Donations & Volunteers are needed!
We can always use donations of your time, food, Venmo, or Cash App.
Donating your time
Help out at the grocery share, help distribute food to Community Fridges, help cook for the food share on Saturdays, spread the word and love, help by designing social content. See more below.
Donating food
Soliciting donations of food that would otherwise go to waste from businesses, co-ops, or your own kitchen! See more details below.
Donate to the Fridge Fund
As a mutual aid network, we do not have a bank account or do fundraising, at this time we accept donations strictly for community fridges transportation efforts, refrigerator maintenance, and upkeep. See more below.
How you can donate your time
Picking up and distributing food for the fridges, food share, or for cooking. We have also been offering home delivery to at-risk and disabled people who have no longer been able to come to the Saturday shares. Cars, vans, etc. are helpful, as are cargo bikes, but some regular pickups can be done on foot or regular bicycle (Be sure to ask/mention what type of transportation you have access to!). There is a Signal group for help with distribution requests. *If you have a vehicle and can help please join that group!*
Help organize a specific fridge. This involves checking on it regularly, making sure others know when it’s low on food, sharing pictures with other organizers for social media, and letting the network know how quickly things are moving, and when more food is needed.
Help out with / volunteer at a public food share like BedStuy Food Not Bombs every Saturday.
Cook or prepare food for the Saturday share, to bring to jail support, or an event or action we are in solidarity with.
Spread the word! Help put up fliers and posters around the neighborhoods—wheat pasting or taping. Spreading the word digitally is also super important! Go ahead and repost our content on all the socials and encourage your friends to do the same! Translation skills are also needed for materials.
Designing materials to promote these efforts—we have an interactive online map that was created by a member. A volunteer has designed Mutual Aid fliers to pass out. There are plans to create informative handouts or pamphlets to encourage businesses to upcycle what they aren’t going to sell, and there have been some individual fridge-specific fliers made for hyper-local distribution. It would be great to have more design help.
Important ways to help or get more involved with In Our Hearts specifically are:
Social Media Management
Website upkeep
Coordination/Management of supporting new fridge projects and coordination of things listed above
How to donate food
Soliciting donations of food that would otherwise go to waste from businesses. This can be done remotely via phone or email or it can be done in person!
We could use your help in transportation for distribution of food to the community fridges. We always welcome new volunteers with or without vehicles or cargo bike skills, though having a car and donating some of your time goes a long way!
For community fridges organized by In Our Hearts, we prefer food to be rescued, not purchased. Therefore, we need people like you to talk to businesses and ask them to donate to the many community fridges out there!
From your own kitchen. If you live near and around a community fridge, donate your own meals or groceries that you know you won’t be using! Make sure to check the fridge rules before you head out. Some accept home-cooked meals, some do not, some accept meat, and some do not. Reminder that while In Our Hearts set up the first community fridge in the US, as a mutual aid group we encourage communities to take care of their own fridges so that their community’s needs are met. Many fridges we organize with, and many are run by their own community members. Which we love!
Food reclamation / food rescue / upcycling or even dumpster diving! A huge motivation in setting up these fridges for many of us has been to eliminate as much food waste as possible and to highlight the issue of surplus food being wasted. If you’re interested in learning how this is done there are a number of organizers happy to show you the ropes!
Donate to the Fridge Fund
All cash donations are used strictly for the distribution and upkeep of community fridges. As a mutual aid group, In Our Hearts does not utilize donations or accept them for ourselves or any organizing we do other than for Community Fridges. We thank you for your help in maintaining these fridges!
Be good to each other.
These are stressful trying times, so understand when people aren’t at their best and show them understanding. We are all part of this because we want to do good things for each other and make the world a better place, that starts with how we treat each other. Assume the best intentions of everyone. Spread love and build community—and Spread the Word!