What Mutual Aid is and how to turn it on

Mutual Aid is a cross-org coordination layer for sharing surplus and asking for help. Where most of Turtini's modules manage a single organization's data, Mutual Aid is explicitly multi-org: a food bank with extra produce posts an offer, a community center with a packed dinner schedule posts a request, and Wally suggests matches based on proximity, capacity, and the category of need.

When to turn it on:

You'd activate Mutual Aid if your org wants to participate in any of these flows:

- **Sharing surplus** — leftover food after an event, surplus office supplies, vehicles available between uses, volunteer-hour availability you'd offer to a partner.
- **Asking for help** — a meal Tuesday night when the family caregiver is overwhelmed, transportation to a medical appointment, a backpack for a kid going to summer camp.
- **Emergency coordination** — when NWS issues a declared emergency in your area, Mutual Aid auto-broadcasts and chargeback fees are waived for the duration of the declaration. Useful for churches and community centers that become de-facto shelters during severe weather.

Categories supported:

Meals, transportation, supplies, shelter beds, labor (volunteer hours), childcare, healthcare, mental-health support, mobility (medical equipment lending), and a couple more — all in the offer / request type dropdown.

How to enable it:

1. Settings → Modules.
2. Find Mutual Aid in the list.
3. Toggle it on. The /mutual-aid surface appears in your nav within a couple of seconds.

Privacy and visibility:

- Public listings (offers + requests) are visible to other orgs in the Mutual Aid network. Your org name and location-region show; specific recipient details do not.
- A successful match generates a confidential pairing record visible only to the two orgs involved, with optional acknowledgment / completion tracking.
- Tiered privacy on requests: a sensitive request can be marked "approved partners only" so it only surfaces to orgs you've explicitly added as Mutual Aid partners.

Counterparty trust at a glance:

Every post card shows the posting org's name with a small green Verified chip next to it when that org has active Verified-by-Turtini credentials (KYB, domain, 501(c)(3), etc.). Click the chip to see which credentials are active and re-verify them on the public /trust pages. The chip is silent for orgs with no credentials on file — silence means "no public credential on record," not "we know something bad." See "The green Verified chip next to org names" for the full picture of what the chip does and doesn't mean.

Pricing:

- Normal use is billed through the standard platform chargeback model (small percentage of any financial transactions inside Mutual Aid, like reimbursements or fulfillments).
- During NWS-declared emergencies in your region, ALL chargeback fees on Mutual Aid activity are waived automatically. The system reads the NWS feed, scopes the waiver geographically, and ends it when the emergency declaration is lifted.

Why we made it opt-in:

Until 2026-05-29 Mutual Aid appeared in the nav for every signed-in org regardless of intent. We changed that — it's now opt-in via the Modules toggle so orgs that don't participate aren't bothered by Mutual Aid notifications, badges, or nav clutter. Existing participating orgs need to flip the toggle on once to keep seeing the module.