Activation Cooperative Fund: a model to distribute mutual aid

The following is a guest post from the Activation Cooperative Fund. It is provided in the hope it will be useful for future organizations and individuals interested in learning from, reviving, or adapting our experiment.

Background

Activation Cooperative Fund (ACF) was an “experimental reparations based funding and investment program” in operation from 2020-2024, that “accumulated funds through member contributions, and redistributed funds to members using a cooperative decision making process.”

The fund was initiated by Kamra Hakim in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter uprisings, as a spin-off of Activation Residency, a Black trans-led artist residency. ACF would act as a new model to distribute mutual aid (with an implicit emphasis on QTBIPOC) which at the time was primarily taking place on a case-by-case basis via GoFundMe, Venmo, PayPal, and CashApp.

ACF operated virtually on the platform known as Loomio, and over the course of its existence, collected monthly donations from its 40+ members, redistributed over $20,000 to members via PayPal, and saw ~160 threads of fund proposals, polls, and organizational discussions. In 2022, students from Hofstra Law School supported ACF in incorporating as a cooperative in the State of New York, and making necessary revisions to our Bylaws and Handbook.

In early 2024, members voted to close the fund, due to inactivity and reduced capacity to manage the administrative aspects of the fund. Two members, Danny and Seb, volunteered to publicly archive the project, and reflect on their experience as members, which can be found below.

Seb

I was a member of Activation Cooperative Fund from Feb 2021 until its closure in Feb 2024. I first learned of its existence from Manifesting Mutuals, a conversation club with my friend Lucy and Kai, in which we would share interesting case studies, often related to technology and the solidarity economy. One of these case studies was ACF, which I joined shortly thereafter to learn more, and report back my findings. Manifesting Mutuals eventually presented some of our findings (on DAOs, the Solidarity Economy, and Cooperative Land Projects) at the 2022 Woodbine x Symbiosis “Building Autonomy” gathering in Ridgewood, Queens - which Danny references in his reflection.

I was curious about this new system of mutual aid, and regularly voted on proposals, most often a simple “Yes”, but sometimes asked questions for more detail, to solicit member engagement, and to test if the Loomio platform would allow for real-time negotiations without feeling clunky (it did!). I was most interested in a thread discussing a land project spin-off of the fund, and facilitated a meeting with other interested members.

One fun moment that resulted from this was getting to know Jessa Carta. We continued to meet about cooperative land projects, but no other members attended, so we continued to meet regularly (just the two of us), which as of this writing, we still do! In 2022, Jessa invited me for a residency at her homestead in southern Oregon (a former commune), and together (IRL for the first time), we hopped on a Zoom call with ACF and Hofstra Law Students, who were helping the fund incorporate as a cooperative.

Other ACF memories include when my proposal was approved to purchase a virtual webinar training from the Freedom Georgia Initiative (a group in Georgia who purchased land to create a city safe for Black people), and shared these resources with the group. I also submitted recommendations for how our Bylaws and Handbook could be made more durable by defining active vs. inactive members, and how the makeup of the Board should reflect our mission of serving QTBIPOC in need.

Members typically requested funds for up to $600 (the maximum non-taxable amount), ranging from car repairs, educational trainings from Black liberation organizations, cameras, rental assistance, permaculture consultations, and more. Funds were also spent on the organization’s operating costs including our Loomio subscription, bookkeeping, and website hosting (via Cargo).

Looking back, ACF felt a bit quiet in terms of member engagement, especially towards the end. While I can’t say this for sure, my guess is that some members with expendable income, (energized by 2020’s movement for Black lives) donated monthly funds, but did not participate in decision-making, trusting that these funds would be redirected to individuals on an as-needed basis. I think there is a lot of value in this, which feels more intimate than donating to a large charity, whose beneficiaries you might never interact with, and whose decision-making you are not privy to. I’m happy to report that I never felt like our trust-based system was abused. Perhaps because it was so word-of-mouth and small scale, there was a level of “quality control” when it came to members. Kai from Manifesting Mutuals always wondered how ACF could scale up, and be boosted by philanthropy funds from the “tech” world. I think there was a lot of value also in the fact that we practiced decentralized protocols on the internet, without engaging “Web3” (DAOs, cryptocurrency, the blockchain) - demonstrating that futuristic visions can be implemented with existing tools and tech literacy. However in hindsight, one limitation was our organization’s PayPal account, which still required an individual member to manage it, rather than a shared bank account that could disburse funds at any time with group consensus (something I understand that DAOs are able to do effectively).

As grantmaking continues to move in a more progressive direction, I hope that more community-controlled funds emerge, and that they can learn from the exciting experiment that was Activation Cooperative Fund.

Danny

I first heard about the Activation Cooperative Fund through the Symbiosis gathering held in May of 2022 and I immediately knew it was a project I wanted to get involved with. It was described to me as an experimental community organized around wealth redistribution that was managed collectively and this resonated with me in 2 major ways:

The first was that I had recently left my job and was starting to dedicate more time in my life to an explicit organizing practice that worked within existing communities that I shared more radical values with. One of these communities was a DIY biology lab that I had begun to organize as a collective that managed a shared space. We were using the same decision making platform as the ACF, Loomio, and I was eager for more experiences in groups using this software. Second, the shared fund was a tangible resource that didn’t have an explicit physical anchor. I thought it could be a model that operated under the constraint of limited physical interaction yet still bringing material benefit to its participants. I wanted to participate in the ACF because it proposed a set of values that resonated with me.

I joined the ACF in June 2022 which put me among the last 25% of what would become our final membership cohort. When I first joined, incoming requests for funds seemed to be fairly regular. Requests coincided with the fund accumulating the maximum amount that could be requested by a member. I recall an urgency to the requests that made me feel good that we were supporting folks in need. It also made me feel part of a group that was struggling to meet its basic needs. I was seeking robust discussion among members about how funds could be used, but in the backdrop of urgent need, discussion seemed like an unnecessary delay. I did participate in some requests for creative projects, but these too did not have associated discussions.

Proposals had fewer than the majority of members voting which gave me some cause for concern. I interpreted the silent majority as struggling with limited time and attention. Some folks shared words of encouragement or enthusiasm on threads and I hoped that these were received well by the fund requesters. Ultimately, I lacked an understanding of the relationships between members to understand the situation. Nevertheless, it was nice to witness folks supporting each other and overall participation in the ACF made me feel like I was contributing to a tangible good.

Work around formalizing the legal structure of the ACF was being completed when I first joined. I learned a lot about how a cooperative could be structured by reading threads on those topics. I was able to start some threads seeking self-reflection among members as well as attempting to make explicit the norms that had been developing within the group. While I don’t think I was successful in these respects, I did receive some positive responses and I learned more about the group by reading old threads in the process of writing my own threads. As it became clear that there was a need for increased administrative support to operate the fund I expressed interest and limited capacity to learn and absorb necessary duties. Ultimately structural issues around the original PayPal account and limited capacity among the volunteer administrative team brought the closure of the ACF. I am grateful for the experience of participating in this experiment and I have incorporated and will continue to incorporate these experiences to the DIY biology lab as well as other volunteer-based collective organizations I have become involved with such as Prime Produce.

Resources

• ACF Bylaws
• ACF Membership Handbook
• Titles of threads & proposals in the Loomio group
• Example proposal 1
• Example proposal 2
• Example proposal 3

Tags: Activism Cooperatives