Annual Report 2025 – A Message From Kate

This is the message from Executive Director Kate Fischer in our 2025 Annual Report. To view the full report, click here.

Dear Community,

This past year held a lot for Walk-In — and for the community we serve. More people came to us in crisis. More volunteers showed up to meet them. And quietly, honestly, we began asking harder questions about what it takes to sustain this work for another generation.

In 2025, we walked alongside over 1,500 people through more than 3,700 counseling sessions. One person came to us stuck on a merry-go-round of anxiety, isolation, and despair. At first it was just connection — the counselor wasn’t even sure they’d made a difference. But the person came back, saw another counselor, then another. Eventually they took us up on the offer to do ongoing work.

Something kept them returning — at Walk-In, we’d argue it was connection. Their capacity for change started to grow: first small promises, then bigger ones, and progress became evident. Our counselors help save lives, literally in some cases. They partner to improve them, redirect them out of despair.

Our volunteer counselors — over 100 trained clinicians at every stage of the professional journey — make this possible. What’s less visible is what Walk-In gives back to them: a community of practice, a place to be held, and challenged, and grow. That exchange of care, commitment, and healing is what Walk-In has always been built on.

Here’s what else is true: our expenses are exceeding our revenue. We’re secure for now — the reserves built over decades by this community are holding us — but we can’t keep doing what we’re doing. Not because we’re failing. Because the need is growing, the complexity is increasing, and our tools need to match the moment. We’re adding volunteers to shifts precisely because we anticipate an increase in need for an indefinite future, as we tend to the harm of the present.

Over 56 years, Walk-In has weathered economic recessions, public health crises, and waves of community trauma. We’ve learned something essential: you can’t just respond to crisis. You have to build foundations that can weather what’s ahead. That’s what we’re doing now — asking hard questions about how we deliver and fund this work, investing in technology, and preparing the next generation of healing professionals, so that when we grow, we grow well.

People are exhausted. They need a bridge to a better path. Walk-In has been that bridge for 56 years — not a crisis hotline, not long-term therapy, but the hard middle place that helps people move from acute crisis toward healing, not just survival. With your continued partnership, we’ll be here for the next 56 — stronger, more sustainable, and ready.

Thank you for being part of this work. Your investments — of time, resources, and trust — make healing possible.

With gratitude,

Kate Fischer
Director ejecutivo
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