2025 Year-End Update
2025 started off in a way that no one could have imagined with devastating fires in LA. If you haven’t read our 2025 Fire Transparency Report, you can do so here. We published 4 Dispatches, hosted 3 Hygiene Hello! kit builds, read 5 books, and distributed over 100 tons of fresh produce to community members! Read on for a full breakdown of our 2025 in review.
FISCAL UPDATE
In 2025, MALAN received $1,543,175.73 in donations. Our fiscal sponsorship fees totaled $107,636.16 (or 7% of all donations). Our total expenditures in 2025 (excluding the fiscal sponsorship fee) were $1,291,104.04.
Our group giving efforts allowed us to support more than 69 different groups with more than $1.135M. We gave over $118k in individual outreach. In total, we redistributed over $1.253M in group and individual giving.
More than $464,000 was used for fire related transactions, you can read more about that in our 2025 Fire Transparency Report.
Our internal MALAN expenses were $37,321.43, these were used for our ongoing projects Produce in the Park, The Dispatch, Open Art Supply, and Hygiene Hello, as well as for PPE and cleanup materials during the 2025 fires.
PROJECTS
In 2025, The Dispatch moved to a seasonal publishing model, instead of monthly, and published 4 Dispatch newsletters, highlighting the work of over 15 different mutual aid groups across Los Angeles and Southern California. Our Summer issue focused on DIY (or as we like to think of it, do-it-together) defense.
Groups featured in 2025
The Directory was a searchable, filterable directory of mutual aid groups in our network. Each listing detailed what the group provided (food, items, services) and ways people could contribute (item donations, volunteering time) and get in touch. Listings ranged from food and water distributions, to community garden efforts, to street medic and harm reduction work.
Our Group Directory is currently undergoing a transformation to allow us to continue to share volunteer and organizing, opportunities while also protecting sensitive information about groups and individuals. While MALAN is grateful for and proud of the reach that our organization has, we also recognize that such an audience can put smaller groups in uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous situations. We hope to be able to introduce a new format for this work in 2026 that will allow us a little more control over the volume of attention that our Directory gets to both uplift this work and protect those doing it.
Our Hygiene Hello! team hosted three kit builds this year (in January, July, and November), making over 1000 hygiene kits and a multitude of period kits. These kits were distributed across the county by over 15 mutual aid groups. We’d also like to those who made these events possible through their generous donations: Liquid IV, Ethique, Dr. Bronner’s, Big Box of Razors, LA Condom, and DML Marketing Group. Finally, we owe endless gratitude to the volunteers that help make these events continue to happen, and to Scribble and Esquina Bicycle Shop for welcoming us into their spaces to host these builds.
To get involved with future Hygiene Hello! efforts, check out the list of items we try to include in every kit and be sure to reach out if you have any of these items (unopened, unexpired) you’d like to donate, if you’d like to to jump in and help source items from companies, if you want to help organize, or to hear about future builds!
In March and April, we focused on creativity, connection, and direct support:
On March 16, we hosted a community art workshop with three amazing artists sharing weaving, collage, and watercolor. Folks came together, made art, donated supplies, and helped us raise funds to keep the work going.
In early April, we were able to send $100 Blick gift cards to 10 people impacted by the fires, giving them a chance to replenish art supplies and stay creative through hard times.
We also helped build and distribute 100+ art kits for unhoused neighbors across LA. Kits included sketchbooks, pencils, pens, markers, crayons, and colored pencils – the items most requested from the community.
If you’re interested in helping MALAN re-establish our Open Art Supply efforts in the future, please get in touch!
Our reading group met almost every Sunday and we read 5 books and watched 2 movies together:
- Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next) by Dean Spade
- Starship Troopers (1997) Directed by Paul Verhoeven
- Let’s Become Fungal! Mycelium Teachings and the Arts by Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodríguez, Rommy González (Illustrator)
- Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis by Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis
- They Live (1988) Directed by John Carpenter
- Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba
- The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
In 2025, PitP distributed 192,257 lbs of produce (over 96 tons of fresh produce!) over the course of 50 weeks. On average, 150 community members joined us at the park to pick up their weekly produce, and we were able to send produce and water to 6 – 10 of the City’s Community Fridges.
Our access to Everytable meals unfortunately ended, but we are excited to find new opportunities to continue to supplement the produce that we hand out each week.
Many thanks to all who have supported our work (either monetarily or through sharing it with others). We’re lucky to be alongside all of you in this fight, and look forward to continued work for many years to come.
Love,
The MALAN Team
Mutual Aid LA Network 