What it is
In a mutual aid society, members contribute regularly to a shared fund that protects each of them. Nobody is only a donor and nobody is only a recipient. Each member pays in while they can and draws out when they need to.
The idea is old. Britannica traces friendly societies, voluntary groups that protected members against the costs of illness, death and old age, back to the burial societies of ancient Greek and Roman artisans and the guilds of medieval Europe. Friendly societies arose in the 17th and 18th centuries and were most numerous in the 19th. They went a step further than earlier groups by working out the size of the risks they covered and how much members needed to pay in to meet them. Trade unions, fraternal orders such as the Odd Fellows, and life insurance companies all grew out of them.
In America
In Philadelphia in 1787, Absalom Jones, Richard Allen and other free Black residents founded the Free African Society. Members paid a shilling a month. After a year, the society could help members in need, supporting them through illness and providing for the widows and orphaned children of members.
Stokvels and burial societies
In South Africa, a stokvel is a group of people who know each other and pool regular contributions toward a shared purpose. The National Stokvel Association of South Africa lists several kinds: burial societies that help with funeral costs and bereavement, grocery stokvels that buy in bulk, savings stokvels, rotational stokvels in which members take turns receiving the pooled money, social clubs and investment clubs.
Their recognition was hard won. In the late 1980s, stokvels were treated as illegal deposit-taking institutions under the country’s banking law. The association was founded in Soweto in 1988 to represent stokvels before the Reserve Bank, and in 1990 the Reserve Bank exempted stokvels from the Banks Act if they registered with the association.
Through the source lens
Mutual aid is relief and repair organized in advance, by the people who need it. Its members decide how it works, the opposite of the Missing Voice. And when it gains rules, legal standing and lasting institutions, it changes structure: friendly societies helped give rise to modern insurance and trade unions. The Encyclopedia’s entry on mutual aid covers the concept. When private provision adds to public provision and when it replaces it is Open Problem 21, the Government Question.