Are you a freelancer, especially in tech, and you want to help others in need? There's a very easy way to do that sustainably, with very little effort on your part.

Increase your standard rate by $10 (or your equivalent currency) per hour. That's it.

Some clients are going to refuse, you can keep them at the old rate if you want. For all the clients that have accepted the rate (most existing clients will, almost all new clients will), the 'extra' $10/hour is your mutual aid budget.

Every month, you divvy out the budget across the various mutual aid requests you can find at the MutualAid and MutualAidRequest hashtags.

Depending on your exact workload, you can divert hundreds if not thousands of dollars a month towards people in need, and you won't even need to do any extra work for it.

(This only works if you are a genuine freelancer, ie. you maintain your own client relations and it's B2B; it doesn't work for employment-without-benefits scenarios. Outside of western countries you may need to reduce the amount of money, but then this is primarily meant for those in western countries.)

The *reason* this works is because a lot of freelancers under-negotiate their payment terms, and there's plenty of room for rate increases. I forgot who said this, but "the correct price is the one that makes them complain but still pay".