This Dakota County Nonprofit Started as a Facebook Group. Now It's Helping Families Stay Housed and Fed

TLDR

• Dakota County Mutual Aid started as a Facebook group where neighbors could find each other: people who wanted to help, and people who needed it.
• Founder Taylor Durry says it started with one small ask: snack donations for kids when SNAP benefits were delayed.
• Now it helps families across Dakota County with food, rent, utility bills, rides, and support after a family member is detained.
• It's now an official independent nonprofit, with a board and more oversight.
• It needs volunteers right now, especially people who can deliver food.

Some of the best stuff in our community doesn't start with a big plan. It starts with one person asking, "Can anyone help with this?" (Kind of like the neighbors in our Eagan lifesaving award story, who stepped up for someone they didn't even know.) That's pretty much the story of Dakota County Mutual Aid, a new group that's grown from a Facebook group into a nonprofit that serves the whole county.

How It Started: One Post About Snacks

Founder Taylor Durry says she's always loved building community. Before any of this, she spent a lot of time putting together neighborhood get-togethers. Her whole idea was that people should "know each other before they need each other."

Then SNAP benefits got delayed. (SNAP is the federal food help program many families count on.) Taylor saw local families worried about how they'd get through the week. So she looked for who was already helping.

She found The Open Door, the Eagan-based food pantry, which was putting together emergency food packs. Taylor asked people to donate snacks that could be repacked for kids.

"I thought we'd get just a few donations," she writes on the group's website. "Instead, people kept showing up."

Food piled up. People offered to help pack bags. Friends brought friends.

Then Came a Bigger Need

A little later, immigration enforcement picked up in the Twin Cities. Taylor started hearing about Dakota County families who were afraid to leave their homes.

She reached out to La Viña, a Latino church in Burnsville, thinking they probably needed volunteers. But Pastor Miguel told her what families really needed was food that could last. Things like protein, pasta, and pantry staples for people too scared to go to the store. (The Sun ThisWeek has a great piece on how La Viña became a hub of help during that time.)

So Taylor made another post. And again, people showed up. Neighbors dropped off food at her house. Volunteers shopped, sorted, packed, and delivered it.

More needs kept coming. A manufactured home community had a water main break. Community leaders said families needed familiar foods from home and hygiene items. Every time the group listened, there was a new way to help.

The Facebook Group That Connected Everyone

Here's the part Taylor noticed that kind of says it all. She saw lots of people asking, "How can I help?" At the same time, lots of other people were asking, "Where can I go for help?"

There wasn't one place in Dakota County that connected those two groups. So she started a Facebook group. That became Dakota County Mutual Aid.

"It wasn't meant to become an organization," she writes. "It was just meant to be a place where neighbors could find each other."

From there, it kept growing. Food deliveries led to rides. Rides led to helping families with housing, legal help, and rent help. The group teamed up with churches, schools, other nonprofits, tenant leaders, and property managers.

This summer, Taylor shared one moment that shows what this looks like in real life. A judge ordered a father released after six months in ICE detention. The group had been helping his family with rent and food the whole time. Volunteers drove to Whipple (the federal building near Fort Snelling) and brought him home to his wife and kids.

Why It Became a Nonprofit

At some point, it got too big to run through Taylor's personal Venmo. Yeah, really.

"If this was really going to belong to the community, it needed community oversight, transparency, and a structure that people could trust," she writes.

So the group turned itself into an independent nonprofit, and it's now official. It has a board and a governance page on its website. Taylor says the goal was never to get bigger. It was to protect what made the work matter in the first place, and to stay flexible enough to help with whatever neighbors need next.

What Kind of Help Can You Get?

If you or someone you know is going through a hard time, Dakota County Mutual Aid may be able to help with:

• Emergency rent and housing help
• Past-due utility bills (so your power or heat doesn't get shut off)
• Food and groceries
• Household items and emergency supplies
• Rides to work, appointments, or other must-do trips
• Emergency money during a family crisis
• Support for families dealing with detention, deportation, or sudden separation
• Connections to trusted legal, immigration, and community resources

They can't promise help to everyone. But a volunteer reviews every request. If they can't help directly, they'll try to point you to someone who can. To ask for help, fill out the intake form on their Need Support page.

The group serves all of Dakota County. It focuses most on families who have a harder time getting help from the usual places. That matters even more with the county cutting public health jobs in its 2027 budget.

How You Can Help

This is the part where you come in. The group is run by volunteers, and Taylor says they need more hands, especially drivers.

Food deliveries have slowed a lot lately. Not enough people are signing up to deliver food through La Viña. Many churches that used to deliver bags from The Open Door have slowed down or stopped. That means some families who need food delivered aren't getting it.

Taylor wants to build a steady food delivery network across the county. If you'd be up for picking up food and dropping it off with families in your own town, she'll help set up a pickup spot and a schedule with you.

Here's how you can pitch in:

• Volunteer: Deliver groceries, give rides, sort donations, or help behind the scenes. Once a month or once a week both help. Sign up to volunteer.
• Donate: Money helps them move fast on rent, food, and emergencies. Donate here.
• Partner: Businesses, churches, schools, and groups can team up through the community partners page.
• Share a skill: They're looking for help with grant writing, translation, graphic design, photography, social media, legal support, event planning, and more. Email Taylor to see where you fit.

The Bottom Line

Dakota County Mutual Aid is proof that you don't need a big budget or a five-year plan to make a difference. You need one person to ask, and enough neighbors to answer. What started as a snack drive is now helping families across the county stay fed, housed, and together.

If you need help, fill out their intake form. If you've got a car and a couple of free hours a month, they could really use you as a driver. As Taylor puts it, the whole thing is about helping "those two people find each other," the neighbor asking how to help and the neighbor who needs it. For more local news like this, sign up for the South Metro Scoop newsletter.