Last year, we wrote a popular post about community groups without non-profit status accepting donations as an alternative to Giving Tuesday, a recently invented holiday non-profits propose as a remedy to the other materialistic splurge days this time of year (black Friday, cyber Monday). As COVID rates rise and isolation continues, we applaud the impulse to focus on "paying it forward"if you have the means, and allowing yourself a rest from consumerism if you don't.
While Giving Tuesday focuses on non-profits, there are literally hundreds of community groups out there doing amazing work who don't have the benefit of that tax distinction. Below is a list of groups you may consider contributing to who we know could use some financial help. And remember that because these are all volunteer community groups, your money can go farther than with a large non-profit with employees and overhead costs. Hope you find something you like to contribute to. And drop us a line if you think of another group that should be on this list!
Community Groups
Local to NYC
Centro Corona: Intergenerational Community Center in Corona, Queens, promoting the autonomy of their community through art and community organization.
Universe City has a mission to create sustainable urban farms and food sovereign hubs through food production, education, and manufacturing founded on circular economic principles. They are currently fundraising to create a commercial sized aquaponic farm in Brownsville Brooklyn.
Queer Detainee Empowerment Project is a post-release support, detention center visitation, direct service, and community organizing project that works with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer, Two Spirit, Trans, Intersex, Gender Non- Conforming, and HIV+ (LGBTQIA* GNC TS) immigrant prisoners and their families currently in detention centers, those that have been recently released from detention centers, and those at risk at entering immigration detention in Connecticut, New Jersey, & New York. (They've also worked in close conjunction with Solidarity Room Project to find housing for it's members.)
For the Gworls is a collective that raises housing and medical funds for Black trans people in NYC.
The Okra Project is a collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people by bringing home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources to Black Trans People wherever we can reach them.
Refugee Translation Project translates all forms and documents needed for refugees and asylum seekers to complete their application processes. They are currently raising funds to support an ongoing process to build a reserve fund to pay their translators, some of whom are refugees themselves, and to strengthen the organization, as they build collaboratively with immigration service providers to meet an unprecedented scope of need. They have expanded their language capabilities to include Dari, Kurdish, Pashto, Spanish, Swedish, and Urdu alongside Arabic, French, German, Greek, and Turkish.
Feed the People Bed-Stuy cooks mouth-watering gormet meals in a commercial kitchen to serve as free takout from Herbert VonKing Park in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn every week for over 100 people. Venmo @bedstuyFTP
Bushwick City Farm has been a community green space in a food desert for over a decade. They've been continuing to grow and give away fruit, vegetables, and fresh eggs through the pandemic, but are short on funds since they haven't been able to have their annual fundraiser this year.
Club A Kitchen is a mutual aid group that provides food, groceries, PPE and hygiene supplies to the community twice a week out of the Bushwick City Farm in Brooklyn, NY
Community Fridges - In Our Hearts Before COVID swept NYC, In Our Hearts started a free food fridge in Bed-Stuy and stocked it with perfectly good food that would have otherwise go to waste. Since February, they continue to stock the fridge every day, and support the promotion, creation, and stocking of over 71 fridges in NYC. Venmo @IOHNYC (individual neighborhood fridges also have their own venmo accounts)
Queens Care Collective is a community of Queens residents sharing resources and energy to meet each other’s needs.
The NYC Chapter of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee is a liaison for incarcerated people to organize and build solid bridges with comrades on the outside in the fight against prison slavery. We fundraise in order financially support our incarcerated members with monthly commissary and to meet any other material needs, as well as to afford mailing supplies to keep the lines of communication open across prison walls.
The Solidarity Room Project (That's us!) is an all-volunteer-run organization working to house NYC asylum seekers in private homes in our city as a dignified response to threats to flood sanctuary cities with refugees.
Beyond NYC
Unist'ot'en Camp is a relatively intact territory of the Unist'ot'en people in what is known as western Canada, fighting pipelines from Trans-Canada, Enbridge, and Pacific Trails since 2007. Your contribution ensures that supporters on the land have food and medical supplies, that Unist’ot’en Youth are able to visit their territories, that Wet’suwet’en Elders have the necessary materials on the land to teach traditional hunting, gathering, food processing, language skills, songs, stories and more.
Indigenous Mutual Aid is an information and support network with an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist framework. We exist to inspire and empower autonomous Indigenous relief organizing in response to COVID-19.
EarthFirst! Journal: Radical environmental biocentric quarterly print journal like no other going through a restructuring on the 40th anniversary of the movement.
Frontline Medics is a collective of medically trained Women of Color committed to providing our communities of resistance with aid and support.
The People's Fund raises money for rotating projects. Most recently, they have delivered & installed on the Navajo Reservation to Families & Elders without access to electricity.
TransCaravana Collective is a small grassroots volunteer-led commissary fund in partnership with Trans Queer Pueblo, an LGBTQ migrant of color and formerly incarcerated-led community group based in Phoenix, AZ. We are continuing to raise money for a second year after a successful first to fund our ongoing efforts!
