Bridges & Balm Officer Transitions and Financial Update

With deep gratitude but also sadness, we are announcing that as of Apr 15, Paul Svendsen has stepped away from his treasurer and bookkeeper roles for personal reasons. We are deeply grateful to Paul for his immense contribution in helping to launch Bridges & Balm and serving as our financial officer for the last 2 ½ years. We are thankful that Paul will continue to be available to Bridges & Balm in an advisory role.

Bridges & Balm is in the process of conducting a search for a financial officer. It is a volunteer position but the rewards are priceless. If you are interested or know of someone who might be a good fit, please contact us at BridgesandBalm@gmail.com. 

As mentioned in our recent 2026 Outlook blog, Sara Sikes assumed the Bridges & Balm Bookkeeper duties as of March 1. Thanks to Sara’s extremely high level of expertise and dedication (and of course Paul’s excellent coaching), the transition has been amazingly smooth. 

We at Bridges & Balm extend a heartfelt thanks to Paul for his dedication and commitment to Bridges & Balm and his empathy and compassion for survivors and resting/transitioning workers.  Paul’s warm presence, calm demeanor, and can-do attitude will be sorely missed by all. 

Thank You Paul!

April 2026 Financial Update

Exhibiting financial responsibility is one of Bridges & Balm’s top priorities as we pursue our mission: to fund therapy costs for survivors and help meet the basic living needs of former workers. Thanks to our wonderful and generous donor community, we’ve been able to honor those commitments over the past 2 ½ years and carried a $135,000 surplus into 2026.

However, donations have fallen off in Q1 2026, likely due to the large 2025 donations, US and global political instability, and economic concerns. Large one-time assistance distributions in January and February have reduced our working capital to $45,000 as of late April. Our projections indicate that if current trends continue without adjustment, we will consume our working capital by mid-to-late Q3 and be required to tap into our reserve funds. 

In the spirit of financial responsibility, we are proactively adjusting assistance levels to ensure that we can meet longer term basic assistance requirements based on reduced projected donations. It is important to note that these reductions will NOT affect therapy programs in progress or former worker essential living expenses. The assistance level adjustment will affect non-essential living expenses for workers and non-essential survivor therapy (as determined by P2HN). We also hope these adjustments will allow us to continue to fund new urgent former worker and survivor requests. 

If donations decline further or urgent funding requests increase, we’ll need to decide whether to fundraise more aggressively, implement deeper cuts, use backup funds or a combination of these options. Waitlists are also an option but are an absolute last resort for someone in an urgent financial or trauma situation. 

We expect that these changes will enable us to fund assistance levels through the rest of 2026 while also preserving our reserve fund, enabling us to meet essential needs of our assistance community in an extended recession scenario. Our annual mid-year fund drive is scheduled for June which we also hope will help bolster our worker and survivor funds. 

Donations will always be affected by the economy and we will continue to monitor donation levels closely and proactively adjust our assistance levels appropriately. Please monitor our Funds Overview and Activity page of the Bridges & Balm website for the most recent charts showing recent monthly expenditures and donations. As always, we appreciate any donations you can make and are deeply thankful for your compassion and care for our former worker and survivor community.