The money exists. It cannot find the people doing the work.
In a lot of places, neighbors cover each other's costs directly. A block, a church, a school parents' group, putting money together for someone's rent, a power bill, or groceries. People who do this call it mutual aid.
Separately, larger funds raise money centrally to back exactly that kind of work. Today the two sides find each other by word of mouth, or they do not find each other at all.
Relay is the connection that is missing between them. It never decides who deserves help, and the money never passes through it.
Not a fundraising problem. A finding-each-other problem.
The money is not the scarce part. Three groups of people who need each other cannot safely meet, and each blocked path fails for a different reason.
A fund holds money it cannot place
An organization that raises money centrally - a solidarity fund, a bail fund, a foundation - has no safe way to tell which local groups are real. So it funds the ones somebody happened to introduce.
A group knows exactly who needs what
The people on the block know whose power is about to be cut. Reaching the fund that would cover it means already knowing somebody who knows somebody.
A person will not leave a trail
Someone in trouble will not fill in a form that keeps their name. Looking for help should not be the thing that puts them at risk.
Every ordinary solution makes people easier to find.
A list that logs searches. An intake form that keeps a phone number. A tracking script that records who visited. Each of those is standard practice, and each one manufactures a record that can be leaked, scraped, or lawfully demanded later.
Assume it will be taken
The starting assumption is that the database will one day be read by someone hostile. Not that it might be. That it will.
Do not collect it in the first place
Information that was never collected cannot be handed over. Relay holds no records about individuals to protect, because it never takes any.
Vouch instead of verify
A fund approves a group, another group vouches for it, or an established organization refers it. No ID, no membership lists, no documents, at any point.
A thin layer between funds and groups. Nothing more.
Built, deployed, and open to inspection.
Anyone can read every line of this, run their own copy of it, or check any claim on this page against the code that makes it. The licence means nobody can ever make it private, including whoever ends up owning it.
Nobody has used this yet.
The software is built and running, and no group has joined. The live database holds zero records. A group cannot appear in the public list until a fund hub approves it, so the first fund to take part is what makes both the list and the anonymous requests work at all. Saying so plainly is deliberate: a project asking to be trusted with other people's safety does not get to overstate itself.
Paused, then restarted
Work stopped in February 2026 after the last planned stage shipped, and started again in August 2026 to repair the deployment and clear the known problems.
One person built it
Everything described on these pages was written by one contributor. The engineering is the part that is finished. Nothing else is.
No money is being asked for
Mythic Works LLC is building Relay and intends to hand it to a nonprofit, which is not formed yet. There is no donation button and no fundraising.