Would Your Organization Give Someone Baby Formula?
Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash
This article was originally published by Anne Helen Petersen on her Patreon, Culture Study, and has been reposted here with permission.
If you're not on TikTok — or not on a particular algorithm on TikTok — you might not have heard about the woman who's been calling religious organizations to see how they respond to a mom's request to source formula for her two-month-old daughter, whose cries you can hear in the background. (Nikalie does not have a two-month-old daughter; she plays a recording of a baby's cries in the background).
Nikalie records the conversations (Kentucky, where she lives, is a one-party consent state, so this is legal) and then posts them to TikTok, along with a tally of how many organizations have offered to help and how many have declined. You can see all the videos here, but viewers have been compelled by the overall stats: only a quarter of the religious organizations she's called have offered direct assistance.
The larger the organization, the less likely it is to help: most of the megachurches have declined, while a mix of Black Protestant churches, mosques, and super small churches have jumped to offer assistance (the most notable — and the most viral — is the response from this pastor of a very small church in Kentucky, who immediately attempts to find and deliver the formula himself).
I appreciate the heart of this experiment. And I want to talk about why it's resonating with so many people. But we first have to acknowledge that this methodology is lacking complexity (I could say it's flawed, but that's not the spirit with which I'm approaching this conversation).
Religious organizations — like many other community organizations — set up systems so that when someone calls with a need, that need can be met by people with practice meeting it. Yes, obviously, they could figure out solutions themselves — but these employees and volunteers are not trained social workers. They don't have the skills or training or immediate access to capital to triage an emergency. They don't try to reinvent the wheel when a pretty good wheel is already there and ready to help.
For example, if a woman called for assistance getting out of a domestic violence situation, someone at the religious organization would work to connect them with a local YWCA or women's shelter — not be the women's shelter. Alternatively, if someone calls, like Nikalie did, asking for a supply of baby formula, they'd connect her with a local food pantry or food bank that provides baby formula (and so much more). And when many religious organizations are struggling to adequately staff themselves — or grappling with clergy burnout, which I've written about in the past — it's important to figure out systems to better distribute the time-consuming (and often very emotionally demanding) work of care.
When Nikale asks for formula, that's what several organizations offer: connections to other organizations. But Nikale still places these institutions under the "no" category, simply because they don't immediately source the formula themselves.
The end result is the same: we have become very good at looking the other way.
Anyone who's worked in nonprofits or with vulnerable populations knows that this sort of binary (offers to immediately buy formula vs. does not immediately offer to buy formula) lacks nuance. Many religious organizations have direct associations with food pantries, services for people who are struggling to make rent, refugee and migrant assistance programs, and shelters. They contribute sizable portions of their monthly budget to sustaining these programs and often coordinate volunteers from their membership. Not all, but many. They do this because helping those in need is central to their faith — but they also understand that merging funds with so many other organizations means better help for more people. It's the same logic that encourages people to donate money instead of canned items to a food bank: you want to fund the people who can do this work at scale.
With that said: if an organization is serving the community, religious or otherwise, they should be able to help when a call like this comes through — even if "help" means connecting you with others. And not just throwing them a phone number, but facilitating that connection, because it takes a lot of bravery for someone to call and ask a stranger for help. If you're telling someone to go to a food pantry, for example, you should also be asking: Do you have a way of getting there? Can I help you find one? Helping might also just mean listening. Whatever form the response takes, it should always be structured by compassion.
And that's the real scandal of so many of these calls: the cold remove on the other end of the line. You hear it from clergy, from office managers, and from whoever the office manager transfers the call to (presumably someone who's better equipped than the office manager to answer this sort of query). Flatness. These calls, and the bureaucratic sheen of cruelty, are excruciating: I'm sorry, we can't help you, click. Or, as the receptionist of a megachurch in Mississippi finessed it: let me put you hold, then transfer you to a voicemail that I recorded that says I'm sorry, we can't help you [click].
Now, if someone called up a neighborhood hardware store and asked for some baby formula, the answer might also be: I'm sorry, we can't help you (although depending on the hardware store, and whoever answered the phone, I bet they actually would try to help you). But a religious organization? The answer should always be yes. No questions asked. No stipulations. Just: here's how we're gonna figure out how to get you help.
People have responded to these videos with valid defenses: it's not the organization's job; there's an application process for aid; it's not the receptionist's fault that she didn't know how to direct her; they knew this lady was lying, so why would they help her. I especially appreciate this response from clergy member Alicia Crosby:
In a fmr life I worked as an operations manager at a church & I’ve been bothered by that viral baby formula “gotcha” vid that’s circling. Houses of worship are/should be hubs for resources but calling places to test their capacity for giving is ass for many different reasons. Here are a few:
1) it’s generally crappy to feign emergencies and push folks responding into a place of scrambling for a test. There are real people on the other end of the line who may stop helping real folks for this.
