About the founder
Built to help neighbors find practical next steps
Rapid Mutual Aid MN is a privacy-first resource hub for West St. Paul, South St. Paul, Inver Grove Heights, Mendota Heights, Eagan, and Dakota County. Tanner John (TJ) built and maintains it to help families find food, housing, health, immigration, and safety resources quickly, without surveillance, unnecessary data collection, or guesswork.
Resources come first. This page gives context on the work behind them.
Where this started
Rapid Mutual Aid MN grew out of urgent local needs that quickly became a systems problem. Neighbors needed food support, legal routing, and clear safety information, but finding current, trustworthy answers was slow and scattered. The tools that existed were hard to use under stress, not built with privacy in mind, and hard to keep current.
That gap became this site: a maintained, mobile-first, privacy-conscious resource directory with bilingual structure, verified information, and no tracking.
Proof of work
What this work proves
Each of these reflects the same design decisions in practice: collect less, route faster, and protect people under pressure.
Privacy-first routing
Privacy-first public resource routing
No accounts, no cookies, no analytics, and no third-party scripts. The site collects nothing it does not need. Even safety tools, like the rental-car plate-check page, are built to avoid tracking by design.
Built for phones
Mobile-first pages for people under stress
Pages are built to be read on a phone, quickly: short next steps, clear headings, and call-first guidance so people can act without digging.
Language access
Bilingual-ready structure
English and Spanish routes run in parallel, with plain-language wording and a shared glossary so meaning stays consistent across both.
Safer pathways
Safer contact and referral pathways
Click-to-reveal contact, minimal-data guidance, and step-by-step routing, like the Find Someone Detained guide, reduce unnecessary data sharing at the moment people ask for help.
Findability
Search-visible resource pages
Resource pages are structured so people searching for local help can find a current page through a search engine, without needing a referral or an account.
Maintenance
Documentation and maintenance workflows
Verify-before-publish notes, last-checked dates, and maintenance routines keep facts current, because outdated resource information can send people to the wrong place.
Operating principles
- Collect less
- Route faster
- Verify before publishing
- Protect families under pressure
- Design for mobile, stress, and translation
- Avoid surveillance, rumors, live tracking, and intake-database patterns
Working with organizations
Need help reviewing or improving public resource infrastructure?
Rapid Mutual Aid MN is a working proof point for privacy-first public resource routing. If your community group, church, nonprofit, coalition, or volunteer network has public resource pages, contact flows, volunteer pathways, or crisis information that people rely on, I can help review and improve them.
I can help organizations review and improve public-facing resource pages, contact flows, privacy posture, mobile usability, language access, and crisis-routing clarity. The first step is usually a focused review or Digital Preparedness Audit, not a rebuild.
How to reach out
Use the contact page to get in touch. A short description of what your organization is trying to improve is enough. You do not need a finished plan.
Share only the minimum needed. Do not send names of minors, immigration status, A-numbers, case numbers, home addresses, or private documents by email or through the contact page.
This is not legal advice. For immigration or legal help, use the immigration legal support page.