Mutual Aid giving – direct contributions from an individual to another individual for an immediate need like food, housing, health care, or even fixing a car to get to work – has had a problematic history in the charitable world (including from this author, in the past). There have been public relations campaigns to discourage giving directly to people on the street, including a campaign from the City of Saint Paul reported in local media to “Be the Solution” and give to a larger effort and not to people standing at freeway off-ramps and busy intersections.
The argument that giving people money in the streets is not as effective as giving to charities sets up an either/or paradigm. One either supports a housing nonprofit, or one supports a GoFundMe for someone needing rent help. Individual people may misuse that money, so the argument goes, so better to give to a charity which reports on how they spend money.1
The current experience of self-organized mutual aid giving in Minnesota under the current federal occupation shows a path for both direct giving without strings and systemic investment in collective solutions. We cannot be pitted against each other. The tendency to do so is rooted in scarcity mindsets, and the people of Minnesota have shown there is capacity for quick, unfiltered individual compassion and increased support for nonprofit missions. Efforts to just get people a winter coat when being released from federal kidnapping into the winter air show people can do direct aid. Giving to many charities is going up. At the same time.
There is a lesson here for nonprofits from our good friends in the theater and improv communities. Don’t say “no”. Say “yes, and…”
Give to mutual aid if that is important to you. There are even pleas for this type of giving on LinkedIn for cryin’ out loud. It’s not hard to find a place. There are problems with GoFundMe, but one thing it does well is allow you to search for places to do direct support. You want to pay someone’s rent, even in part? You can give money. Go look.
AND.
Many charities are skillfully threading the needle of building community, which inevitably leads to relationships and donations, while lifting up mutual aid. This could go ham-handed and wrong, so vet any such campaigns with impacted communities and be sure you aren’t accidentally causing more harm than good in your actions. Trilingua Cinema is a great example of mixing their mission (utilizing multilingual films to build community among the diverse residents of Saint Paul’s East Side) with mutual aid giving. There are many successful examples.
Nonprofits should be thinking of how to incorporate mutual aid philosophy into our work in authentic, additive ways. It needs to be mission related, it needs to be community-conscious, and ideally it will build on a culture of abundance where your community will also support your direct mission. Yes! And!
- Yes, people asking for money on off-ramps and other dangerous places can be bad. And, one solution is things like Universal Basic Income, which the City of Saint Paul has piloted). ↩︎
