How Working Class Acupuncture Got Its Fourth Clinic
right on the heels of the pandemic -- welcome WCA North!
In the entryway to the treatment space at WCA Cully, there’s a map of the Portland area. A sign next to it says: Help us figure out where to put our next clinic -- put a pin in the map where you live! There are pins scattered all over, but North Portland/St. Johns stands out:
For years, patients who live out that way have been asking for a WCA closer to them. And for years we looked for suitable clinic spaces. We got really close to creating a clinic in partnership with New Columbia (some devoted WCA supporters live there) but the space fell through at the last minute. And then the pandemic came along.
Even when everybody agrees that low-barrier acupuncture is a good thing (which I realize not everybody does, but that’s a different post), and even when a neighborhood clearly wants it, actually making it available -- particularly to the people who need it most -- is a complex undertaking.
Making a community acupuncture clinic requires luck, sacrifice, repeated leaps of entrepreneurial faith, plus some synergy to hold it all together. Partnerships can be part of the synergy.
A community acupuncture clinic doesn’t just happen, it has to be brought into being by at least one person who’s deeply invested in the project and willing to get really uncomfortable for its sake. Meet Sara Biegelsen of POCA Tech’s Cohort 7:
Sara’s version of the story goes like this:
In 2021 I was working at a coffee shop, No Wave, at the corner of Portsmouth and Lombard. The owner, Chris, is amazing at connecting with people just through being who he is, and the shop has always been saturated with a community vibe. Running a coffee shop is a lot, though, and for a couple of years he’d been saying things like, I only have another two years left in me for this. So I started imagining what the coffee shop space could turn into instead...and by then I had started the POCA Tech program. I knew I wanted to work for WCA after I graduated but I didn’t want to assume there would be job openings at the other clinics. I also knew that WCA had been trying for years to make a clinic in this area and had almost succeeded with New Columbia (which is less than a mile away).
In June 2021 I was talking to Skip and Lisa and Sonya --they had asked me about my plans after graduation -- and I said, I have an idea. I kind of want to get the lease for the coffee shop and make a clinic there. It might be kind of wacky, but it also might work.
They said, we like wacky.
At that point I was one year into a three year program with a licensing process at the end of it, so it seemed VERY premature to be looking for a space to practice. But if what you need to have a clinic is a centralized location in an area with desire for such services, in a building with affordable rent that somehow pulses with community vibes, I thought we’d struck gold with the coffee shop space. And I was willing and able to restructure my life to follow the bread crumb trail the universe was laying down.
So apparently the universe heard that, because Chris let me know he wanted to be done with the coffee shop ASAP. He wanted to shut it down in December 2021; his lease went until March 2022. I asked him if the landlord would let me take over the lease, could I ALSO take over his business to keep paying the rent until I could graduate, get licensed and turn the space into a clinic.
So one year into acupuncture school, I’m looking into taking on a 5 year lease and taking on a small business for the next almost 2 years. Which is how I ended up running a coffee shop, working 20 day stretches at a time so I could keep the coffee business afloat while I was juggling acupuncture classes and internship.
Obviously, we needed to fundraise. WCA was just barely out of the pandemic and didn’t have cash to throw around for a new clinic. The thing about fundraising, though, is that cash is like the checking account in terms of resources, but word of mouth is like the savings account.
The most important aspect of fundraising is just getting the word out that the clinic is there for people to use.
Lisa and I did some math on the back of a napkin and as a result, we applied for a grant through Care Oregon’s Community Giving program. And we got it! In October 2022, Care Oregon gave us $10,000 to fund a series of pop up clinics.
The grant paid for the materials and other costs: needles, receptacles, chairs, a HEPA air filter, rental on the space, paying WCA staff to work the event, and administrative overhead for tracking and data collection. The goal was to make sure the coffee shop space really was the right location. We started out doing the pop ups monthly, then in the spring we increased them to weekly.
Over the course of twelve and a half months, we’ve provided over five hundred and thirty treatments at the future home of WCA North.
The plan is to keep offering weekly pop ups until I get my acupuncture license, at which point the space will stop being a coffee shop and will become a full-fledged WCA clinic. I’ll be a WCA employee. (And as the community magic seems to do, the coffee shop will be up-cycled into another local business one block away -- we’re not taking anything away from the neighborhood, only adding to it!)
The biggest thing I learned from having the pop ups here is how much this neighborhood WANTS this, and how much acupuncture really can change the world, one lil’ group nap at a time.
WCA North only came into being due to multiple configurations of partnerships.
Looking back, what happened is that the coffee shop became a social business, partnering with Working Class Acupuncture and POCA Tech. WCA’s longstanding partnership with Care Oregon was what made the grant funding possible. The coffee shop paying the rent on the space gave us time to build up a patient base with the pop ups, including regulars who are eagerly waiting for more shifts to open. Amazingly, the whole thing has been paying for itself and WCA hasn’t had to dip into its savings.
The community embraced the project and supported it by SHOWING UP! Neighbors got treatments, shared the word with others, brought fliers to their exercise groups, baked for our bake sales, donated plants for our not-so-baked sales and cheered me on by sharing their stories. Going forward, WCA’s Builders program -- the donors who contribute monthly -- will help us bridge the gap to the clinic becoming fully self-supporting. And we’ve applied for another Care Oregon grant for the next phase of the project -- fingers crossed.
I keep showing up every day through all the risk and exhaustion and difficult moments, because this wacky idea is fabulously in the flow of what IS supposed to be happening. It has NOT been easy but IT HAS ALL BEEN WORTH IT!
I’m sharing Sara’s story not just to answer the question of, HOW did WCA come out of the pandemic with a fourth clinic??? but because it’s such a beautiful illustration of the main theme of this newsletter:
community acupuncture as a community resource — which requires community investment.
Sara herself is a great example of why we needed to make our own acupuncture school -- WCA needs acupuncturists with a collective mindset who are willing to embrace social entrepreneurship, who can roll up their sleeves and build relationships in their communities. Seeing beyond the privatized version of acupuncture can be a subtle, difficult, multi-phase undertaking and conventional acupuncture schools don’t prepare graduates for that.
This is a heartfelt thank you to everyone who made our fourth clinic possible: Care Oregon for the grant funding, WCA’s donors, all the supporters of No Wave’s transformation from a coffee shop into a different kind of community resource, all the WCA staff who helped with the pop ups both in person and behind the scenes, the space itself for bringing the magic, and most of all to Sara, for giving so much love to her wacky idea — and her community.