TurnOut powers intersectional movements for mutual aid and liberation
Why Do This Work?
TurnOut began as a project to support queer and trans people. Traditionally queer and trans people have been unable to rely on mainstream institutions or our biological families for support. To fill that gap, our communities built a parallel infrastructure of grassroots organizations to meet our needs. We learned to raise money, we learned to build structures of care, and we learned how to work together effectively to protect the people we love. We launched TurnOut in 2015 to offer a pathway for those who cared about queer and trans people to join in that work and support that infrastructure.
By 2024, the landscape had changed drastically. As wealth and power concentrate in fewer and fewer hands, more and more of us find ourselves on the outside, just as queer and trans people have. Facing urgent crises of all kinds, movements like ours must join together with others fighting the same fight - the fight for survival and liberation. The lessons we have learned as queer and trans people - and those learned by others operating outside the system - are the best blueprint we have for this moment. This blueprint is the map that charts the path to the new world we need, and this is the work that TurnOut drives forward today.
Mutual Aid
Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world. As more and more people have lost faith in the institutions in power (including politicians, media institutions, and business leaders), interest in mutual aid has skyrocketed.
Traditions of mutual aid have existed for time immemorial. In the United States, communities locked out of mainstream institutions of support have practiced mutual aid since before the American Revolution. Those with a long history of practicing mutual aid have learned many lessons, and TurnOut works to bring those lessons to anyone who is interested in building new systems of support for their communities. Through recruitment, training, information sharing, and infrastructure development, we work to strengthen mutual aid and direct action organizing to build the new world we need.
Grassroots Fundraising
Traditional charity models are failing. Wealthy donors and foundations decide which causes are worthy of funding and which strategies they will support, leaving those most invested in the status quo in charge of funding the resistance to it. Power stays in the hands of those who already have it. Inequality keeps rising, the climate keeps warming, and the institutions we once trusted for solutions seem completely incapable of making any meaningful impact.
Grassroots fundraising for mutual aid organizations presents the most powerful counterforce to the nonprofit industrialization complex. Mutual aid organizations place solidarity over charity, eschewing highly-funded charities to center agency and decision-making of marginalized communities, creating a social safety net that works to address the root causes of community harm. TurnOut trains and supports grassroots fundraising initiatives at every level, from fundraising trainings for individuals to large-scale fundraising projects executed on mutual aid principles.
Beyond Traditional Volunteering
Volunteer rates are plummeting nationwide. In queer communities, the last influx of volunteers we had was during the peak of the AIDS crisis when we learned how to build our own clinics and shake the institutions that had no motivation to help us. This was mutual aid. Now, much of that volunteering has become institutionalized and many volunteers do unpaid work with no structural impact while most of them are struggling themselves. This is true across many communities and many causes—it is no wonder people are not interested.
TurnOut works to reinvigorate community engagement by providing a pathway to real structural impact for anyone who wants it. By providing opportunities for real mutual aid, grassroots fundraising, and movement building, we aim to provide a simple and well-supported pathway to anyone to be an active part of creating the new world they want to live in.