"ordinary friends can still cobble things like this together"

January 31, 2022 4:32 AM

"Last year, in cooperation with many of my friends on a private social network, I took an idea from neighborhood organizations here in Chicago and started a small online-only mutual aid fund. Over twelve months, we distributed more than seven thousand dollars from some friends to others, mostly in increments of $100 USD..... A number of the people involved made requests at one point and donations at another, which I think illustrates how important the fluidity of a mutual aid project can be." Brendan Adkins writes about how the group did this, in case you'd like to set up something similar. Disclaimer: written by a friend of mine.
posted by brainwane (27 comments total)

This sounds a lot like the (rapidly evolving) "savings groups" in Africa, where a network of trust is built up and there are various community-based systems for saving & distributing funds, like Chama or stokvel.
posted by chavenet at 5:12 AM on January 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

This is what burial clubs and fraternal organizations used to do in the 19th and early 20th century US.
posted by Hypatia at 5:47 AM on January 31, 2022 [10 favorites]

Great project and a helpful how-to.
posted by evilmomlady at 7:01 AM on January 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

I really like how he closes this piece with a backhanded nod to cryptocurrency. Blockchain-based transaction registers are an attempt at a technological solution to a fundamentally social problem: how do you establish trust within a network? You can build an elaborate web of voting protocols and distributed recordkeeping, which is cumbersome and slow and uses an unbelievable amount of electricity and can STILL be gamed by a dedicated enough attacker... or you can leverage a small existing network of people who already know and trust one another, and use a shared Google doc.
posted by Mayor West at 8:04 AM on January 31, 2022 [12 favorites]

This will wendell with metafilter providing mefite health care insurance.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 8:21 AM on January 31, 2022 [7 favorites]

Very interesting/neat. My experience setting up/being something in the same ballpark has been of two halves. One is more of a group endeavor, where my closely-knit IRC group turned Slack (Odd choice, I know, but we haven't found anything quite compelling enough to jump ship again & how Discord's going isn't exactly dissuading that) has a channel where no-shame requests for aid go in & those of us who can shoulder them split it.

The other is more personal, where friends come to me & I can usually bridge the gap myself.

In both cases, I figure that in many instances a critical jolt to someone's situation can be the start of a spiral where a late bill accrues penalties, which leads to more penalties, which leads to... So if I can provide that bit of padding, it'll be better for their mental & physical stability and be less costly long-term.
Only problem there is, it's been a bumpy last couple-few years, let me tell you. And I'm very glad that I'm in a position to provide gap-coverage aid for... hell, I'm up to 5 households?? at this point who're surviving off my shoulders (not counting my own).

I don't know where this leads, but I've never been good at turning someone down when they need something & I'm not in the red, so onward I/we go until conditions improve or something wears out, I suppose.
posted by CrystalDave at 9:00 AM on January 31, 2022 [8 favorites]

> This will wendell with metafilter providing mefite health care insurance.

That’s not so far fetched
posted by Monochrome at 9:15 AM on January 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

We have a tool for helping each other. It's called government.

This is just implementing an early model, alpha-release of government, invented in the eighteenth century - the mutual aid society.

Mutual aid societies work better at scale, as risks and costs are shared across more people. That's why mutual aid societies evolved into a more recent version of government - the welfare state. Ultimately, government works best if it serves everyone, which is why nations with the highest quality of life have public health systems, public accident insurance, etc.

Did anyone involved ask why they were having to do this themselves? And why their government wasn't doing this for them already?

(Yes, I know this is America, it could only be America where half the politicians think government should be actively destroyed so they can replace public goods with private rents.)
posted by happyinmotion at 10:12 AM on January 31, 2022 [20 favorites]

This is just implementing an early model, alpha-release of government, invented in the eighteenth century - the mutual aid society.

This is a rather ahistorical view, considering governments (including those providing some form of social welfare) date back a few thousand years before this.

I don't think we're ever going to reach a point where short-term/one-time needs aren't often met by informal social networks and families rather than government. The machinery the state would require to fill all these needs would be far too cumbersome. I've donated for years to a charity that tries to meet one-time emergency cash needs for working people (Modest Needs), and their application process already seems too elaborate without the added superstructure and tensions of government.

The drawback, of course, is that social networks are no use to people who aren't in them, or aren't in the right ones. With the best will in the world, reliance on such networks can easily reinforce various disparities.
posted by praemunire at 10:20 AM on January 31, 2022 [10 favorites]

What makes me nervous about mutual aid is how much it privileges those with the social capital to have friends who are willing to help them out. I wonder, for example, how racially diverse the network in the original post was. My own experience, not as someone who needs aid but as someone who wants friends, has shown that it is incredibly hard to make friends with white people. White people, even the leftists and anti-racists, just aren't interested in including me, for whatever reason.
posted by chernoffhoeffding at 10:31 AM on January 31, 2022 [23 favorites]

No, it's pretty historical. Prior to the 20th Century, the US government provided almost no social welfare. The first meaningful welfare would have been Civil War pensions.

