This is a living, ever-evolving hub of resources to support folks who are unemployed and underemployed. I've been there, fam, and not so long ago. I've had to decide between health or housing, food or electricity. As communities, we must step up and help out one another.
Resources are organized alphabetically by topic and resources within each content section. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter to be notified anytime additional resources are added.
If you’d like to recommend resources to be added, don't hesitate to contact me with additional details.
Children and Families
- Local Public Libraries: Your local public library can be a great source for finding free and low-cost entertainment and resources for children and families.
Clothing and Hygiene
- Aid, Safety, Hygiene (ASH) Kits: I Support The Girls (ISTG) provides customizable Aid, Safety, and Hygiene kits (A.S.H.) that can be requested directly from ISTG and delivered by mail. These kits support marginalized individuals and ship to any U.S. address while keeping information confidential.
- Laundry Love: Laundry Love is a neighboring movement that partners with groups, schools and local laundromats to wash the clothes and bedding of low-income and/or no-income families and individuals for free.
Community Support
- Agile Unemployment: Sabina Sulat wrote Agile Unemployment, a guide to thriving while out of work. She also hosts the Agile Unemployment Podcast. In it, she covers everything you need to know not only to survive, but thrive through being out of work.
- Coworking Sessions: Each week, I offer free, virtual coworking sessions. Work is defined as existing. We show up with cameras on, mics muted, and we draw, read, code, relax, and work on anything we'd like.
- Gender-Affirming Support Groups: Jasmine of Black Remote She has curated a directory of various gender-affirming support groups. These can be healing spaces for our community members to grieve, empathize, and gather together as a collective.
- Out in Tech: The world’s largest non-profit community of LGBTQ+ tech leaders, OIT creates opportunities for career advancement, networking, and a free Slack community.
- Trans Lifeline: Trans Lifeline's directory of resources is huge and all-encompassing.
Educational Support
- Learn2Be: help kids from underserved communities unlock their potential by connecting them with exceptional tutors online, for free.
- Online Public Schools: Connections Academy’s K–12 accredited online public school program is tuition-free and aligned with your state’s educational standards. Students learn from home, with parent involvement, and connect to curriculum, teachers, classmates, and resources using the internet.
- PowerMyLearning: free digital learning platform for K-12 students, educators, and parents. It offers a wide selection of online learning activities, including games, videos, and simulations. These resources are organized based on Common Core Standards, subject, grade level, and more.
Financial Assistance
- Welfare: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), also known as welfare, helps families after experiencing hardships.
- Legal Referrals for Disability Benefits: Atticus provides free referral services that helps individuals in determining if they’re eligible for disability benefits, apply, or find legal representation if they need it.
Food Security
- FindHelp: Search FindHelp's database for local nutrition, food, and pantry resources.
- Food Banks in Your Area: Connect with your local food bank to learn about upcoming free food distributions and to apply for national food programs like SNAP and WIC.
- Food Stamps: SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits can help pay for food for low-income households.
- Food Stamp Assistance: mRelief provides help signing up for Food Stamps including help ensuring individuals and families qualify.
- School Meals: Children may be eligible for free or reduced-cost meals at their school or childcare center.
- Thrive Market Membership: Thrive Market offers free one-year memberships to teachers, students, nurses, first responders, and families in need.
- WIC: The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant women, breastfeeding and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, infants, and children up to age 5 at nutritional risk.
- WIC State Offices: listing of each state’s WIC contacts, as well as additional program offerings to address food insecurity.
Healthcare
- Advocating for Chronic Conditions, Entitlements and Social Services (A.C.C.E.S.S.): Accessia Health offers the ACCESS program to help find solutions to the social and economic problems that confront families facing chronic conditions. The services provided by A.C.C.E.S.S. are offered absolutely without charge.
- Affordable Virtual Health Care: ReviveHealth provides you the care you want, the medications you need, and supports your well-being with a simple, convenient, and affordable plan that is right for anyone.
- CancerCare: the leading national organization dedicated to providing free, professional support services including counseling, support groups, educational workshops, publications and financial assistance to anyone affected by cancer. All CancerCare services are provided by oncology social workers and world-leading cancer experts.
