Marking 5 Years of Mutual Aid: The Origins and Impact of One of Dr. Bronner’s Product Donation Programs

In March 2020, a week before the COVID-19 national emergency was declared, Dr. Bronner’s began receiving urgent requests for hand sanitizer and hygiene products from nonprofits and community groups. In response, leadership quickly developed a strategy, and our public relations and shipping teams launched a COVID-19 Product Donation Program.

Throughout 2020, Dr. Bronner’s donated essential hygiene products to support high-risk groups, including seniors, unhoused individuals, frontline workers, shelters, and low-income communities. We also supported food banks, homebound grocery programs, street medics at George Floyd protests, refugees, Indigenous communities, disaster relief efforts, election poll workers, and San Diego-area first responders. Many of these grassroots efforts launched during the pandemic, often volunteer-run and led by the communities most affected.

As time went on, more and more of the requests we received came from organizations working under the banner of mutual aid. Beginning in 2020 thousands of mutual aid groups rapidly formed across the U.S., driven by grassroots efforts to provide food, hygiene supplies, and essential support to vulnerable communities left behind by more formal systems and institutions. Increasingly Dr. Bronner’s focused our efforts to fulfill requests from decentralized mutual aid groups, many that launched across the country in response to the pandemic, climate disasters, and other crises. Along the way our COVID-19 product donation program became Dr. Bronner’s Mutual Aid Product Donation Program.

At the heart of mutual aid work is the rallying cry “Solidarity Not Charity!” Dean Spade explains, “Mutual aid projects, in many ways, are defined in opposition to the charity model and its current iteration in the nonprofit sector. Mutual aid projects mobilize lots of people rather than a few experts; resist the use of eligibility criteria that cut out more stigmatized people; are an integrated part of our lives rather than a pet cause; and cultivate a shared analysis of the root causes of the problem and connect people to social movements that can address these causes.”

This year marks five years of Dr. Bronner’s Mutual Aid Product Donation Program. Since March 2020, Dr. Bronner’s has donated over 212,000 units of 4oz liquid soap and nearly 250,000 units of hand sanitizer to 347 groups supporting at-risk communities across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. We continue to be inspired by the collaboration, solidarity, and creativity of the mutual aid groups and other grassroots and nonprofit efforts we support. Through these projects, people of diverse genders, ages, races, cultures, and socio-economic backgrounds have come together to demonstrate the transformative power of community. As a company guided by the belief that “We are All-One or None,” the spirit of mutual aid resonates deeply. We support these groups because their work aligns with Dr. Bronner’s mission to build community and create meaningful, positive change.

We are honored to have collaborated with and supported the work of so many inspiring groups over the past five years. While, there are truly too many to name all of them in one article, I want to highlight a few of most crucial partnerships that have guided this program. Indigenous-led mutual aid groups, especially the Indigenous Mutual Aid Network, set a powerful example for solidarity-based, community-rooted organizing through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are deeply grateful to have worked with the late Klee Benally of Indigenous Action, in assisting Hopi and Diné community members in Kinłani/Flagstaff, AZ, and remote areas of the Navajo Nation with access to essential hygiene supplies for distribution in the region.

The Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) have been vital allies in connecting us with grassroots organizations led by and for people experiencing homelessness. We continue to collaborate closely with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, which assists communities across the U.S. facing climate-related and human-influenced disasters. On the US-Mexico border we have contributed to the important work spearheaded by Solidarity Engineering to provide hygiene infrastructure in migrant camps.

We’ve also supported groups like EKY Mutual Aid, which has been doing incredible work in eastern Kentucky, where residents have been grappling with unemployment, disinvestment, a shrinking tax base, and crumbling infrastructure amidst a series of devastating climate disasters.

Sadly, groups like EKY Mutual Aid, which also emerged in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, have seen an increase in need over time. EKY Mutual Aid provides direct financial aid, pays bills, offers expertise and labor, and distributes food and supplies. With current threats to programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and FEMA, the work of mutual aid organizations is more essential than ever.

We are proud to continue this work. Dr. Bronner’s Mutual Aid Product Donation Program is made possible by many dedicated individuals working to ensure its success, and most importantly those on the ground around the country who get our essential hygiene products into the hands of those who need them. Our work with individuals, organizations, and networks of community activists across the country has demonstrated that in the face of a pandemic and myriad other crises, mutual aid can illuminate a path forward through collective care, compassion, and direct action.

Further reading:

Mutual aid toolkits:

In 2024, Dr. Bronner’s Mutual Aid Program supported the following organizations and efforts:

Program Totals for 2024:

TOTAL UNITS OF 4OZ. SOAP DONATED: 13,571
TOTAL HAND SANITIZER UNITS DONATED: 12,887
TOTAL ORGANIZATIONS SUPPORTED: 47

- Locations include: Alabama, California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Ontario (Canada), Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia.

Total retail value of product donated: $133,177.32

Organizations & Projects Supported in 2024:

Alder Health Services – Harrisburg, PA
Ashland Community Food Bank – Ashland, OR
Baby 2 Baby – Van Nuys, CA
Bags of Promise – Kingston, Ontario
Bangor Area Homeless Shelter – Bangor, ME
Bill Wilson Center – San Jose, CA
Brooklyn Public Library’s Flatbush Branch – Brooklyn, NY
Capital Region Vegan Network – Cobleskill, NY
Codepink Women for Peace – West Palm Beach, FL
Community Center of St. Bernard – Arabi, LA
Community Resources for Independent Living – Hayward, CA
Dignity Project – Commerce City, CO
EKY Mutual Aid – Olive Hill, KY
Food Not Bombs Pensacola – Pensacola, FL
Gnardawgs – New Orleans, LA
Haymarket Pole Collective – Portland, OR
HIPS (Honoring Individual Power & Strength) – Washington, DC
Homebridge – San Francisco, CA
Homeless Action Center – Berkeley, CA
Jacksonville Food Not Bombs – Jacksonville, FL
Jersey City Mutual Aid Society – Jersey City, NJ
Lowernine Org – New Orleans, LA
Merrimack Valley Assistance Program – Manchester, NH
Mobile River Collective – Prichard, AL

Mutual Aid Disaster Relief – Tampa, FL
Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Cleveland – Cleveland, OH
Mutual Aid L.A. Network – Los Angeles, CA
Nederland Food Pantry – Black Hawk, CO
NorCal Resist – Chico, CA
North County Mutual Aid Collective – San Marcos, CA
Octavia’s Options – Rogue River, OR
Ohio State Street Medicine – Columbus, OH
OnPoint NYC Holistic Services – New York, NY
Operation Pathways – Arlington, VA
Palomar Health Foundation – Escondido, CA
People’s Project – Lafayette, TN
Project Street Vet – Brooklyn, NY
Rio Grande Valley Harm Reduction – Edinburg, TX
Serenity Solidarity – Averill Park, NY
Solidarity Engineering – Hidalgo, TX
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church Outreach (SPECO) – Huntington, WV
Steady Collective – Marshall, NC
Sweet Evening Breeze – Louisville, KY
Tranzmission – Asheville, NC
Vocal NY – Brooklyn, NY
Wayside – Los Angeles, CA
West Oakland Mural Project – Oakland, CA
West Valley Health Equity – Phoenix, AZ