This is How You Keep Your Mutual Aid Group Sustainable
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, communities across the country formed mutual aid groups, pooling their time and resources to help neighbors through a traumatic period of loss. Six months later, some mutual aid groups are still going strong. Here, four organizations share how they’ve kept up the momentum while turning resource sharing into a replicable, sustainable pursuit during a pandemic with no end in sight.
LES Mutual Aid Network, started March 2020 in New York
Jasmine, an organizer with LES (Lower East Side) Mutual Aid Network, told me they’ve been able to deliver meals to local residents of the New York City Housing Authority by partnering with grocery stores and other organizations. Since March, they’ve received food from Pret a Manger, homeless service Hungry Monk, food rescue nonprofit City Harvest, and relief program RAP4BRONX. They also worked with the Sixth Street Community Center as a sorting and distribution center. In July, LES Mutual Aid Network launched a fundraising campaign to buy produce and pantry items themselves, and are still seeking financial donations and partnerships.
“We had to go this route because agencies were no longer able to donate but the community need was ever so present,” Jasmine said.
Berkeley Mutual Aid, started March 2020 in Berkeley
Gradiva, an organizer from Berkeley Mutual Aid, said they field requests for help from nearly 500 households, including seniors or immunocompromised people who need help grocery shopping, people with financial challenges, or people just looking for someone to talk to during this period of isolation. Here are several ways they’ve changed their operations over the past six months, in order to prepare for the long haul.
Practicing self-care and self-compassion to avoid getting burned out
Seeking funding to hire paid staff through a community GoFundMe, grants, and assistance from the local government
Connecting with other area mutual aid networks to share best practices and resources
Continually recruiting to build an organization that can withstand core organizers leaving
Scaling back or delegating "side projects" to conserve their capacity
Oxford Mutual Aid, started in March 2020 in Oxford, UK
Muireann, an organizer with Oxford Mutual Aid, said a fiscal sponsorship (an arrangement in which an existing nonprofit accepts money on a newer organization’s behalf) has allowed them to receive donations and spend money securely and transparently through the online donation platform Open Collective. They’re planning to incorporate as a nonprofit as part of their long-term sustainability. Using the donations, they’ve delivered supply packages to thousands of families, as well as make and distribute masks and hot meals.
Oxford Mutual Aid also built a variety of local partnerships, which allowed them to recruit more volunteers from the community. “LGBTQ groups, trade unions, religious groups, immigrant communities, and local community groups all try to look after their most vulnerable members, and when these different working-class efforts are coordinated, they are able to achieve a lot more,” Muireann said.Defend the clinics and fight the fakes
Anti-choice harassment of clinics is common and the anti-choice movement has a long-standing terrorist wing that has attacked doctors, staff, and patients. Brown notes that abortion rights activists have quite literally battled anti-choicers who terrorize clinics, and this work continues today.
There’s also the issue of crisis pregnancy centers – fake clinics designed to divert people seeking abortions. Brown said these centers “have misleading names often similar to a real abortion clinic so people are often confused … even though it’s not a medical facility, everyone is wearing white coats.” Protesting at such centers has been very effective in Tallahassee and Gainesville, Florida, she said. The National Women’s Liberation group has published a guide to protesting crisis pregnancy centers here.
Twin Cities Mutual Aid Project, started in May 2020 in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota
The Twin Cities Mutual Aid Project tracks where aid is being distributed and where it’s needed throughout the area of Minneapolis and St. Paul. (It does not distribute aid itself.) They say that donations to mutual aid projects have declined, and that many supporters and beneficiaries of the mutual aid projects were “directly impacted by the uprising and retaliation from law enforcement in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.”
TCMAP has relied on volunteers to track more than 200 mutual aid sites, in the hope that providing coordination will make all the projects more sustainable. “However – like many of the aid sites we have on the map – we are powered by people and community, and the people are tired,” a spokesperson for the organization said. “In order to promote sustainable mutual aid and push harder against the failed structures that currently exist, we need perpetual advocacy for the need for, the value of, and the long-term availability of mutual aid.”
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