Lincoln-Sudbury Mutual Aid Network

We're All Organizing Together

The biggest piece of advice is to remember that there are hundreds of other people doing this kind of work in parallel with you. They are more than willing to share best practices, pitfalls, and resources. We encourage reaching out to other network organizers for advice on getting started.

In order to share experiences and resources across Mutual Aid Networks, there have been several efforts to create statewide and national lines of communication:

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Here is a link to join a Massachusetts-wide Slack channel where there are many helpful links and threads to ask questions. 

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Here is a link to join an active Nationwide Slack channel to connect with organizers across the country.

 

There is a weekly Mutual Aid Zoom call organized by Massachusetts Mutual Aid organizers. Send them an email to get on their list to receive call invites and be added to the Massachusetts Mutual Aid Google Group. 

 

The Town Hall Project launched Mutual Aid Hub, a space for tracking networks on a national scale. They also run weekly meetings for mutual aid networks nationwide and focus on sharing best practices and resources across networks. Email them to join the calls.

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How to Actually Build a Network

Mutual Aid Medford and Somerville (MAMAS) created this document, which is essentially a how-to guide on building a mutual aid network from the ground up. 

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To create a Google Voice Hotline, check out this toolkit from Mutual Aid Brookline.

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To create a Neighborhood Pod structure, MAMAS has this document.

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A few pieces of general advice from Mutual Aid Brookline on getting started.

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A master document of Lessons Learned from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief.

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How to Let People Know About Your Network

Once your network has some basic infrastructure up and running, get the word out by registering with different databases of mutual aid organizations. Below is a list of places that keep track of running groups, if there isn't a clear place to register online or if it's a spreadsheet, we recommend sending them an email with your network's name, how people can reach you, and any other materials you want to share.

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Mutual Aid Hub's National Interactive Map of Mutual Aid Networks

 

AARP's list of mutual aid groups nationwide 

 

Human Network Initiative's Centralized Database of Massachusetts Mutual Aid Networks

Google Form to add your Mutual Aid Network to the Human Network Initiative's database in English, in Arabic, in French,

or in Spanish

 

List of Massachusetts organizations, mutual aid networks, and local resources

 

COVID Connect, A general mutual aid connection web platform

 

List of Massachusetts Mutual Aid Networks by Zip Code

 

Mass Jobs With Justice's List of Mutual Aid Networks

 

We would also encourage you to reach out to your local press networks to try and get the word out through news releases. 

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Massachusetts Mutual Aid Linkshare

This document is updated semi-regularly and contains all of the links from the Massachusetts Slack channel so people don't have to scroll through months worth of slack messages to find the resources they're looking for.