- COBRA Coverage: Learn how to continue your employer-provided health insurance after a job loss.
- Diabetes Education Programs: The American Diabetes Association offers a recognized diabetes education program to help patients thrive with diabetes. Certified educators are available to work with patients and find practical solutions tailored to their needs.
- Folx: Health care for the LGBTQIA+ community. They accept insurance and you can view Folx's price list for uninsured visits.
- Gender-Affirming Care: Plume offers access to support groups, up to 5 monthly visits, prescriptions, lab orders and more for $99 monthly without insurance.
- HRT Access Fund: Point of Pride offers an HRT (hormone replacement therapy) access fund/scholarship-like program.
- FindHelp: Search FindHelp's database for local healthcare resources.
- GoodRX: Search and compare prescription prices in your area.
- Marketplace Plans: Also referred to as Obamacare, see the plans for health insurance in your state. Once you provide your zip code, you can enter household details to see an estimate of your cost and savings.
- Patient Advocate Foundation’s Case Management: PAF’s program provides free case management service to individuals with life-threatening or debilitating disease who are experiencing healthcare or financial issues that are impacting their care.
- Point of Pride: provides financial aid and direct support to trans folks in need of health and wellness care.
- Queer and Trans Birthing People: Classes and resources for queer and trans folks in their childbearing years.
- QueerDoc: Expert trans and gender-affirming medical care online by trans or queer providers.
- QMed/QueerMed: Gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary individuals. They accept insurance and you can view the QMed pricing options if uninsured.
- Spectrum: Queer-driven, gender-affirming care. $100 on-time fee for an appointment, then $38 per month afterwards.
- True U Clinic: Personalized online hormone therapy for transgender and non-binary folx.
- Una Voz Para La Salud (Call for Health): Call for Health supports agricultural workers and their families in accessing health services, including COVID-19 testing and vaccination, as well as providing financial assistance for medical services and interpretation services for farmworkers and their families, health providers, and organizations serving farmworkers.
- Variety, the Children’s Charity: Variety’s Care Program delivers critical life-saving medical equipment and services, healthcare and well-being to individual children and children’s health organizations.
Housing
- Emergency Rental Assistance: Comprehensive listing of programs available to help with emergency rent and utility support by state and county.
- FindHelp: Search FindHelp's database for local housing resources.
- HUD: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has resources for rental assistance, local public housing, rent relief resources, and more.
- Just Shelter: Comprehensive directory of more than 600 community organizations working to reduce homelessness and prevent evictions.
- Salvation Army: Search the Salvation Army's database for a shelter near you.
Job Searching
- Never Search Alone: A free volunteer-driven community offering mutual support groups of peer job seekers. Be sure to look at their Checklist For Laid Off or Let Go.
- Pay Forward Coaching: Pay Forward is a non-profit that offers free 1:1 career coaching sessions and free education and career resources.
- Prepare for Interviews: LinkedIn shares free interview resources, including free learning courses, practice tools, and common interview questions.
- Resume-Now: Free resume builder and job tools.
Legal
- A Better Balance: free and confidential legal helpline can help you understand your workplace rights around caring for yourself and your family members.
- FindHelp: Search FindHelp's database for local legal resources.
- Free Legal Documents: LawHelp Interactive is a free website that helps you complete legal documents without a lawyer.
- Free Legal Help: American Bar Association’s directory of free legal services available.
- Legal Aid: Listing of organizations that provide free and low-cost legal aid.
- Queer Muslim Legal Resources: the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD) has curated a list of legal resources for LGBTQ+ Muslims.
- WARN Act Compliance Assistance Worker’s Guide: The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act helps ensure advance notice in cases of qualified plant closings and mass layoffs.
Local Community Support
- 211: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated 211 as the 3-digit number for information and referrals to social services and other local assistance.
Make Money
- Kashkick: Kashkick offers options to earn money for playing games, completing surveys, and other activities.
- Outlier: Get paid to train AI on your own schedule.
- Remotasks: Get paid to perform simple tasks, from labeling images to transcribing audio.
