Creating equitable opportunity, representation, and access within Oregon's Psilocybin Therapy Framework
About the foundation
The Sheri Eckert Foundation is a 501c3 charitable nonprofit that is able to receive and allocate funds to individuals and organizations operating in Oregon’s legal and regulated psilocybin facilitation program.
Our mission
The mission of the Sheri Eckert Foundation (SEF), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is to ensure that Oregon’s evolving psychedelic ecosystem is accessible to participants from diverse backgrounds, financial means, and geographies around the state and country.
Our story
The Sheri Eckert Foundation was established in 2021 to honor Sheri’s legacy and fulfill a clearly stated wish.
Measure 109 co-creator Sheri Eckert, who passed away in December of 2020, spoke frequently of generating support for “equitable access to psychedelic education and services.” In her words, she wanted to create an institution that, “guided by on-the-ground community leaders, would allocate resources to support facilitator training, community education, and service delivery for often underserved populations.”
Under the Hood:
Phase 1 - What we accomplished in 2023
Received one of the few and highly coveted approval statuses by the IRS as a 501c3 charitable nonprofit that is able to receive and allocate funds to individuals and organizations operating in Oregon’s legal and regulated psilocybin facilitation program
75 Fellows were selected, overseen, and awarded~$300,000 in scholarships towards their training and licensure in psilocybin facilitation
Fellows attended over a dozen schools - nearly every State of Oregon-licensed and operational psilocybin training school in the nation
Co-created and presented the Horizons Northwest (NW) conference for the second year, educating ~1000 attendees on the latest developments in the field of psychedelics
All 75 Fellows received full ride scholarships to attend Horizons NW 2023, a total value of $52,125
Nearly all of the 75 Fellows have graduated from their school’s training program and are now Licensed and practicing or pursuing licensure
Phase 2 - Where we’re headed in 2024
Now in phase 2, we’ve created the Psilocybin Access Fund.
The Psilocybin Access Fund will cover psilocybin facilitation costs for those in need of deep healing, who experience financial hardship, and/or come from underserved communities. We believe getting money directly to folks that want this medicine, but normally wouldn’t be able to access it, is the best solution now for creating more access and potential for healing.
Our 2024 fundraising objective is to raise one million dollars to support the Psilocybin Access Fund. SEF’s immediate goal is to create a statewide “sliding scale” for psilocybin services in Oregon.
While respecting underground pathways and the psychedelic science community, we are committed to this new state-regulated framework and believe that psychedelic services and therapy rendered in this model can be more widespread, financially accessible, and without the legal risk.
And we’re under no illusion that philanthropy will last forever - we see this new fund, and the work it will empower, as an essential intermediary step until we achieve insurance coverage for psilocybin services.
Phase 3 - Our future goals
Accelerating the path to broader access - insurance coverage for psychedelic therapy in state regulated models
In 2025 and 2026, we plan to expand SEF’s Psilocybin Access Fund to additional states, starting with Colorado and Massachusetts. We’ll consider covering additional medicines, as is allowed in Colorado's version of the Oregon Model (state regulated psychedelic therapy model). Through this approach, we’ll help accelerate the path towards expanded access and insurance coverage for psychedelic therapy in state regulated models.
Why is accelerating the path to insurance coverage our ultimate goal?
We know from firsthand experience that philanthropy will not and should not last forever as the solution to any problem. This is the very reason for this foundation’s existence and our Psilocybin Access Fund.
Currently, the biggest program in the Oregon Model is a structural one that is the result of the federal government and the ‘war on drugs’; a lack of equitable access to psychedelic therapy due to the absence of insurance coverage.
In order for insurance to arrive, which we believe will happen eventually through hard work, we must first show that the Oregon Model - state regulated psychedelic therapy frameworks - work. In order for them to work, the public must have trust in the model, which translates to other states' adoption of the Oregon Model.
