This is a message for both everyone who created a mutual aid campaign and are still waiting, and everyone who’s helping.
At the beginning things went much faster when it was just one person at a time on the Mutual Aid page, we used to be able to help 2-4 people every 1-2 days. But ever since it was increased to 3 people at a time on the page it now takes much longer, the 3 people who are currently on the Mutual Aid page without their goal being met have been there for almost 2 weeks now. I believe we don’t have the ratio for 3 people at a time yet, so the money is spread too slowly and the morale to donate goes down when donors see that many people at once and the amount for the goal not rising. So after the current people waiting for their goal on the mutual aid page reach their goal, I’ll be decreasing the amount of people to 1 person at a time, and we focus on that person specifically until they reach their goal, and we go to the next person.
The app is increasingly getting more known, I’ll continue fighting to get it to become as popular as possible so mutual aid becomes faster. There will reach a day where 10-20 people a day will be able to receive help/reach their goals. For now we’re not popular but we’ll get there.
I’ll also do my best to code better ways to make giving easier. PayPal is currently the only method that both allows Mutual Aid and also has a method of counting the donations; they send something called IPN (Instant payment notification) info to our network which our API (something that communicates with other networks) is setup to pick up and allows us to use that info to update/increase that green bar/number you see on the campaigns, otherwise there’s no way to see what/the amount the receiver received and who donated it, and this whole goal system won’t work. Cashapp doesn’t have this. And all other payment methods that can do it, like Stripe etc don’t allow Mutual Aid, they allow Fundraisers for a specific significant causes like “help hungry children” “help fund research for cancer cures” etc, but they don’t allow what we’re currently doing like randomly helping a random person pay their car note or their water bill, or their rent, things like that. Again PayPal and Cashapp are the only ones that allow Mutual Aid, and Cashapp doesn’t have IPN unless you use a Business Cash App account, which most don’t have and it complicates things. PayPal allows donations to any account, personal or business, and allow you to not have to sign in/register, letting use your debit card quickly without an account. There is another way to do it which makes donating extremely smooth, allowing things like Apple Pay/and other instant payment me to odd, but the money would have to come to me and I distribute it, but I 150% want to avoid that, I want the money to always directly go to you without it ever seeing my hands (I have my reasons, and some of those reasons are obvious, but the simplest reason is: I want your money to be handed to you directly because there’s more trust that way and I can never be accused of anything) so we’ll continue with this method and improve on it, I’ll find new methods and code new ways to make things smoother.
This was just a message to let you know that there’s not a single person I’m ignoring or don’t plan to get to. I’m working hard all day at all moments to make a lot of impossible things happen and getting to dozens of people at once, I know it’s hard to be patient in a lot of your circumstances and I appreciate your patience.
I also thank everyone who’s been helping, it truly means a lot and so many people in the community have been helped out of situations they couldn’t find their way out of, I appreciate you all so much, and most of all the people you help appreciate you.
Going to go continue working hard to make things happen. Sorry for taking your time with this very long message, have an amazing day week! (If there are typos please forgive me)