- Savvy Cooperative: Get paid to provide patient or caregiver insights. Savvy Cooperative offers gigs that fairly compensate folks to provide their lived experiences to organizations, helping to shape products and services.
Mental Health
Resources marked with the "no entry" (⛔) icon avoid the police.
- 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Dial, text, or chat 988 or 1-800-273-8255 to be connected to trained counselors who are part of the existing Lifeline network.
- BetterHelp: BetterHelp is a mental health platform providing direct online counseling and therapy services via the web or phone.
- ⛔ Blackline: peer-support hotline by and for Black, Black TLGBQI+, Brown, Native, and Muslim communities. Call or text 1-800-604-5841 or download the Call BlackLine app.
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741. Crisis Text Line is a nonprofit organization that provides free, 24/7, confidential text-based mental health support in English and Spanish.
- Employee Assistance Programs: Check if you still can access your organization's EAP. They often continue providing support even after employment ends.
- FindHelp: Search FindHelp's database for local mental health and crisis resources.
- Headspace: App using science-backed meditation and mindfulness tools. They offer 7-day and 14-day trial memberships.
- Mental Health Resource Guide for LGBTQ+ Muslims: the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD) also offers loads of resources for queer Muslim folks.
- Mutual Aid Safety and Wellness Planning Kit: Mad Queer has created a massive kit for mutual aid and wellness planning + a template to share with folks to express your needs.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255. Lifeline assists people in immediate crisis with a skilled, trained crisis worker who will listen to the problems they are experiencing and will connect them to local mental health services. All calls are confidential and free.
- Suicide Prevention and Resources for Black Women: Dr. Heliana Ramirez has built a comprehensive Black Women Toxic Job Suicide Prevention Resource Guide.
- The Trevor Project: 24/7 suicide hotline for LGBTQ+ youth and young adults. Support is available by phone call, texting, or online chat.
- ⛔
- ⛔ Trans Lifeline: Radical community care run by and for trans people. They also provide a great collection of community-based crisis support resources.
- UK LGBTQIA+ Mental Health Resources: Google Doc with mental health resources for queer folks in the UK.
Negotiation
- Severance Package Negotiation Sample Letter & Guide: Tips on negotiating a severance package and understanding one’s rights when making the request.
Professional Development
- Alison: Free online courses with certificates & diplomas. While these carry more weight in Europe, they offer some amazing training opportunities.
- Amazon AWS Skill Builder: AWS offers a lot of free courses and learning plans to build in-demand cloud skills.
- Coursera Access: Many states offer a free subscription to Coursera, once you’ve registered for unemployment benefits. To note: some folks who aren’t eligible for benefits still can get access to this program and for many, it never expires. Search for “Coursera [your state] unemployment” to see if it’s available.
- Free Learning Paths for Top Jobs: LinkedIn Learning and Microsoft offer free learning paths for Administrative Professional, Business Analyst, Data Analyst, Digital Literacy and Productivity, Entrepreneurship, Generative AI, Project Manager, Software Developer, Systems Administrator, and Soft Skills.
- GitHub Courses: Free, interactive courses to learn how to use GitHub.
- iTalki: free language lessons, assessments, and community to support learning a new language.
- Master of Project Academy: MPA offers a free Scrum Product Owner Certification Training
- Microsoft Learning Paths and Modules: Microsoft has more than 4,500 learning offerings available for their products.
- Mindvalley: Mindvalley offers a new free masterclass every week.
- Udemy: Udemy offers more than 10,000 free courses to learners on every topic imaginable.
Toxic Workplaces
- Academic Parity Movement: The Academic Parity Movement addresses academic bullying, mobbing, abusive supervision, harassment, and discrimination at their roots to ensure all bright minds can excel and progress.
Unemployment Benefits
- How to File for Unemployment Benefits: U.S. Department of Labor guide to eligibility for unemployment payment benefits plus a state-by-state listing to apply online.
Utilities
- Lifeline Support: Lifeline is a federal program that lowers the monthly cost of phone and/or internet service for qualified households.
- Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program: LIHEAP is a federally funded program to reduce the costs associated with home energy expenses.
- Weatherization Assistance Program: Listing of the administrators of The Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) by state.
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