Join the Board of Directors
How to Apply
We accept applications on a rolling basis. Please fill out our application to apply to the Board of Directors for the initial portion of the application process and to be updated for when Board positions open.
When a Board position opens, and if you are selected to continue to the next stage, you can expect to be asked to submit a resume, attend an interview, visit a Monday evening Board meeting, and attend our Tuesday evening All-Clinic and Clinic-Steering meetings.
Current & Future Openings
We are currently accepting applications. Standard Board terms last two years. If you submit an application, we will email you regarding next steps.
Statement from the Board
The Board understands that confronting systemic oppression and white supremacy is often uncomfortable, and we are prepared to embrace that discomfort. We reject white fragility and all other attempts to decenter the experiences of marginalized groups. We recognize the great harm that the medical industrial complex has caused and continues to cause to our communities, especially our Black and Indigenous communities. The Board recognizes that Black and Indigenous POC have historically been excluded from our community, especially from leadership positions. We will strive to confront anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism within our organization.
We aim to demonstrate our solidarity through including and uplifting the voices of our clients. We are actively recruiting folks who share experience and identities with the clients we serve. This role is well-suited to people with disabilities, people with families, formerly incarcerated individuals, people who are currently experiencing or who have experienced homelessness or housing instability, people who use or have used drugs, people who are HIV positive, people who do or have done sex work, people of color, immigrants including undocumented immigrants, trans folks, and people who have lived experience navigating the medical system.
We are seeking individuals who have a desire to make connections and collaborations with other nonprofits, grassroots organizations, mutual aid networks, community groups, city and state governments, other free clinics, potential funders, and the communities we serve.
Board members will be part of projects and conversations that lead to organizational change. We appreciate applicants who have an interest in consensus-building, conversation facilitation, harm reduction, mediation and remediation, transformative justice, and trauma-informed care.
You don't have to meet all of these criteria or disclose information you are not comfortable sharing. However, we hope this statement gives you an idea of our values and the kind of community we hope to cultivate at the Berkeley Free Clinic.
Organization Description
The Berkeley Free Clinic (BFC) is a do-it-yourself health collective that has been providing dental and medical care, peer counseling, and community referrals since 1969, when we formed a street medic collective to care for protesters injured by UC Berkeley police during the People’s Park Riots. Our clinic has stood in solidarity with Black Panther clinics in the 1970s, with lay health workers in the Global South, with queer folks who were rejected by mainstream medicine, and with police brutality victims who feared seeking medical care.
We believe that healthcare is a fundamental human right, that power and knowledge should be shared collectively, and that everyone has the right to basic knowledge about their bodies.
Unlike most clinics, we are largely non-professionals – medical services are provided by ordinary people whom we train to provide specific medical/social services. All of us are volunteers and we share decision making power equally.
Board Description
The Board of Directors (BOD) is one of the voting bodies of Berkeley Free Clinic. We are a volunteer Board responsible for supporting our members and clients, ensuring effective financial management, performing needs assessments, reviewing our administrative policies, fundraising, and planning for the longevity of our clinic. We help ensure all the i’s are dotted and the t's are crossed to keep our work insured, licensed, funded, and above board.
The Commitment
Standard terms last two years with the option to serve a maximum of 3 consecutive terms
Attend a minimum of 50% of regularly scheduled
BoD meetings (2nd Monday of every month) – attendance may be in person or remotely
Serve as an ambassador to BFC in your professional & social circles
Make an annual financial contribution to the BFC in an amount that's significant to you.
Honor an annual service commitment by completing one of the following:
Serve as an officer
Chair a Board committee
Chair one special BFC event
Strengthening the Clinic’s Financial Health
We ask every Board member to support and strengthen the financial health of the clinic. That could include promoting the BFC within your personal and professional network, contributing personal capital, building relationships with foundations and grantors, organizing a benefit event for the BFC, making a matching donation to the clinic through your workplace or another program, helping our funding section apply for grants, reviewing our financial policies, assisting with the auditing of our finances, assisting our bookkeepers in reviewing our budget, or a general interest in problem-solving around our finances. Financial expertise is an asset, and certainly not required to be on the Board.
Each Board member is asked to make an annual financial contribution to the collective. The amount of this contribution will vary from Board member to Board member, but should be "personally significant" to each person, to be determined by the Board member themself, representing the importance of what it means to serve on the Board. For one member, this personally significant amount may be $5. For another, it may be $500. For a third, it may be $5,000. The amount chosen should ideally be such that the BFC is one of the top three or four charitable receivers for each member.
A Note for Licensed Professionals
If you are a certified or licensed accounting, legal, or medical professional your participation on our Board could help the BFC in several tangible ways. First and foremost, your perspective from your professional experience will provide our Board with valuable insights that are otherwise not easily available to us. Doctors, nurses, lawyers, and accountants have been very helpful contributors in the past in navigating insurance coverage, submitting licensing applications, and creating financial statements. These efforts are greatly sped up when a licensed professional contributes to the process. Additionally, when certified and licensed professionals participate on the clinic’s Board it helps foster our credibility and confidence with external parties. It’s easier to get follow-through when we meet or correspond with potential funders, medical and research institutions, in-kind donors, and elected officials - especially for initial contacts. We have found that doors open for us when doctors and other licensed members of the Board are part of the team.
If you’re interested in assisting us with providing services to clients instead of serving on our Board, please see our Volunteer Opportunities for Healthcare Professionals page for more information.