How to Manage Your Mutual Aid Group's Money Without Burning Out

The person holding your mutual aid group's money is probably exhausted. They're tracking donations in a spreadsheet, fielding DMs about disbursements, reconciling four different payment platforms, and dreading tax season because the IRS thinks all that community money is their personal income.

Treasury is the most thankless job in mutual aid and the one most likely to end a group. Put all the money and all the stress on one person and burnout stops being a risk you manage. It becomes a date on the calendar that nobody has looked up yet.

This guide covers three models for managing mutual aid money, the real problems with each, and practical steps to build a treasury system that doesn't depend on one person's sacrifice.

This is where nearly every group starts. Someone offers their Venmo, money comes in, money goes out. It's fast and free and it holds up fine for a while, which is precisely what makes it dangerous.

The Bed-Stuy Strong example

Bed-Stuy Strong, a mutual aid network in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, ran $1.2 million through a personal account during the COVID-19 pandemic.^[1] One point two million dollars, flowing through one person's personal banking infrastructure, serving one of Brooklyn's largest neighborhoods.

It worked, in the sense that money moved and people got fed. The bill came due somewhere else. One person carried the financial risk and the tax exposure, and carried the knowledge that a neighborhood's crisis response ran through their phone. That last part doesn't appear on any ledger and it is what tends to end people.

Why groups use this model

• Zero setup time. In a crisis, you need to collect money today. Opening a bank account takes weeks.
• Zero fees. Venmo person-to-person transfers are free. Every dollar donated reaches the group.
• Familiarity. Everyone already has Venmo. No one needs to learn a new platform.

Why it falls apart

• Tax liability. The account holder gets a 1099-K for all received funds over $600. The IRS treats it as their income until proven otherwise.
• Account freezes. Venmo and PayPal regularly freeze accounts that show “business activity” patterns.
• Single point of failure. If the account holder gets sick, burns out, moves away, or has a conflict with the group, the treasury goes with them.
• No transparency. Other group members can't see the balance or transaction history unless the treasurer manually shares screenshots.
• No accountability. Nothing prevents misuse except trust, which is fine until the day it isn't. Every organization eventually has a disagreement about money, and without a paper trail that disagreement has no way to end.

A fiscal sponsor is a registered nonprofit that holds funds for groups that aren't incorporated. You operate under the sponsor's tax-exempt status rather than filing for your own, which means donors can deduct their gifts and your group gets a real bank account without a year of paperwork.

What Open Collective Foundation charged

Before it dissolved in December 2024, Open Collective Foundation (OCF) was the most popular fiscal host for mutual aid groups. Their fee structure ranged from 5% to 13% depending on the payment method and services used.^[2] A group moving $50,000 a year paid somewhere between $2,500 and $6,500 for the service. Whether that's expensive depends on what you compare it to; against the cost of compliance it's cheap, and against a month of rent assistance it isn't.

Other fiscal sponsors charge similar rates. Most take 5-10% of all funds received. Some add additional fees for disbursements, reimbursements, or administrative support.

The tradeoffs

• Pro: Legal protection. Your treasurer doesn't bear personal tax liability. The sponsor handles compliance.
• Pro: Donor trust. Some donors (especially foundations) will only give to 501(c)(3) organizations.
• Con: Fees eat into community funds. Every dollar paid in fees is a dollar not distributed to people who need it.
• Con: Loss of autonomy. The fiscal sponsor has ultimate legal control over the funds. They can (and do) impose restrictions on how money is spent.
• Con: Platform risk. When OCF dissolved, 600+ collectives had to scramble to find new homes for their money. Your fiscal sponsor can shut down, change terms, or drop you.

The newest option is purpose-built software that gives a group its own treasury, with transparent records and shared access, and doesn't require you to incorporate or find a sponsor first.

This approach is still young and worth evaluating skeptically. What it does address is the specific failure mode of each model above: no individual is holding the bag at tax time, fees are minimal or absent, and no outside board can dissolve and take your bank account with it.

Regardless of which model you use, most mutual aid groups end up managing money across multiple platforms simultaneously. Venmo for quick peer-to-peer collections. CashApp because some members prefer it. Zelle for bank-to-bank transfers. GoFundMe for public fundraising campaigns. PayPal for international transfers. A shared Google Sheet trying to tie it all together.

The result is a reconciliation nightmare. The treasurer spends hours each week cross-referencing transactions across four platforms, updating spreadsheets, and answering questions from group members who want to know where the money went.

One mutual aid organizer described it this way: “I spend more time accounting for the money than we spend deciding how to distribute it. The tracking work is a full-time job that nobody signed up for.”

This is what actually burns treasurers out. The responsibility of holding money is heavy but people carry it willingly. What grinds them down is the administrative overhead of reconciling four tools that were never built to talk to each other, week after week, for no reason anyone chose.

Whatever stage your group is at, here's what you can do today:

1. Separate personal and group money

If nothing else on this list happens, do this one. Group funds sitting in someone's personal Venmo is the condition that makes every other problem worse. A dedicated Venmo Business account or a basic checking account at a local credit union both work. What matters is a clean line between one person's money and the community's.

2. Establish transparent reporting

Every member should be able to see the current balance and recent transactions at any time, without asking the treasurer. This can be as simple as a shared spreadsheet updated weekly, or as sophisticated as a platform with real-time dashboards. The point is that financial transparency should be the default, not something granted on request.

3. Create shared access

At minimum, two people should have access to every financial account. Three is better. If your treasurer disappears tomorrow, can someone else send disbursements? If the answer is no, fix it today.

4. Build governance before the money arrives

As Dean Spade writes: “When groups that have been all-volunteer get money, they often fall apart in conflict about that money.” Establish decision-making processes for spending before there's money to fight about. Who can approve a disbursement? What's the maximum amount one person can authorize? How are disputes resolved? Write it down.

The Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) offers a free legal toolkit for community organizations that covers governance structures, fiscal policies, and decision-making frameworks. It's one of the best free resources available for groups thinking through these questions.

5. Rotate the work

Treasury management shouldn't be one person's permanent job. Build rotation into your governance: quarterly treasurer transitions, monthly accounting reviews by different members, or a finance committee with rotating membership. The knowledge of how money works in your group should never live in one person's head.

6. Document everything

Keep a record of every financial decision: who proposed it, who approved it, when the money actually moved. Documentation reads like bureaucracy right up until someone asks a pointed question in a meeting. At that moment it's the difference between a two-minute answer and a fight that costs you three members.

In a well-functioning mutual aid treasury:

• Any member can see the current balance and full transaction history
• No single person controls all the money
• Spending decisions follow a documented process
• The treasurer's personal finances are never entangled with group funds
• Transition to a new treasurer takes hours, not months
• Financial reports are generated automatically, not compiled manually

Almost no group is there yet, and treating that list as a pass/fail test would be a mistake. Each item you can check off takes weight off one person's shoulders, and that is worth doing on its own.

Explore the Goodkeep directory to see how other mutual aid groups in your area are structured.