Meet the Board
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David Bronner, Founding Board Member
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Tom Eckert, MS, Founding Board Member
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Nate Howard, Executive Director and Founding Board Member
David Bronner, Tom Eckert, and Nate Howard—the Founding Board Members of the Sheri Eckert Foundation and co-creators of Horizons Northwest—share reflections and aspirations, alongside leaders in the psychedelic medicine movement, during the closing panel of Horizons Northwest 2023 at the Portland Art Museum.
About Sheri
Who was Sheri Eckert?
Sheri Eckert (maiden name Bessi) was born in San Diego in 1961. With an absent father and a struggling mother, Sheri’s childhood was nomadic, impoverished, and insecure. As an adolescent, she was entrusted to an adult who isolated and abused her. At just 16, she was pregnant with her daughter, Carrissa. Sheri escaped the abuse before giving birth, but a botched surgery led to sepsis and a near-death experience – she felt herself rise from her body into a great expanse, before eventually returning to breathe and to live.
The experience changed the trajectory of her life. Still a teenager, she lovingly raised Carrissa and later a son, James, providing them with security that she herself had lacked as a child. Sheri would later get trained in counseling and spend years in war-torn West Africa, working with dignitaries on peace projects and giving talks on conflict resolution. She continued to travel the world, returning stateside to run successful businesses, before moving to her motherland of Italy to manifest her dream of owning a restaurant in Florence.
With the great recession of 2008, Sheri lost her restaurant. Under stress, she found herself again reevaluating. She began a journey of healing, including a daily practice of writing short, inspirational affirmations with a certain cosmic flare, which she began posting to a Facebook page. Each missive began with a simple greeting, “Dear Human…” The page amassed a wide following.
Portrtait of Sheri Eckert by Erin Wyner, 2021
Having moved to Portland, Oregon, Sheri met Tom Eckert, who would become her husband. Tom was a therapist with a similar outlook on life, death, and the mysteries of consciousness. They developed a counseling practice called “Innerwork” and founded a groundbreaking “Better Man” program to tackle the problem of intimate partner and family violence. Tom also had a keen interest in psychedelics, a world which Sheri had yet to explore.
With Tom at her side, Sheri’s first psychedelic experience served to affirm, in an environment of love and safety, the astonishing impact of her early near-death experience. With continued exploration, she became convinced, like Tom, of the therapeutic and psychospiritual importance of the psychedelic experience. The couple became inspired by the renaissance of clinical research into psychedelic medicine at top institutes like Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and the Imperial College of London.
In 2015, at a time when legal psychedelic therapy seemed a remote possibility, the Eckerts, while on a road trip through one of Oregon’s ancient forests, came to imagine a full legal framework for the careful use of psilocybin mushrooms. Inspired by their vision and by a need to see a world that would allow for it to unfold, the Eckerts boldly set out to reverse 50 years of psychedelic prohibition. Aiming for the 2020 statewide ballot, they built a strong coalition, assembled a team to collect 165,000 petition signatures, and advanced a first-of-its-kind ballot initiative measure that would legally license psilocybin practitioners, producers, and provider organizations in Oregon.
Oregonians showed up in force to support it, and, with a boost from Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, the improbable journey became a matter of destiny. Passing with 1.3 million votes (56%), Measure 109’s victory at Oregon’s ballot box was decisive and historic.
Tragically, on December 17th of 2020, just a month and a half after the historic legislative victory, Sheri Eckert unexpectedly passed away. She died in her sleep, next to her beloved Tom. She was 59 years old. Sheri Eckert is survived by Tom, her daughter Carrissa, and four grandchildren.
Sheri will be remembered by the psychedelic community, and a wider audience as well, for championing the unique spirit residing in each of us, and for having helped deliver the nation’s first above-ground psychedelic therapy framework, a statewide program indelibly infused with her characteristic perseverance, integrity, competence, and, above all, her loving, inclusive embrace.
