Simon House

About Simon House:

Founded in 1982, Simon House provides a 12-step-based addition treatment and recovery program for adult males in Calgary, Alberta. The charity has a mission to help men achieve long-term recovery from addiction and all its effects. Simon House operates in 4 buildings and has a total of 66 beds across 3 phases of programs.

Over 250 men are enrolled in treatment annually across Simon House’s 3 phases of addiction recovery. The first of the 3 phases is a highly structured 12-week residential program. Clients in Phase 1 are required to attend 2 one-on-one counselling sessions per week for the first 4 weeks. During the entire program, clients are required to attend 5 Alcoholics/Narcotics/Cocaine Anonymous (AA/NA/CA) meetings, weekly alumni speaker meetings, monthly graduation meetings, and daily morning meditations and house meetings.

Phase 2 is semi-independent and takes place in a separate facility, but with substantial support and programming. It includes mentoring a Phase 1 participant and paying market rent for their housing. Phase 2 is typically 4 months long. In Phase 3, clients live in an independent sober living house in the local community. Clients are required to have full-time employment and a sponsor in the community. They must also attend weekly counselling sessions and community meetings, in addition to monthly graduation and alumni meetings.  

Simon House reports on the social return on investment of its work. The charity reports that for $25k per year, the charity can return its clients to the workforce and keep them out of jail and the hospital. It estimates that the costs of homelessness, incarceration, and in-patient hospital care cost society roughly $55k, $88k, and $292k per year, respectively.

On June 14, 2017, Simon House spoke to Global News about the supervised drug site that Calgary is proposing to open¹. Simon House advocates for recovery and believes that spending funds on a safe injection site will have less long-term impact than investing in services that reduce drug usage and focus on recovery.

Financial Review:

Simon House is a small-cap charity with $608k in donations and special events fundraising in F2015. The charity also received $753k for room and board. Administrative costs were 10% of revenues and fundraising costs were 8% of donations. As such, for every $1 donated, 82 cents went to the cause. This falls within Charity Intelligence’s reasonable range for overhead spending.

The charity does not receive annual funding from the government and relies completely on donor-generated funding. Operating cash flows have been consistently negative in the past 3 years. Because of this, Simon House has been dipping into funding reserves each year to cover program costs. Funding reserves of $202k can cover 15% of annual program costs.  This means that the charity only has enough cash on hand to pay for just under 2 months of programs, indicating a need for funding.

This charity profile is an update that is currently being reviewed by Simon House. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on June 27, 2017 by Juliana Badovinac.