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StayNeighbor

A volunteer-powered mutual aid network built in the early days of COVID-19. Stay home, stay safe, and let StayNeighbor keep the whole neighborhood running.

StayNeighbor Platform

Project Type

Open-Source Community Project

Context

COVID-19 Crisis Response

Sam's Role

System Design, Originator

Team

Volunteer professionals across the US

The Problem

In the early weeks of COVID-19, people were stuck at home and running out of things they needed. Grocery shelves were inconsistent. High-risk individuals couldn't leave safely. Neighbors wanted to help but had no way to find the people who needed it.

The infrastructure for mutual aid existed in pieces: food banks, community organizations, volunteers willing to drive. What didn't exist was a way to connect all of it. Requests went into Facebook posts and phone trees with no coordination layer on top.

Sam, based in Wilmington, NC, joined a group of volunteer professionals from across the country to build the connective tissue. The goal was simple: give communities a place to submit needs, give organizations a way to see and fulfill them, and get supplies moving.

Tech

  • Browser-based web app
  • Crisis Cleanup integration
  • Dispatcher management system
  • Open source

Key Design Decisions

  • No app download required
  • Request on behalf of others
  • Dispatcher layer between need and fulfillment
  • Free to use for communities

What We Built

StayNeighbor is a community-facing web portal where anyone can submit a supply or service request for themselves or on behalf of someone else. Those requests get routed through a dispatcher layer to local organizations, volunteers, and delivery drivers who can fulfill them.

We wanted it to be as frictionless as possible. No app download required, no account needed to ask for help. The people who needed it most were the least likely to fight through a signup flow.

Request Portal

  • Submit needs for yourself or on behalf of a neighbor, family member, or anyone in your community.
  • Requests cover supplies, food, medications, and services.

Crisis Cleanup Integration

  • Requests feed into the Crisis Cleanup mapping system, the same infrastructure used for disaster relief coordination.
  • Local organizations can see open requests in their area and assign volunteers to fulfill them.
  • Gives communities a birds-eye view of where the need is and where the help is going.

Dispatcher and Delivery Network

  • Volunteer dispatchers manage the flow between request and fulfillment.
  • Delivery drivers handle last-mile delivery so recipients never have to leave home.
  • Designed to plug into existing community organizations rather than replace them.

The Result

A fully functioning web app, built and shipped by a volunteer team of developers, designers, project managers, and community liaisons across the country, in the middle of a pandemic.

When neighbors help neighbors, everyone wins. StayNeighbor was built on that premise and delivered: a working coordination layer for communities in the middle of a crisis, shipped by an entirely volunteer team.

The platform was free and open source. It was later acquired by Core, Sean Penn's nonprofit organization, who continued the work and eventually rebranded the app as Relief Compass. Sam handled system design from the start, helping stand up the architecture that made coordinating a distributed volunteer workforce possible.

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