In this unprecedented time of crisis we all have to be inventive. So when we - and hundreds of other mutual aid projects across the country - launched last month, this was trial and error for all of us, and we've learned some important lessons.

For the past five weeks, MACO has maintained a Google Form where people send in their needs and/or offers, and a growing team of volunteers have been working every day to match people. While this has created many connections and met many needs, we've learned the downfalls of this method. It created a huge barrier for those looking to volunteer with the group, as it required an unsustainable amount of work on the back end in order to one-to-one match hundreds of people. This created a bottleneck in the system. We believe that mutual aid is meant to be done among communities, not administered by a separate group of people - and our form and its troubles made us feel like we were administrators.

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While volunteers worked to match needs and offers, many people were self-organizing in our Facebook group, collectively working to support each other in profound ways. However, we learned that in a group of over 10,000 people, not everyone was approaching each other with the kindness and grace that is necessary - and we are actively working on improving the moderation of the group. Another thing we learned: while there have been many successful connections made within the group, because of the way the Facebook algorithm prioritizes and makes it hard to categorize posts, Facebook is not always the most effective platform for people to find what they need.

So, in order to make this system more open and effective, we’re officially closing the system of one-to-one matching through that Google Form. Instead, we are focusing our efforts on the 5 parts of our network that are outlined on our home page.

We’re flexible and adapting as we go - so we continue to welcome feedback, continue to welcome new volunteers/organizers, and continue to learn from those who have already been doing this work. No one of us holds all the answers, but we all know a lot together.