Who is behind this — and what he owns.
A small organization should tell you exactly who is making decisions and exactly what else they have a stake in. Here is both.
Clay Hess, MD
Founder & President
Bachelor of Humanities · Master of Public Health · Doctor of Medicine · Oncology & Global Health
kindMANkind began as a public-health ethics term paper in Boston in 2018, arguing that humanitarian aid could connect people in need directly to people who want to help — without a middle man — using trackable aid and the reach of ordinary cell phones.
It came to life in Atlanta in 2019. Working downtown, Dr. Hess kept seeing the same thing: patients who could not finish cancer treatment, not because the medicine failed, but because of relatively inexpensive social barriers — a ride they could not get, a prescription they could not cover, a place to sleep they did not have. The clinical problem was solved. The logistics around it were not, and nobody was paid to solve them.
Originally incorporated in Atlanta as AccessHUMANITY, the organization is now kindMANkind, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, with 501(c)(3) status in process. The thesis has narrowed and sharpened since 2018: the barrier is rarely the absence of help. It is the absence of anyone whose job it is to walk you to it.
What Dr. Hess owns, and how we handle it
Disclosed here deliberately and in full. You should not have to discover this somewhere else.
GVRO, dba CureRays
A for-profit medical professional corporation owned by Dr. Hess, providing cancer screening and primary care. It is a separate business operating at arm’s length. It cannot receive charitable donations, cannot access 340B drug pricing (for-profits are ineligible), and serves a different population than kindMANkind.
How we handle it: any transaction between kindMANkind and GVRO requires review and approval by disinterested directors, at fair market value, with Dr. Hess recused. The rule we hold to: value may flow from the for-profit to the nonprofit — donated expertise, supervision, space. Value flowing the other way is what destroys nonprofits, and we have structured against it rather than planning to explain it later.
Candidate, Marin Healthcare District Board
Dr. Hess is a candidate for the Board of Directors of the Marin Healthcare District, an elected public agency that owns MarinHealth Medical Center.
How we handle it: a public official may not be financially interested in contracts made by the body they serve, and recusal does not cure it — one member’s interest can bar the entire board. Accordingly, kindMANkind is being built as a complementary, independent effort that partners with community clinics rather than with the District. Formal written guidance is being sought from the Fair Political Practices Commission before any of these relationships are formalized.
CureRays Institute
A 501(c)(3) focused on research, education, and public health, affiliated with Dr. Hess. Intended role: the training academy that credentials our navigators, and the research arm that measures outcomes and publishes them either way.
The Corporation of The Church of Faith and Reason
Founding supporter. It does not operate kindMANkind. We are forming as a separate 501(c)(3) with an independent majority board — because an organization that promises transparency should file a public Form 990, and because help in this neighborhood must never carry a religious condition, or the appearance of one.
Governance commitments. An independent majority board. Disinterested review of every affiliate transaction. A public Form 990 the day we have one. Outcomes published whether they flatter us or not. If you think our structure is wrong, we would rather hear it from you now than read it later — tell us.