The government prior to WWI was tiny, only about 3% of GDP or one-fifteenth of the current size. From our perspective, the government did almost nothing. They saw common welfare as a matter for individuals and groups of individuals such as mutual aid societies and churches. Sadly, some people want us to return to that state.
posted by happyinmotion at 10:48 AM on January 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

No, it's pretty historical. Prior to the 20th Century, the US government provided almost no social welfare. The first meaningful welfare would have been Civil War pensions.

No, you're wrong. Management of social welfare is a very early function of government, if for no other reason than to deter popular unrest. Literally Roman governments distributed grain to the poor on a recurring basis thousands of years ago, and the Elizabethan poor law which taxed local residents to provide payments or work opportunities and many see as the antecedent of the various American systems is six hundred years old now. To conceive of historical government social welfare efforts as limited to direct cash payments from the US federal government is frankly bizarre.
posted by praemunire at 11:02 AM on January 31, 2022 [7 favorites]

This is one of those heartwarming stories that's really just an indicator the massive failure of the safety net in the US. I mean, this is great for the people involved but they shouldn't have to resort to something like this.
posted by octothorpe at 11:04 AM on January 31, 2022 [11 favorites]

(Also various mutual aid organizations, particularly amongst people of the same trade, are about as old as we have records at that level of society for. Not an eighteenth-century invention at all. If you were the distressed widow of a cutler or a baker in fifteenth-century London, one place you might look for recurring assistance would be your husband's [and, occasionally, your own] guild.)
posted by praemunire at 11:07 AM on January 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is one of those heartwarming stories that's really just an indicator the massive failure of the safety net in the US.

octothorpe, I disagree. The post I linked to is, in fact, not particularly narrative, and is not a "look at this particular bad event/situation that got resolved through crowdfunding" story. It is a rather dry logistical "how we did this" explanation about how one group of people set up some light infrastructure, and shares no specifics about the kinds of problems that the money helped anyone address. Perhaps you did not literally mean that the piece is "really just" a heartwarming story of the type you described, and were being hyperbolic?
posted by brainwane at 11:20 AM on January 31, 2022 [4 favorites]

Thanks brainwane for sharing this. While I know Metafilter has a largely US-based member pool, I hope the discussion does not focus on the US only (and what the US government is/is not doing well). Looks like the author is US-based also, but they mentioned that "people in countries outside the US" also participated in the mutual aid group.

chavenet already mentioned the chama concept popular in Kenya in particular. In the Philippines, a popular approach is called paluwagan, which is a merry-go-round ROSCA (rotating savings & credit association) based on that Wikipedia page on Tanda/Chama. The root word luwag literally means "ease" or "loosen," and in this sense, you are helping to ease each other's way financially. There are a couple of main differences between Brian Adkins' approach and the merry-go-round (ROSCA) approach:

• Adkins specifically calls the contributions to the pot "donations" meaning there is no guarantee that any donor would get the equivalent amount of money back in the future. A wealthier participant might donate multiple times but never request a disbursement. The ROSCA approach is forced savings, and you will get your money back when it is your turn.
• Adkins' group's disbursements were needs-based, so you could have a large number of requests just before Christmas, or when kids school fees are typically due. ROSCA disbursements are on a schedule, which is probably easier to manage on the admin side, but not as user-friendly (what if you had a family emergency, but it's not your turn yet to get cash?).
• The needs-based approach also requires some sort of vetting process whether a request for aid is legit or not. I can see this being tricky to manage, as different people have different definitions of need vs. want.
• With the ROSCA, there is always a risk of someone cashing out, then leaving the group / no longer putting money back into the pot. If you are new and an unknown quantity, you're probably at the end of the line to cash out so the risk is lowered.

As with most things in life, there is no one-size-fits-all answer, and both formal and informal safety nets are useful. Keep in mind that there are a lot of folks out there who cannot get gov't supports since they are not "in the system," as was recently posted in the thread re: COVID relief for folks who are in a grey area, or even students (specifically this comment).

It's cool to read about the logistics and tools used, to put a 2020s spin on it, for those of us with bank accounts, PayPal, and internet connectivity. I would not be surprised if in the future a fintech startup will claim to have "disrupted" the savings and loan industry with an all-in-one package of all the tools/processes that Adkins used, and get a bajillion dollars in VC funding! Meanwhile the lo-fi version using a notebook for record-keeping, and a tin can for your pot of money, will still continue to be practiced elsewhere. :)
posted by tinydancer at 11:55 AM on January 31, 2022 [14 favorites]

Chiming in just to make the point again: you don't need no stinkin' blockchain/coin/NFT to do these kinds of things. Trust is not a technology, it's a relationship.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 3:20 PM on January 31, 2022 [4 favorites]

Like this? For more, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolution
posted by homerica at 6:52 PM on January 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

I would argue that the community savings arrangements (i.e., chama, susu, etc) are different from what is being described, because in the savings rotas people eventually get out what they put in, and unless someone flakes out, no one gets out more than they contribute. They are really powerful vehicles for people in situations where savings is hard -- maybe they have pressing needs, or a spouse that would drink away their money otherwise.

