Nightingale funds emergency hotel stays for sexual assault survivors across Placer, Sacramento, and Nevada counties — one night when no one else has a bed to offer.
Every night, advocates across our region take calls they cannot finish. There is no bed. No shelter space. No agency dollars left in the account. Nightingale fills that gap with one thing: a paid hotel room, booked under an alias, in a vetted property — given freely, asked of no one.
In the Crimean War, Florence Nightingale walked the hospital halls at night with a single oil lamp, checking on wounded soldiers everyone else had forgotten by sundown. The soldiers called her the Lady with the Lamp. She is the reason modern nursing exists.
That is the entire idea behind this organization. After dark, when the agencies are closed and the funding is spent, someone still has to walk in with a light. The flame inside our logo — the i in Nightingale — is hers.
You cannot have light without dark. We exist in the dark hours, on purpose.
Sacramento County figures, 2025. National figures via the Placer County District Attorney’s Sexual Assault Resource Portal (CDC / NISVS data). California context: Valor.us, “#MeToo 2024.”
Rape crisis centers across California are watching their budgets disappear while the calls keep coming. Advocates are told, again and again, that there is no money for a hotel room — the safehouse is full, and a hotel room is not an option for all survivors — even when a survivor has nowhere else to go.
Many of the survivors in the region are already unhoused. A single safe night does not fix that. But it gives an advocate the time to find what comes next.
That is the entire point. One night. Then the next door opens.
Every line above is free, confidential, and answered around the clock. Nightingale is not a crisis line — these partner agencies are.
100% of every donation pays for a hotel night. No overhead. No skim.