While shocking nonprofit chicanery has found itself in the media spotlight, the story of one West Texas charity deserves to be told and to inspire.
This is the kind of story America needs. A story of a well-run, back-from-the-brink nonprofit, fulfilling an important local mission, capturing Tocqueville’s portrayal of an America defined in part as a thing exceptional because of its vibrant local associations.
It might be hard to believe, given recent headlines, but not every American nonprofit is an entity of partisan contrivance. Of skullduggery. That prioritizes filling its coffers with public funding to dispense for off-charitable purposes. That is complicit with scheming orchestrated by politicized bureaucrats.
In fact, some nonprofits actually engage in remarkable charity for good, and for the welfare of local people in need. One such entity with a story worth telling is West Texas Counseling & Guidance (WTCG). Its mission, accomplishments, and administrative practices offer a textbook case of civil society done right.
It may be an exemplar, but that WTCG even exists to tell any story, especially a good one, is remarkable.
WTCG is the rebrand of what was once Samaritan Counseling Center of San Angelo, itself a rebrand. Founded in 1976, the mental health organization was then known as Abiline Pastoral Care and Counseling Center. Its activity consisted of a distant therapist visiting once-weekly for a handful of clients. It was a thing of struggle, its good intentions offset by minimal (in number, in quality) trained therapists, excessive administration, limited income, limited clients, and limited consequence.
Come 2011, it was on the verge of going bust (thanks in part to an embezzling bookkeeper). At its nadir, there was little more than two weeks of operating funds on hand. Somehow, it pulled out of its nosedive, straightened out, flew right, and flew up.
That “somehow” has several components, but its key was the hiring of Dusty McCoy as Samaritan’s new leader. McCoy was a licensed therapist working part-time at the nonprofit. His main-job boss “thought I’d be back in 30 days” after what was sure to be a quixotic experience. What McCoy found after taking over the teetering nonprofit’s leadership was deeply troubling. “The phones were not ringing,” despite the San Angelo area’s “having desperate need for counseling” (it’s home to Goodfellow Air Force Base, with Laughlin AFB in the broader region). McCoy admits, however, that the agency’s therapists “were not properly trained.”
Worse: “Our reputation was bad,” he says.
Something happened between 2011 and 2025. Today, WTCG receives 300 calls a day, some 75 referrals are faxed weekly, and there are 500 people on a combined wait/referral list. There is, moreover, a bounty of therapists (over 50; the organization hopes to hire nine more), and two major programs: one offering veteran services, the other dubbed “Zero Suicide,” its meaning obvious. WTCG’s annual budget is over $7 million.
It turned out that McCoy was more than a mere therapist. He was a talented and purpose-driven administrator—better, a true leader—who sparked the turnaround by doing and implementing a handful of basic-but-critical tasks that are central to any vibrant and successful nonprofit.
The name, the mission, the quality of the staff, the integrity of the board of directors, and embracing the need to fundraise—a task which frightens many a nonprofit leader—were all addressed by this low-key therapist-turned-CEO.
Changing the name was important to the turnaround. While a Christian, McCoy realized that “Samaritan” proved off-mission. “I asked a new client, ‘Why are you coming here?’ and was told, ‘Because you’re Christian counselors.’” While they might have been counselors who were Christian, the organization wasn’t religious. The emphasis and mission required a this-side-of-Heaven geographic rebrand. So “Samaritan” clarified its purpose with the nomenclature shift to “West Texas Counseling & Guidance.”
A clear mission was important to match the new name. McCoy focused on professionalization throughout, in services and organizationally. The former meant—demanded—well-trained counselor staff, with the training ongoing. A one-time grant from the Abilene-based Dodge Jones Foundation launched that effort. “We needed a quality product,” says McCoy. “Now, all grants include components for training.”
Soon enough, the center’s once-lousy reputation had done a 180.
Organizationally, McCoy embraced three basic rules that so many nonprofits violate. The first: having an effective and engaged board of directors. “We needed to get quality board members, with a focus on younger professionals who had not yet been on boards or burned out by prior service.” The second: ensuring a workplace culture that fosters camaraderie, in turn fortifying the center’s mission. The third: embracing strong leadership that delegates.
On the latter two areas, WTCG’s Tiffany Talley says, “Everyone hired here has a passion for the center.” It doesn’t happen by chance: “Dusty’s leadership is key. He is very intentional about culture, and he delegates. He does not micromanage. He lets his staff shine.”
Board chairwoman Nyssah Perrine echoes the importance of the center’s culture, and McCoy’s central role in fostering one both exceptional and entwined with the nonprofit’s mission:
Over the years, he has carefully hand selected his administrative team and found the perfect people for each position who believe in the mission as much as he does. As a team, they have worked together to find more and more clinicians to provide high quality care. They remain focused on recruiting, retaining and training in effort to limit turnover.
The united front pays off. “As new needs arise,” Perinne says, Dusty and his team have proven “excellent at problem solving and figuring out ways to find funding and resources to continue to meet those needs for years to come.”
And therein lies another core tenet of nonprofit work, a duty that makes many a charity leader wince: raising funds.
McCoy is not a wincer. Michael Wilson, a University of Texas graduate student, wrote in an illuminating college thesis (“Building West Texas Counseling and Guidance’s Engine of Impact”) that the CEO is unabashed about “pursuing every possible dollar from every possible donor (as long as it does not lead to mission creep).”
McCoy learned that the hard way, about creeping: A major donor offered a major gift for a project that was offline to WTCG’s core focus. The challenge was accepted, but it didn’t work, and proved distracting. McCoy vowed never again to take funds for ideas that, while likely good, were not a clear fit for WTCG’s mission.
As missions go, the center’s remains clear, and focused. WTCG has seen its area of service vastly expand. It now describes itself as “the only non-profit, outpatient, mental-health service provider dedicated to counseling across 36 counties in the Concho Valley, Val Verde area, and the Permian Basin, as well as in three counties in Southeastern New Mexico.”
Who’s impressed by this? Some key philanthropists. Destiny Rojo, a program officer for the New Mexico-based PY Foundation, believes the grant-making charity’s money has been well spent. Before the nonprofit began serving the state’s rural areas, she says:
We were a black hole for mental health; leaving many of our citizens secretly struggling to find resources for themselves or their families. There was no way out and the providers who were in our area were overwhelmed. WTCG stepped in to fill a void that had long plagued our rural communities, a change that was quick and evident.
This has become more than a donor–grantee relationship. “WTCG are more than just providers,” says Rojo. “They are partners, walking along side you through the good times and the bad. The care and dedication that WTCG’s providers have shown our students, families, and veterans has made it an easy choice for PY Foundation to support their cause.”
Her PY Foundation colleague, Sandra Borges, doubles down: WTCG’s “presence is changing lives, offering hope, and strengthening the fabric of our community. We are grateful for their dedication and the positive impact they continue to make.”
Which is a refreshing thing to hear any day, but especially in these days, when nonprofits have taken lumps for those shady ones that abuse America’s tax laws to engage in politics and ideology instead of charity.
There are nevertheless many good and inspiring stories to tell of local charity done well, and of nonprofits run as nonprofits deserve to be run, and led as they deserve to be led. And as such stories go, you’d be hard-pressed to find one better than that of Dusty McCoy and West Texas Counseling & Guidance.
A version of this article was published by National Review on April 7, 2025, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/04/charity-done-right/.
