Outside In (organization)

Outside In

The exterior of the organization in 2006
Formation	1968
Location	Portland, Oregon
Executive Director	Kathy Oliver
Budget (2014)	$9 million
Staff	140
Slogan	The Point of Return

Outside In is a nonprofit organization in Portland, Oregon, United States that provides social and medical services to homeless youth and other marginalized people (including the LGBTQ community) so that they can improve their health and move towards self-sufficiency. Founded in the late 1960s to serve youth, since then the organization has continued to revise its services to meet the changing needs of its clients. Today the organization's services include medical care, mobile medical vans, tattoo removal, housing, education, counseling, and job training.

Outside In was founded in June 1968 by Dr. Charles Spray, Arnold Goldberg, and Mary Lu Zurcher as one of the first free community health clinics in the U.S. and one of the earliest on the West Coast, along with the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics and the Los Angeles Free Clinic. The organization was founded to serve Portland's "alienated youth", some of whom had substance abuse problems and most of whom had mental health issues. It initially rented its Downtown Portland space from the First Unitarian Church of Portland. Spray helped found the organization after learning that the Unitarian church's youth coffeehouse space, Charix, was in danger of being shut down by the city and a group that had successfully shut down the Crystal Ballroom music venue because of its association with the 1960s drug culture.

Some of the group's early work involved staffing a 24-hour crisis hotline that was later spun off to form the Metro Crisis Intervention Service.

Outside In is a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) and a licensed mental health agency. In 2013–2014, the organization served 966 youth with mental health care, drug and alcohol treatment, employment, education, job training, and housing. Outside In's medical clinic was the medical home for 5,384 people in 2014. The same year, the group's syringe exchange served 4,322 people. The syringe exchange, implemented in 1989, was the first one to be developed and the third to go into operation in the country.