oregon Medicaid experiment clinical outcomes. Oregon Health Study Group. Randomized lottery study. Published: 2013-05-02; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
  8. 2024 state volunteer-hour values. Independent Sector. Generic volunteer valuation. Published: 2025-04; retrieved: 2026-09-10.

Annual expenses: years and sources

Average annual expenses (three consecutive fiscal years): $392,521. Organization size is separate from the modeled cost-effectiveness of a donation.

Berkeley Community Health Project

Form 990/990-EZ reported whole-entity expenses; includes program, administration and fundraising costs, but excludes any costs netted against revenue.

Original returns checked for legal identity, full-year period and total expenses. Latest three linked original returns.