Tucson Reparations is a mutual aid fund creaded by and for Tucson, AZ's black community. Donations are asked from non-black people and are given directly to the local black community to foster financial security and healing.
Jailbreak PGH is a self organized group of community members providing free support to people inside or coming out of Allegheny County Jail (ACJ), in PA.
Sex Worker Emergency Endowment of Tucson We are a small group of current/former sex workers and allies based in Tucson with an interest in serving our community. Our main focus is on connecting marginalized, struggling individuals in the local sex industry with micro-grants to help pay for essentials.
Black LGBTQIA Migrant Project (BLMP) builds and centers the power of Black LGBTQIA+ migrants to ensure the liberation of all Black people through community-building, political education, creating access to direct services, and organizing across borders. They are also providing cash assistance to Black LGBTQ+ migrants and first generation people dealing with the impact of COVID-19.
Fireweed Collective offers mental health education and mutual aid through a Healing Justice lens. We help support the emotional wellness of all people, and center the needs of those most marginalized by our society.
Sins Invalid is a disability justice based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized.
National Queer Therapists of Color Network (NQTTCN) is a healing justice organization committed to transforming mental health for queer and trans people of color (QTPoC).
Miss Major's House of GG Founded and led by Trans and gender nonconforming people and our allies, we create safe and transformative spaces where members of our community can heal—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—from the trauma arising from generations of transphobia, racism, sexism, poverty, ableism and violence, and nurture them into tomorrow’s leaders. We currently primarily focus on supporting and nurturing the leadership of Transgender women of color living in the U.S. South.
Camp Mni Luzahan Creek Patrol has been established to offer care and protection to our beloved unsheltered relatives. There is active and ongoing effort to provide consistent care through offerings of food, blankets, and cold weather gear as well as protection from police and settler harassment/violence. This is a vital coalition effort to offer mutual aid and your support is needed.
Landback is a mutli-faceted campaign to get Indigenous lands back into Indigenous hands, and empower Indigenous people across Turtle Island with the tools and strategies to do LANDBACK work in their own communities.
Boone Community Relief is an autonomous mutual aid group that helps people meet needs in the so called Boone area and western NC in Cherokee land.
AvispaMidia is an independent collective of journalists and researchers that seek to discern about the political, economic and social events that take place in our regions of Latin America, and in the contexts that we share.
Bail Funds - A collection of community resources for protestors around the country.
Canoe Journey Herbalists is starting a land project creating a much needed centralized home for Intertribal Indigenous medicine and food sovereignty in the Salish Sea area.
Funds for Individuals
We are nearing the obscenely high goal to raise bail in support of Malcolm’s mother. Malcolm has been incarcerated in NYC since June: bit.ly/MalcolmFreedomFund
Lady O is healing from injuries after a violent home invasion last week. This PayPal link reflects $28,000 that have already been spent towards housing for her. We’re working to raise $5K for the month of December to replace stolen items, cover her medical costs, and provide for living expenses: https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/8rw86bUtLm
Dr. Mutulu Shakur has now been incarcerated for almost 35 years. We are making an urgent plea for your support in the next phase of work for Mutulu’s freedom. We need financial support for his legal defense, commissary, and more. http://mutulushakur.com/site/support/
Russell Shoatz whose been in prison since 1972 is suffering from Covid and colon cancer. He is being held in inhumane conditions that's detrimental to his health. These funds will go towards costs that the Shoatz family encounter fighting what seems to be an endless battle towards getting proper medical attention for Russell Shoatz, and someday bringing him home where he belongs. https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-for-the-shoatz-family-fighting-injustice
Sirajuddin A. Qadir has been wrongfully convicted to 35 years in prison for a crime he did not commit and that never happened. He and his mother are in need of financial support to afford the retainer for a competent attorney so he can go to retrial and win his freedom. https://free-sirajuddin.square.site/
Over the past year, dear Rain, a queer native youth, has lost both her parents at only age 15. At a time when she should be exploring herself and the world with joy and curiosity, she’s been left heartbroken and with an uncertain future. Your donations will go towards a new family car (so they can actually drive and get groceries), school supplies and materials, healthy food (which is difficult to get in Grande Prairie), clean water, support for extracurricular activities (she wants to start training martial arts), and of course a college fund so Rain can achieve any and all of her dreams. http://www.gofundme.com/f/futureforrain
Non-Profits we want to lift up anyway
Community Solidarity is America’s largest all-vegetarian hunger relief food program, based in Long Island, NY, with one weekly food share in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. Anyone in need of help can come to a Community Solidarity Food Share and get most, if not all, of the groceries they need for the week, as well as clothing, books, toys, school supplies, and other necessities without ID or registration of any kind. They've been a dependable mutual aid project in the area since 2006, and became a non-profit in 2011.
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