You’re practicing social distancing. And doing your best to come to terms with the speed of the Covid-19 pandemic. Are you wondering what to do to help others during the Covid-19 pandemic and its resulting economic and humanitarian impact?
First, make sure you and your loved ones are cared for and following appropriate national and local public health guidance. For starters that means stay home as much as possible and wash your hands. I would also recommend doubling-down on your practices to stay healthy physically and mentally in other ways.
Secondly, if your job is directly related to COVID response, obviously do that! And thank you.
If you have more time and/or resources after those two, here are some of the suggestions that I found helpful. More to add? Let me know.
- Local
- Check on Neighbors – What can you do to help your neighbors? Consider focusing on those neighbors over 60 or with other health conditions that make it best for them to stay home. Can you help them get food or medication? To reduce the spread, you probably want to coordinate over email, text, WhatsApp, Google Sheet, or Nextdoor. Or if you want to use more technology via a mutual aid network. For example, here is one active in San Francisco. (Does anyone know of public health guidance on how to do this best?)
- Connect with Others – organize a virtual social or happy hour for your social circle to make sure people have a human connection.
- Support the Frontline – Can you offer food, thanks, or other support for healthcare workers, delivery, police, or others on the frontlines? For example, offer more tips or keep paying for services you may not be able to use right now. Or write thank you notes with your kids?
- Support Local Businesses – Many small businesses are struggling even with expected government support. Consider purchasing a gift card or donating food from local establishments to others. For example, you can use the Gannet/USAToday effort online for gift card purchase, or in the SF Bay Area something like SaveOurFavs or directly purchase a gift card.
- Leadership at Work
- Please Note: This list is adapted from Eric Ries’ email newsletter. If I can find an online version, I will link to it.
- Make a clear declaration that people come first, ahead of any other business priority.
- Keep paying employees and your contractors (even if you have less urgent work for them to do)
- Send a note out to vendors encouraging them to do extreme social distancing.
- Offer a remote work stipend. Make sure people have money right now to upgrade their home office situation.
- Offer remote therapy as a benefit and make sure your employees are aware of it and how to access it.
- Get a corporate account on Outschool or something similar and pay for employees’ kids’ virtual classes.
- Assign pandemic-specific jobs.
- Arrange social time to ward off isolation and loneliness. (for employees)
- Join coalitions working on pandemic relief and response. (as a company)
- Match donations to relief efforts or related nonprofits
- Prepare for extended remote work/work from home. For an in depth look at how to do that read this guide from David Hassell CEO of 15Five a remote-first company.
- Volunteer
- Help with Covid – this website has a list of dozens of projects that are looking for volunteers. Many are new projects with plenty of room for impact.
- Scientific Research – For those with skills to help scientific research, Crowd Fight Covid-19 is the place to find the best project for you.
- Makers – if you are a maker, then get involved in a PPE or ventilator project. I’m aware of a few affiliated with MakeHaven or MakerNexus. Your maker group probably has their own thing going.
- Give or Invest
- Give Directly – with experience distributing cash to the extreme poor, they have expanded into giving money for disaster relief. Recently, they have launched a fund for those impacted by Covid-19.
- SF Bay Area Tipping Point – more locally for me, the Tipping Point Community has a track record of grants to nonprofits working on poverty alleviation.
- Curious Learning – I’m on the board of directors so I’m a big fan. Curious Learning distributes smartphone apps that teach kids how to read. With so many children around the world out of school, free high-quality learning resources in native languages are even more critical.
- Covid 19 Response – for some investment opportunities, the Covid 19 Response task force has started serving as a clearing house.
- Political
- Resistance Labs – you can volunteer to send text messages in support of causes, candidates and also to share public health information. For example, they recently ran a campaign texting people in 11 Florida counties about local public health resources.
- Humanity Forward – you can volunteer or donate to support the universal basic income and related causes. In the short-term you can donate cash to be distributed to those in need.
- Start Something
- If you think there is an initiative that the world needs, by all means, start it!
- Other Lists