Mutual aid runs on a group chat until the group chat gets big. Then "I can take that one" scrolls past unseen, two people drive to the same house, and somebody waits all day.
What goes wrong
Offers and needs are interleaved with everything else. Scroll back far enough and nobody can tell what is still outstanding, so the same request gets asked three times.
Somebody starts keeping the real list in their head and answering every message. That person burns out, and when they do the whole thing stops.
A spreadsheet of names, addresses and medical needs is the wrong artifact to paste into a channel, however well intentioned the channel is.
What the list looks like
Eastside runs — this week
One item per line, pasted from wherever you keep them. That paste is the entire setup — there is no project to configure.
How it runs
Not a scrollback. A board where what is left is what is on it, and taking something removes it for everybody else immediately.
Nobody has to be awake to hand out a run. Someone free on a Tuesday opens the link, takes a delivery, and the coordinator finds out by looking.
Write the item as "Grocery run — Eastside, 4 households" and keep names and addresses wherever you keep them now. A link pasted into a channel travels; the board should survive that.
The button says Claim, Take or Sign up rather than Yoink when you choose it that way — the same tool in a register that suits the work.
No. They open the link, type a first name, and take something. There is no signup, no email and no app, which matters when half your volunteers joined this week.
Do not. Anyone holding the link can read the board, and links travel further than you expect. Keep an item at the level of "Block 14 — 9 addresses" and hold the detail somewhere access-controlled.
Yes, if you leave that setting on — and the organizer link can always release a claim. Nothing is destroyed by a claim, so a released run goes back exactly as it was.
It is deleted automatically after the retention window on the privacy page, along with its items, names and log. Nothing is archived elsewhere.
Close to this
Wellness checks — Block 14, 9 addresses
Registration desk — Sat 08:00–10:00
Maple St 400–430 · 31 doors
Seven jobs, one shape
You get two links: one to share, one to run it with. No email, no account, nothing to confirm. How it works.