Monthly free food distros with live music at Glenfield Park (with Toni’s Kitchen and Parents Who Rock)

• It’s not a handout or a food line. It’s a family and community event where people are welcomed as neighbors. We do not require qualifications or ID, so it’s truly open to all. It includes many types of items, not just food. It’s in a residential neighborhood at a convenient time, not at a remote location open only during business hours. We designed the event to reach people who were not well served by existing Montclair soup kitchens, pantries, and charities.

• Volunteer opportunities:
  • Liaison for food donations
  • Liaison for park reservations
  • Liaison for musicians
  • Music performers
  • Dropoff location for donations of clothing, toiletries, etc.
  • Setup, replenishment, and takedown of tables
  • Flyer graphic design
  • Publicity and social media posting

Weekly community food gardening (with NE Earth Coalition)

• This is a hands-on participatory program where neighbors can both help grow vegetables and take food to eat. It’s a learning opportunity about gardening and nutrition. It helps make people more self-sufficient. It distributes food even to non-gardeners via Toni’s Kitchen. It builds relationships between community members by allowing time to talk and work together.

• Volunteer opportunities:
  • Weekly hands-on gardening at Montclair sites, Spring-Summer-Fall

• To participate, contact Andrea Marshall, garden@montclairmutualaid.org.

Freeshop events

• These periodic events distribute donated items for free to community members. Our first Freeshop, in October 2021, collected thousands of kitchenware items, and held an indoor event where hundreds of people came and took items for their home. The event also included storytelling about cooking, food, and family kitchen traditions.

• Volunteer opportunities:
  • Planning for Spring 2022 Freeshop event

• To participate, contact the MtcMA Freeshop affinity group, stories@montclairmutualaid.org.

Direct giving of urgent cash

• We help individuals raise cash from the community for their urgent needs.
  • direct cash from Montclair Mutual Aid donors,
  • crowdfunding on social media directly for individual recipients,
  • publicizing and promoting crowdfund campaigns in social media.

• Cash recipents must be local, in Montclair or neighboring towns. We meet briefly in person with each cash recipient. There are no other requirements and no documents requested – only an urgent need.

• Volunteer opportunities:
  • Recipient liaisons
  • Social media fundraiser graphic design and posting

• To participate, contact the MtcMA Direct Giving affinity group, directgiving@montclairmutualaid.org.

Gofer errands

• MtcMA volunteers do errands (e.g., pick up and drop off school lunches) for people who can’t get out (lack of transportation, unavailability during limited hours, immunocompromise, …). These free activities help build neighbor relationships and community goodwill.

• Volunteer opportunities:
  • Public relations, publicity
  • Graphic design, social media posting
  • Occasional or regular pickup/dropoff errands in the Montclair area

• To participate, contact the MtcMA Gofer affinity group, gofer@montclairmutualaid.org.

Collect and distribute free air conditioners during summer

• No qualifications or ID are required – this avoids the degrading or undignified process of having to apply and be judged. We clean and test the ACs, to reduce the humiliating feeling of receiving poor-quality, cast-off items. Environmental stewardship is promoted, by keeping functional units out of the landfill.

• Volunteer opportunities (Summer):
  • Social media posting
  • Logistics
  • AC pickups
  • AC cleaning and testing
  • AC dropoffs

Connect people for flood cleanup equipment borrow/lend

• We put people in touch, and let them directly arrange with each other the terms of their own lending and borrowing. This builds relationships between individuals in the community.

• Volunteer opportunities:
  • Social media posting
  • Contacts liaison, arrangements, and logistics

Free food pantry kiosks (with NE Earth Coalition, UU Congregation, and other orgs)

• These are open to all, 24×7, and are in multiple neighborhood locations. They are not supervised or observed by an attendant – so people can get food in privacy and with dignity. No qualifications or ID are required.

• Volunteer opportunities:
  • Regular checking and restocking from donated inventory.

• To participate, contact Jose German-Gomez, info@neearth.org.

Publicity

• We need help getting the word out to as many Montclair-area people as possible. Flyers, press releases, newspaper contacts, social media, etc.

• Volunteer opportunities:
  • Writing, editing
  • Graphic design
  • Public relations
  • Publicity campaigns
  • Social media posting

• To participate, contact communications@montclairmutualaid.org.

Social media

• We need help running our Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok presence, as well as our website.

• Volunteer task opportunities:
  • Creating posts
  • Responding to inquiries and comments

• To participate, contact communications@montclairmutualaid.org.

If you’d like to do videography with us, wow, we’d love to get you involved!

The live musicians at our monthly food distro events need audio system help.

We need occasional help from people who feel comfortable with computers, software, apps, and/or information technology.

Resource website for critical needs (montclairmutualaid.org)

• We research local organizations and created an information hub to help people find essential resources. This brings people closer to organizations that help meet needs.

Organizational structure and dynamics

• We need help improving our structure, meetings, governance practices, and interpersonal communications.

• Volunteer opportunities:
  • Organizational psychology
  • Consensus decision-making process
  • Restorative justice
  • Meetings efficiency

• To participate, contact communications@montclairmutualaid.org.

Legal

• We need help in figuring out whether and how to spin out a nonprofit organization for finance, tax, and donation purposes.

Bookkeeping and acccounting

• We need help recording incoming and outgoing funds. We need advice on how to structure our accounts and finances. And we need help with filing tax forms.

The funds that we raise from our local community go to:

• purchasing essential goods for people in our area, and
• urgent cash to help neighbors with essential expenses.

We need local people who enjoy putting on fundraiser events, doing social media fundraising, or writing grant proposals.