Who We Are:
We are an inter-generational and Black-led mutual aid initiative. None of our organizers are paid for their work. The people who receive funds decide through consensus how funds are allocated. 

Who We Serve + How:
Our recipients are Queer, Transgender, Indigenous People Of Color (QTIPOC) living in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, or rural North Carolina. All recipients are under/unemployed due to COVID-19, and were fighting to survive systemic racism, queerphobia, and transmisogynoir before the pandemic even hit. Most have never received a stimulus check, and face significant barriers to accessing safety-net services. So every month, we ask the community for survival funds on social media + send those funds to our recipients. Mostly through Paypal, Venmo and Cashapp. We figure out other ways when folks don't have bank accounts. Funds are given with zero strings attached. 

What We've Done So Far:
We've re-distributed over $87,000 to our recipients since the pandemic hit. About $65,000 of that came from our beloved community! The rest came in the form of rapid-response grants + fundraisers from LGBTQ+ focused social justice non-profits like the Third Wave Fund, the Equality NC Foundation, Race Forward, The Campaign For Southern Equality, and Southern Vision Alliance. We are grateful to these orgs for funding + supporting autonomous groups like ours!
​
Updates 2/5/21:
Our recipients have voted to ​CLOSE the Fund to new folks seeking support until further notice. To get on the recipient waitlist: chcbrroqtipocfund@gmail.com <3

We are working hard to provide long-term, reliable support to our existing 17 recipients! Please consider helping make this work more sustainable by signing on to our Solidarity Pledge.
​
Our goal is to continue to provide our recipients with at least $200 in survival funds a month, for the foreseeable future. Our Black transgender recipients are living under unconscionable conditions. These funds help our people avoid being forced into exploitative work + relationships, as well as avoid starvation, exposure, and incarceration. We are helping our recipients stay SAFE during this terrible time, and hope to continue doing so after this COVID-19 pandemic is over. 

Our organizers:
​Sharon P. Holland is an African-descended queer + gender non-conforming Elder + writer who is also a professor at UNC. She organized with ACT-UP in the 80’s during the AIDS crisis, and has supported anti-racist and anti-HB2 work here in Chapel Hill. Her approach to community building is inter-sectional and encompasses deep connection to this place and its people, as her grandfather was active in Durham Civil Rights in the early 50's and her mother, a UNC alum (‘61) was a plaintiff in the Blue school desegregation case. She came back to the Triangle to teach and to continue her family’s social justice legacy. 

​Bakari Roscoe is a young Black queer activist who organizes around food/housing justice and harm reduction, with a huge affinity toward diverting resources to community members fighting houseless-ness and substance use disorder. He co-founded The LGBTQ Pop-up Center of Carrboro + Carrboro’s Queer Family Dinner after the 2016 election. He does mutual aid work almost exclusively and has been handing out harm reduction supplies like Narcan /clean needles and getting food to those who need it in Chapel Hill since he was a teen.​

Our silent organizer is white, working-class, and trans. They are an independent grassroots activist who has worked collaboratively with orgs like SONG NC, Equality NC, BYP100, The LGBTQ Center Of Durham, TGI Justice Project (TGIJP), El Centro Hispano, and more.​

#We Are What Community Looks Like