Teach In: Money-Handling and Taxes for Mutual Aid Groups
Click here to access Mike’s powerpoint slides from this event.
This online teach-in is for mutual aid groups facing nuts and bolts issues that come with the work we’ve all been doing. How has your group been funnelling money to people in need, and what are the tax consequences? How should we store money we raise? Do we need to consider incorporating, having a fiscal sponsor, or becoming a non-profit? What are the costs and benefits of each potential approach? What should we do now if we didn’t think about this in 2020 and now one of our members got a big tax bill because they took in all the money through their personal Venmo or Paypal account? What should mutual aid groups know about banking? This webinar will be taught by Mike Haber, author of Legal Issues in Mutual Aid Operations: A Preliminary Guide. Mike is a professor at Hofstra Law School. Bring him your questions or email them now to bcrw@barnard.edu!
Some of the information on handling money will be relevant to anyone doing mutual aid, but most of the tax questions are going to specifically address US tax law questions.
About the Presenters
Mike Haber is a Clinical Professor of Law and directs the Community and Economic Development (CED) Clinic at Hofstra Law School in New York. The CED Clinic provides legal assistance to community-based organizations, social movement groups, and cooperatives, collectives, and social enterprises. Mike’s scholarship focuses on the intersections between community institution-building, social movements, and non-profit law. His writings include: Legal Issues in Mutual Aid Operations (2020); The New Activist Non-Profits: Four Models Breaking from the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (2019); and CED After #OWS: From Community Economic Development to Anti-Authoritarian Community Counter-Institutions (2016).
Dean Spade has been working in movements to build queer and trans liberation based in racial and economic justice for the past two decades. He’s the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, the director of the documentary Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!, and the creator of the mutual aid toolkit at BigDoorBrigade.com. His latest book is Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next).
Accessibility
Live transcription and ASL interpretation will be provided.
Please email any additional access needs to ekausch@barnard.edu.
This event is free and open to all. Please register here.
General Mutual Aid Resources
- Handout (PDF): Guide to Handling Money in Mutual Aid Groups
- Video: We Keep Each Other Safe: Mutual Aid for Survival and Solidarity
Conversation with Ejeris Dixon, Mariame Kaba, and Dean Spade (Nov 2020) - Legal Issues in Mutual Aid Operations: A Preliminary Guide
- Mutual Aid Hub
- Big Door Brigade
- Mutual Aid Disaster Relief
- It’s Going Down
- Mutual Aid on Lockdown (Podcast)
Books
- Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
- Scott Crow, Black Flags and Windmills
- Victoria Law & China Martens, Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind
- Marina Sitrin & Colectiva Sembrar, Pandemic Solidarity
Resources on Limits of/Problems with Non-Profits and Non-Profitization
- The Revolution Will Not Be Funded
- Queer Dreams and Non-Profit Blues Video Series: How Non-Profitization Impacted Queer/Trans Politics
- Queer Dreams and Non-Profit Blues Video Series: Lessons from the Anti-Violence Movement
- Special Issue of the Scholar and the Feminist Online: Navigating Neoliberalism in the Academy and Non-Profits