How to Partner with Scottish Rite RiteCare to Fund Your University Speech Clinic

Since the early 1950s, the Scottish Rite's RiteCare program has been quietly funding university speech-language clinics across the country. No national press releases. No competitive grant portal. Just local lodges writing checks to university programs they believe in, and doing it year after year.¹

Some of the largest SLP programs in the country have active RiteCare partnerships. Many others have never heard of it, or they've heard the name but assumed there was a formal application process that they somehow missed. There isn't. The partnership works through local Scottish Rite lodges, and the national office can help you make that connection.

This post explains what the RiteCare childhood language program actually is, what funded clinics receive, how the money fits into your revenue model, and the specific steps you can take to start a conversation with your local lodge.

What the Scottish Rite RiteCare Program Is

The RiteCare Scottish Rite Childhood Language Program (SRCLP) was established in Colorado in the early 1950s by the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, a national fraternal organization with local lodges throughout the United States.¹ The original purpose was direct: help children with speech and language disorders get access to diagnostic and treatment services, particularly in communities where that access was limited.

Seventy-plus years later, there are over 180 RiteCare programs operating across the country: clinics, centers, and special programs affiliated with universities, hospitals, and standalone facilities.¹ Each is organized and funded locally, through the Scottish Rite lodge in that area. The national organization sets the framework; the local lodge decides who it partners with and how much it contributes.

The focus is pediatric. RiteCare is specifically oriented toward children with communication disorders, including speech, language, and learning disabilities. And services are provided regardless of the family's ability to pay. That's not an add-on to the program; it's a foundational design choice. The question RiteCare is trying to answer is: how do we make sure a child's access to speech therapy isn't determined by what their parents can afford?

For university SLP clinics, this aligns pretty naturally. You're already training students on real caseloads. A RiteCare partnership can bring in children who need services, fund some of the operating costs of providing those services, and let your lodge partners see direct community impact from their contribution. Everyone wins.

What RiteCare Funding Actually Looks Like

One of the most common reasons clinic directors don't pursue RiteCare is that they don't know what to expect. Is this a $5,000-a-year check? A major endowment? The honest answer is: it depends on your local lodge, your relationship with it, and how well you've documented your outcomes over time.

Here's what real programs are receiving.

Cal State LA's Rongxiang Xu College of Health and Human Services received a five-year pledge of $386,500 from the California Scottish Rite Foundation to cover operating expenses for its Robert L. Douglass Speech-Language Clinic, which serves pediatric clients with articulation, language, cognitive, voice, and fluency disorders.² That's a multi-year commitment that covers real infrastructure, not just a one-time gift.

Cal State Long Beach announced a partnership with the RiteCare Childhood Language Center of Long Beach that restructured and expanded its SLP program, enabling year-round services and group therapy infrastructure for children with language disorders.³

Georgia Southern's RiteCare Center for Communication Disorders serves more than 300 community members annually. In 2023, the center was selected as one of 16 universities nationwide to receive a grant from Parkinson Voice Project worth more than $280,000 in training, services, supplies, and equipment over five years. That grant built directly on the foundation the RiteCare relationship had already established.⁴

At West Virginia University, the Scottish Rite Foundation supports speech-language pathology scholarships, and local lodge contributions fund language camps and specialized clinical equipment for programs serving children with communication disorders.⁵

The range is wide. Some programs start with a modest annual contribution from a local lodge and build from there. Others have grown long-term relationships into major multi-year pledges. What the examples above have in common is that none of them happened through a grant application. They happened through relationships.

How RiteCare Fits With Your Revenue Model

Before you pursue a RiteCare partnership, it helps to understand where it fits in your clinic's overall financial picture. Because RiteCare isn't a replacement for your billing revenue. It's a supplement to it.

Under the RiteCare model, services are provided regardless of the family's ability to pay. That means the children you see through a RiteCare partnership aren't generating fee-for-service revenue. The lodge contribution is what makes that caseload financially viable. You're using the funding to cover the operating costs of serving those families, not to replace insurance billing or Medicaid reimbursement for other patients.

The practical implication: RiteCare works best as part of a layered approach. Your clinic bills Medicaid, accepts commercial insurance, and maybe runs a sliding scale for some patients. Then you use RiteCare funding to cover the operating costs of serving children whose families can't pay, which expands your pediatric caseload without creating a financial gap.

That expanded pediatric caseload is actually a significant training asset. Student clinicians working with RiteCare-funded children are seeing real pediatric speech and language disorders, working under supervision, and gaining clinical hours that count toward their certification requirements. The community benefit and the training value are the same activity. That's a strong argument to make when you're talking to a lodge about what their dollars are funding.

Documentation still matters on the RiteCare side of your caseload. Those clients need SOAP notes, treatment plans, and progress reports just like any fee-generating patient. And the outcome data you track (number of children served, diagnostic categories, functional gains over time) is exactly what a local lodge will want to see in your annual update to them.

