Returning Home to ISF: What It Means to Fund Mutual Aid Like Infrastructure
I’ve been living inside a theme for a while now: Returning home.
Not home as a soft place to land, but home as a discipline. A practice of coming back to what we know is true, what we’ve built before, what we’ve learned the hard way, and what the current moment is asking us to strengthen.
That’s why bringing back the Interdependence & Solidarity Fund (ISF) at Cypress Fund feels like a homecoming and a sharpening. We’re not returning to repeat the past. We’re returning to rework it for what’s here now.
We started this return in November in response to SNAP instability
In November of last year, we kicked off a process to move resources to groups across the Carolinas responding to disruptions and uncertainty around SNAP. In real time, partners were doing what partners always do: holding communities steady while systems wobble. That moment was a reminder, not a surprise, that the most “stable” parts of people’s lives are often the most precarious. And when the ground shifts, it isn’t institutions that catch people first. It’s neighbors. It’s organizers. It’s aunties. It’s mutual aid crews. It’s artists. It’s the informal networks that become formal lifelines. So ISF is our way of saying: we are still here. We are still paying attention. And we are still committed to moving resources in a way that matches the speed and clarity our people deserve.
ISF is part of Cypress’ origin story
ISF continues the legacy that kicked off Cypress in the first place: Community-driven, responsive philanthropy meant to resource people who are most vulnerable to harm and most essential to community survival.
For me, this is also a shared leadership practice.
Shared leadership isn’t just about who sits in a meeting or who gets to speak first. It’s about who gets to shape the decisions that impact daily life and whether money can move in alignment with that truth. ISF is one of the ways we practice that alignment: trusting community expertise, designing for dignity, and building processes that don’t punish people for needing help.
A quick ecosystem read: Why this matters right now
Here’s the high-level truth I keep coming back to:
In the Carolinas (and across the South), we have an ecosystem of movement work that is both deeply resilient and structurally under-resourced.
— There are strong pockets of organizing, care networks, cultural strategy, and community defense, often powered by small teams doing big work.
— Rural communities and smaller towns are carrying tremendous load with fewer philanthropic relationships, less flexible funding, and more distance from traditional “power centers.”
— The harm is layered: affordability crises, safety concerns, policy volatility, and the everyday wear-and-tear of trying to survive systems that were never built for us.
— Many groups are forced into a false choice between “service” and “power”, when the truth is that people need both. Survival and strategy. Immediate care and long-term change.
Mutual aid shows us something organizing has always known: when material conditions tighten, people don’t stop needing power; they need power and support to make it through the week.
Mutual aid is not new here — it’s Carolina infrastructure
When people talk about mutual aid like it’s a recent trend, I want to gently push back. Mutual aid has always been part of how people live and resist here. Our region carries a long memory of collective survival, from maroon communities who built refuge and resistance in places like the Great Dismal Swamp, to the everyday networks of care Black communities have built through generations when the state and the market offered abandonment instead of support.
That lineage matters because it helps us name the truth: mutual aid is not charity. It’s infrastructure.
It’s how communities build safety when safety isn’t guaranteed. How they build food systems when food is unstable. How they build care when care is unaffordable. How they build belonging when belonging is weaponized.
Lessons we’re carrying forward as we rebuild ISF
Returning home also means telling the truth about what we learned. Since 2020, we have mobilized over $500,000 to support mutual aid, artist collectives and frontline organizing through various iterations of ISF.
Through ISF, we’ve learned that:
— Speed without structure can burn people out. We learned that moving fast matters, but speed without a clear container can quietly offload the burden onto partners. When the process isn’t clean, timelines are unclear, expectations constantly, and there are too many touchpoints, organizations end up spending precious time navigating us instead of serving their people. A fund that’s meant to offer relief shouldn’t create more friction. So, “fast” has to be paired with a structure that’s steady, transparent, and humane.
— Tiny grants can cost more in time than they provide in relief. We also learned that small-dollar awards can unintentionally disrespect people’s labor. If someone has to write an application, track receipts, submit reports, and hop on calls for a grant that doesn’t meaningfully shift their capacity or their community’s conditions, the net impact can actually be negative. Partners deserve grants that are worth the effort, grants sized to the reality of the work and the scale of the need.
— A wide-open process without clear lanes can blur purpose. When everything is eligible, it becomes harder for applicants to know what we’re really trying to do, and harder for us to make decisions that feel principled instead of reactive. “Open” can sound inclusive, but it can also create confusion, misalignment, and disappointment. Clear lanes are not about limiting imagination. They’re about being honest: naming what we’re prioritizing, why it matters right now, and what kind of work this particular pot of money is actually designed to support.
If we’re serious about equity, we have to design for reach, not just for the folks already closest to philanthropy.
Equity isn’t just who gets funded; it’s who can access the process in the first place. If our application assumes a stable internet connection, grant writing time, funder language, or insider relationships, we’re automatically narrowing the pool to the same familiar organizations. Designing for reach means doing the extra work: rural outreach, trusted messengers, clear language, office hours, multiple ways to ask questions, and timelines that don’t punish people who are already stretched thin. If we want to resource the ecosystem, we have to build a doorway wide enough for the ecosystem to walk through.So this return is not a reboot. It’s a redesign.
We’re rebuilding ISF with clearer lanes, stronger internal rhythm, and a more transparent public process, so partners can tell quickly whether it fits, and so we can move resources with dignity and care.
Why mutual aid + arts belong in a material conditions strategy
I want to say this plainly: funding mutual aid and arts is one of the most direct ways philanthropy can participate in shifting material conditions. Because mutual aid stabilizes people’s lives. And art does something just as necessary: it helps communities interpret what’s happening, sustain spirit, build memory, and widen imagination, which are not “extra.” They are part of how people keep going long enough to fight for change.
When we fund this work alongside organizing and movement infrastructure, we’re not just funding projects. We’re funding the conditions that make life more livable.
Material conditions require ingredients
If we’re serious about shifting everyday life, we have to name what that actually requires.
Four ingredients I keep returning to:
Safety — Physical safety, political safety, safety from displacement and surveillance.
Affordability — Food, housing, childcare, transportation, healthcare.
Community — The networks that make survival collective, not isolated.
Access to decision-making — Who gets to decide what happens with resources, priorities, and policy.
ISF is one way we can resource those ingredients; not perfectly, not alone, but meaningfully. And importantly, it helps us build the pathway to move money as it comes in, rather than getting stuck in cycles where urgency outpaces our systems.
Coming back to the work
Bringing ISF back feels like returning home to a core Cypress truth: our job is not simply to give money away. Our job is to move resources in a way that strengthens ecosystems and honors the wisdom, care, and strategy communities are already practicing every day.
If you’re in South Carolina (or connected to the organizing, mutual aid, and cultural ecosystems here), I’d love to hear from you:
What do you want philanthropy to understand about mutual aid right now?
Where do you see the greatest needs and the greatest possibilities?
We’re returning to this work.
Not to repeat it but to remake it for the moment we’re in.