Even in a well-functioning society, there is a need for mutual aid and people helping each other without expectation of reciprocity, but overall I'm with octothorpe: these stories say more about the broken system here than anything else. Reading about the mechanics of their approach was interesting, and I appreciate the link, but I personally don't find it inspiring.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:22 PM on January 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

There's another key difference between mutual aid and savings groups: most mutual aid funds don't ask questions, and they don't require you to pay back what you've been given. A cash gift at the right moment can permanently transform and improve someone's quality of life. A loan can become a millstone that leads to desperate decisions to try to meet the social obligation of repaying the debt.

No doubt that a cash gift might be used for purposes other than what was intended. But it can't lead to someone gambling today's earnings to try to make tomorrow's repayment. Or the shame of being unable to make repayments because your husband stole the loan money for drink.
posted by happyfrog at 10:53 PM on January 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Just a quick note for folks who want to dig in on how this isn't good / interesting because government, society, or the world should be better, actually: we have lots and lots of posts about how fucked up government (etc.) is, and those threads are good places to register your thoughts on that, but this is an interesting post about how some people have organized an effort to help friends in need, how they set up their system in a pretty simple, straightforward way. It's not presented as or meant to be a solution for all that ails society in general. To discuss the larger picture of private vs public/gov programs, you might want to go over here instead. Meanwhile, please think about what you are contributing here, and let's try not to sneer at someone planting a tree on their block because it's definitely not going to solve climate change. Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 2:19 AM on February 1, 2022 [8 favorites]

Per homerica‘s link, while it may be slightly misused in some cases now since the idea became more popular over the pandemic, “mutual aid” implies a particular political aspect to the project such that we can be pretty sure the folks participating are highly aware that ideally government is directly democratic rather than oligarchic, and provides this organizational infrastructure.
posted by eviemath at 4:04 AM on February 1, 2022

I am very keen on this thread for many reasons. I will look elsewhere for the historical context, but it is good to know! Here the technical and social are worth exploring and I hope more of us join in.

This thread reminds me how much effort it takes to create and -maintain- networks that are not the product of inertia. And systemic racism is certainly as powerful as gravity when we calculate what contributes to inertia in cases like that.

I’m not saying that this is part of any specific effort, but as I try to ration calories to this or that cause or org I find that I have to remind myself of this reality and use it as a lens.
posted by drowsy at 5:36 AM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

I think it’s interesting how difficult technologically it still is to do this relatively simple thing. It’s not a space that’s ripe for “disruption” or profit, and probably each group that would want to do this has slightly different needs- location, default amounts, ease of access to technology/bank accounts, etc .

I’ve seen similar semi-anonymous mutual aid efforts crop up where specific people proxy funds for anonymous recipients, but this requires a lot of trust in the intermediaries.

> The needs-based approach also requires some sort of vetting process whether a request for aid is legit or not

I think it does not! On the small scale, when you see the same people contributing and receiving, social norms probably coalesce around what’s reasonable.
posted by worstname at 9:43 AM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

Hopefully this isn't too misremembered, but I read the book Farming While Black a few years ago by Leah Penniman. She has spent a lot of time learning from African systems of farming and community work. Inspired by what she learned in an African country (I want to say Ghana?), she started a group like this but a bit more structured, more of a savings group.

I think a lot of what makes these successful is the community element, both in the sense that the givers have at least some connection to the receivers and vice versa (and people may be both), but also it's not just me looking at an underfunded GoFundMe wondering how much exactly I can spare and having that despairing feeling of "however much I give, I can't save this person" - in this model, you know for sure you're not alone in trying to help.
posted by Emmy Rae at 9:43 AM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

How does this work for social disabilities? Likeability and having connections is a massive, contingent privilege.
posted by The Last Sockpuppet at 1:41 PM on February 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

How does this work for social disabilities? Likeability and having connections is a massive, contingent privilege.

That can definitely be an issue. But there's also a distinction between likeability and trust (though certainly they influence each other). As well, mutual aid efforts are political efforts, and usually aim to explicitly deal with such issues head-on by defining the community involved not just as a friend group. Eg. there's a political distinction between a mutual aid effort and your friend or family member helping you through a rough spot (though the latter can also help resist capitalism and open up spaces for non-transactional interactions, depending; can also result in very controlling or coercive interactions instead, of course).
posted by eviemath at 8:02 PM on February 1, 2022 [2 favorites]