The Partnership Pathway: How to Connect With Your Local Lodge

Here's the part that most clinic directors don't know: there is no centralized application. There is no grant portal. There is no deadline to meet.

RiteCare partnerships are built between a university clinic and a local Scottish Rite lodge. That means the path to funding starts with finding the right lodge and having a conversation. And the national Scottish Rite organization can help you do exactly that.

The Supreme Council (the national office) is located at 1733 16th St. NW, Washington, DC 20009. You can reach them by email at ritecare@scottishrite.org or by phone at 202-232-3579, Monday through Thursday, 7am to 5pm Eastern.¹ Their team maintains a directory of local lodges across the country and can tell you which ones are active in funding SLP programs in your area.

Once you've identified the right lodge, the first conversation should be in person if at all possible. Come prepared to explain three things: what your clinic does for children in your community, how many pediatric patients you serve and what their diagnoses look like, and what outcomes you track. Lodges want to know that their contribution will help real kids in their own community. The more concrete you can be about the impact, the better.

Your university's development office can be a helpful partner here. Many development teams already have relationships with civic and fraternal organizations in the region, and they're practiced at structuring gift agreements, gift acknowledgments, and the kind of ongoing reporting that sustains a philanthropic relationship over time.

What do lodges look for in a partner? A university program with qualified clinical supervisors. A pediatric caseload that demonstrates genuine community need. And the ability to report back with meaningful data. If your program can show all three of those things, you have what it takes to start a productive conversation.

Growing a Partnership Over Time

RiteCare isn't a one-time transaction. It's a relationship. And like any relationship, it grows when both parties feel the value of the connection.

The most reliable way to grow a RiteCare partnership is to report consistently. Every year, give your lodge contact an update: how many children you served, what their communication profiles looked like at intake, and how they progressed. Include some notes about student clinicians who trained on that caseload. Lodges use this information in their own annual reporting to the national Scottish Rite organization, so good data from you makes their job easier.

That annual report is also, quietly, your ask for continued support. A lodge that sees strong outcome data is a lodge that will maintain or increase its contribution. Cal State LA's $386,500 five-year pledge didn't happen in year one. It grew out of a relationship where the clinic showed it was a responsible steward of the lodge's investment.

You might also find that the relationship opens other doors. Georgia Southern's lodge has awarded financial scholarships directly to graduate students in their Communication Sciences and Disorders program, adding a second category of support beyond clinic operating funding.⁶ Some lodges contribute equipment, fund language camps, or help promote the clinic's services in the community.

And RiteCare doesn't have to be your only philanthropic partner. Programs like Sertoma International (which also funds children's hearing and speech disorders), local community foundations, NIDCD training grants, and ASHA Foundation awards can all layer alongside RiteCare to build a more stable philanthropic funding base. The outcome reporting infrastructure you build for your lodge relationship will serve you with all of them.

Is RiteCare Worth Pursuing for Your Program?

If your clinic serves any pediatric speech and language caseload, the honest answer is almost certainly yes.

RiteCare is one of the oldest and most established philanthropic funding programs in the SLP field. It's been operating continuously since the 1950s, which is more than can be said for most grant programs. The partnerships are local and relational, which means they're stickier than one-time foundation grants. And the funding, even at modest levels, covers real costs (operating expenses, equipment, scholarships) that are otherwise hard to fund through clinical revenue alone.

The first step is the simplest one: send an email to ritecare@scottishrite.org and ask which lodges in your state are currently funding SLP programs. From there, it's a conversation, not an application.

If your Scottish Rite RiteCare university speech clinic partnership is going to involve both philanthropy-funded and fee-generating patients, you'll want a documentation platform that handles both without doubling your administrative work. ClinicNote is built for university SLP programs and keeps SOAP notes, treatment plans, outcome tracking, and reporting in one place, so when your annual lodge update is due, the data is already there. See how it works at clinicnote.com.

Sources

1. https://scottishrite.org/philanthropy/ritecare/ritecare-srclp/
2. https://news.calstatela.edu/2024/10/18/california-scottish-rite-foundation-gift-to-cal-state-la-expands-speech-language-services-to-the-community/
3. https://www.csulb.edu/college-of-health-human-services/speech-language-pathology/article/the-speech-language-pathology
4. https://ww2.georgiasouthern.edu/news/2023/04/12/georgia-southern-clinic-to-remove-barriers-to-parkinsons-speech-therapy-in-georgia/
5. https://appliedhumansciences.wvu.edu/current-students/scholarships-and-aid/program-specific/communication-sciences-and-disorders/scottish-rite-foundation-speech-language-pathology-scholarship
6. https://www.georgiasouthern.edu/2024/04/08/ritecare-center-communication-disorders-students-receive-financial-awards-from-scottish-rite-masons