Pepper's Fund

Pepper's Fund is a Client Emergency Fund for Clients facing financial crisis. Your gift to Pepper’s Fund provides tangible support to victim/survivors of sexual assault when their need is greatest.

Sexual assault impacts every aspect of a person’s life and healing often requires substantial resources that many SAC clients do not have. While this looks different for every person, some examples are:

• Loss of income due to missing time at work for court appearances, therapy, etc.

• Job loss due to mental or physical health challenges resulting from assault

• Inability to focus on healing due to lack of basic needs (especially for unhoused clients or those living in poverty)

• Being unsafe at home if the perpetrator remains an ongoing threat

• Difficulty finding and/or paying for childcare when attending therapy, court, etc.

• Cost of medication to manage anxiety/depression following assault

• Difficulty obtaining transportation to/from court, Clinic, therapy, etc.

• And much more

Pepper’s Fund is accessed at the discretion of SAC Therapists on behalf of their Clients to offset these challenges. One Therapist summarizes its benefit here: "My clients are often folks who are already set up to fall through the cracks of social service systems, and before Pepper’s Fund was in place, I’d sometimes feel at a loss about how to help them when we were running into red tape, too-long waitlists, and missed windows of eligibility. I deeply appreciate that Pepper’s Fund puts trust in my clinical judgment and allows me to access funding for my clients with minimal barriers. Being able to offer a “yes” to my clients when they’ve been running into a system of frequent “noes” has contributed to my work feeling more emotionally sustainable. 

- SAC Therapist