Our Story
We hear so many people say, “I want to support my community (especially during this COVID-19 crisis), but I don’t know how to start or where to look”. Searching for ways to offer & request support is much harder than it needs to be. After you spend hours searching online, you will often find that most volunteer opportunities have requirements such as:
Little variety
Few remote options
Weekly or monthly attendance + 6 month - 1 year commitment (i.e. long-term commitment)
These requirements are not feasible for most of us. We have families/children, jobs, and variable schedules, so it is just too difficult to offer support. This must change. There has to be a better way.
During this time of COVID-19 and beyond, it needs to be easier to find ways of offering/requesting support in time-limited, safe, and reliable ways. We’re creating that vision.
Community Collaboratory is a smartphone app and website that allows you to easily find brief, safe, and remote ways to offer/request support that fits your interests, availability, and comfort level. We aim to improve community wellbineg by using relationships to increase access to healthcare, education, public services, and address unmet needs in our communities.
Community Collaboratory: Main Features
Matching Algorithm
Our matching algorithm makes it easy to match with community members to offer/request support. Community Collaboratory uses the same type of matching algorithm as other professional sectors (e.g. dating apps, real estate, pet-finding, etc.). Why is it that I can search for a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom craftsman house in my zip code, built between the years 1980-2000, within a certain price range, with a certain walk score….but I can’t use the same precision to offer/request support from other community members? Now you can. Community Collaboratory gives that precision and ease to match with community members by: Zip Code, Level of Involvement, Age, Topic, and much more.
Community Care Teams
Community Care Teams are groups of community members that are supporting an individual or family. This is wraparound care by your community: every person requesting support has a Community Care Team, which can have 1-15 people offering support. For instance, to join Sarah’s Community Care Team, Anna would send a request to Sarah to join her Community Care Team and Sarah could approve or deny her request. This gives the person requesting support the ability to have control over who supports them. Once you are part of a Community Care Team, you will get updates on how that person/family is doing!
Your Support Network
It is hard to ask for support from others. Even asking family/friends—we live in a culture that does not promote vulnerability and asking for help. But we all need support. It can feel difficult to ask for support because of thoughts like:
“I don’t want to be a burden on others”
“They’re too busy to talk to me for a long time about how I’m having a hard time”
“It makes me self-conscious to tell my friends that I’m struggling when they seem to be doing great”
“What if my friend doesn’t don’t want to talk to me?”
Challenge those thoughts. There are others here that care about you. We just need to be re-assured that others will show up for us. With ‘Your Support Network’, you can add friends, neighbors, family members, (anyone you want) to be part of your support network who you can call on when you need support. This makes asking for help that much easier—you’ve already done the hard part of asking a group of friends to be ready/willing to respond when you need them. The hard part of asking for help just got easy.
Bright Spots
We are constantly given so much bad news about the world. Remembering that there are bright moments happening locally, all the time, is essential to our well-being. On our home page, you can post bright spots: moments that made you smile. These might relate to offering/receiving support, or not—maybe a moment that made you smile! Examples:
“I just went for a walk and saw two kids yelling “HELLLLOOO” into a sewer pipe….the playfulness and joy of these kiddos laughing at their echos brought a much needed smile to my face.”
Alexis, 28 years old
“Someone asked me for spare change today outside the grocery store. I didn’t have any cash, and I felt nervous at first, but I stopped and we chatted for a bit. We ended up laughing about a few things—like how Backstreet Boys are not as cool in their current comeback as they were in the 90s! Our conversation was a helpful reminder that even though I felt nervous/powerless to affect this person’s situation, connecting was a positive moment for both of us”.
Sean, 45 years old
How is this different from ‘Mutual Aid’?
Community Collaboratory has 4 primary aims:
Increase social connection and create trusting/supportive relationships between community members
Address unmet social, economic, and health needs of individuals and families
Reduce loneliness in our communities
Increase access to healthcare, social services, and education
These are very similar to the aims of Mutual Aid: building resilience, power, and health among our communities. However, we do not want to appropriate or claim the term ‘Mutual Aid’ because it has been in existence for decades. One way we are trying to expand th work of Mutual Aid is that most Mutual Aid groups use Google doc/spreadhseets (see examples below) that are organized by a few individuals. This is difficult to scale. We want it to be easy and reliable for thousands of community members to easily find ways of supporting each other. Community Collaboratory is attempting to provide that scalable model for thousands of community members to easily find ways of offering and receiving support.
What is Mutual Aid?
The concept of ‘Mutual Aid’ was first introduced by Peter Kropotkin in his 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. Big Door Brigade is a Mutual Aid group in Seattle, WA that offers an excellent explanation of Mutual Aid. The Big Door Brigade was launched in 2016 by a group of activists and organizers, including Dean Spade, trans-activist and Associate Professor of Law at Seattle University. There are over 720 Mutual Aid groups across the U.S. that focus on a variety of issues, including COVID-19 responses, housing affordability, and disability rights. Here are some more national examples of Mutual Aid groups.
COVID-19 & Mutual Aid
Mutual Aid groups have responded to the COVID-19 crisis by providing a way for community members to “Offer Support” and “Request Support” with a variety of tasks (e.g. emotional support, financial support, picking up prescriptions, dropping off groceries, etc.). For a more in-depth explanation of COVID-19 and Mutual Aid groups, see this article.
Here are a few examples of Seattle COVID-19 Mutual Aid Group Links:
Community Collaboratory Testimonials
“As baby boomers retire, they are going to want/need ways to continue to feel productive, and to contribute. This seems like a very efficient way to both make connections and try different options to discover what kind of thing is a good fit. ...I like the word collaborative because the blessings go both ways, not just from the volunteer to the recipient.”
— Anonymous, 62 years old
“Most people have some free time so this app is just the “go to” platform for finding a good fit for all types of volunteers to enrich their community. I’m glad someone created just this user friendly way to better everyone!”
— Anonymous, 48 years old
“I hear people in my community all the time talking about volunteer opportunities, but they have limited flexibility and time so they rarely engage; this app would be a great tool for busy people who can't make long term commitments, but who really want to help and connect with their community.”
— Anonymous, 34 years old
Community Collaboratory….Coming Soon!
Community Collaboratory is registered as an LLC in 2020 in Washington State. We are applying for a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to hire computer scientists and build the full smartphone app and website with matching algorithm (this is a prototype of the website). Stay tuned!
To hear about next steps, fill out the ‘Hear Updates & Next Steps!’ form below!