2) Churches and their infrastructures vary as do their capacities. Some churches are tiny with no FT staff and a pastor who works btwn 2-3 other churches or has another job. Others have dozens of paid employees and hundreds of volunteers. The programs offered and policies on resource provision span wide because the people there and material supports can be vastly different.
3) When you call a church, you don’t know who’s picking up and what knowledge or access they have. For example, in my old job I would occasionally support the paid and volunteer receptionists and knew tons they didn’t because my job was managing the logistics of the church. And if I don’t know I knew who to ask bc again…my job required it. Plenty of others didn’t have info and this was in a long standing NYC megachurch setting with waaay more infrastructure than most places have.
4) speaking of infrastructure, this is literally where stuff can be a mess in churches. Turnover, bad practices, local and/or denominational politics may mean that a church doesn’t have their own in-house resourcing programs or the may take on one type of resourcing they figure they do well and refer people to other places that can more fully, immediately, and sustainably offer the aid folks call or come in to request.
Especially if capacity or staffing is limited, folks concentrate efforts.
5) churches are nonprofits that can be audited and as such, not everyone has access to credit cards or petty cash. When folks purchase things on behalf of a church, there’s a process for community and IRS accountability sake and receipts are literally kept.
6) Saying someone can just go buy formula or another resource makes a lot of assumptions.
If you mean they can use church money, you’re making assumptions about the staff, on hand coin, and capacity of a church. Giving money for one person outside of structured programs can unfortunately create expectations that can’t be upheld and I logistically understand that.
Also, saying folks can pay out their own pocket is assuming folks picking up the phones have coin and aren’t struggling too.
7) These ain’t regular degular times. In addition to the governmental and political shenanigans that are making folks vulnerable and in need of support, layoffs, discrimination, rising food and utility costs, and more including rising numbers of folks becoming disabled due to post-Covid conditions means there’s folks are down bad all over. Systems are failing, long established funds are drying up, denominational & grant shifts may leave churches more inclined to give with fewer funding sources.
I say all this to say there’s much more work than an edited viral video may suggest. And yes, it’s edited, because I’ve seen churches respond internally sharing that resources were shared a that was edited out bc they were community partners and it didn’t fit the narrative the storyteller wanted to share.
It’s so easy to be reactive because of religious bigotry that we sometimes forget to ask questions that’ll help us sort out how to actually make sure folks get what they need.
Note: I have no dog in this fight. I’m an ordained Christian minister but I intentionally situate myself outside of congregational & institutional settings because I find what my soul needs in the community I find with God & others elsewhere. The near 30 years I spent, worked, & grew up in traditional church space was ecumenical af & I’ve spent the last 15 years working to addressing Christian religious violence and trauma in my work.
TLDR: this is all more complicated than a viral vid shows
But what is the church's plan if someone like Nikale called? What's the current protocol — and what should it be?
All of these explanations make sense. The vast majority of clergy I know are deeply involved in anti-poverty work and might also fail this "test" if someone called their organization, simply because they would, indeed, refer them to partner organizations providing more organized care. It's also worth noting that many of the people who've been served these videos are people who are not religious themselves, and have little familiarity with how religious organizations actually provide aid on the ground.
I also understand how these defenses can feel like deflections from a larger failure. Specifically, we have built structures with boundaries that make it very easy to ignore others' suffering. Some of those structures are institutional (don't step on anyone's toes); some are legal (don't do anything or offer anything that could make us liable); some are political (only people who believe the things I do are worthy of help); and some are technological (the way others' pleas for help are lost within the endless scroll of contemporary media consumption). The end result is the same: we have become very good at looking the other way.
That's why Nikalie's choice for her ask — formula for a wailing two-month-old baby — is rhetorically effective. No one should be able to look away from a hungry baby. That baby has no politics and has made no decisions that you can judge. That baby is wholly dependent on others — including you, the second you are asked to help. But the systems have become so normalized that even with a wailing baby in the background, it's easy to slip into their cruel logic. She should've called a food bank. She should have friends she can ask for help. She shouldn't have gotten pregnant if she couldn't pay for formula. This is what SNAP is for. She's lying. She's just gonna use that money on drugs.
In other words, if she'd just done things right, then she wouldn't have a problem. And this is where we reach the breaking point — and why, despite all the very valid objections to the methodology, this series is resonating with so many right now.
Because we shouldn't even be [f—---] arguing about this! No mother should be forced to call up a community organization and ask for a can of formula in a country with a functioning social safety net. But that net is in tatters — and not just because of the government shutdown. So we have to depend on one another.
We depend on GoFundMes to cover medical costs. We depend on food banks because we allow companies to pay wages that don't cover the cost of feeding a family — even when they do receive governmental assistance. We depend on credit cards and payday loans and the hope that our fragile ties to our community are strong enough to support us when a car accident or an unexpected diagnosis or a broken water heater derails our lives. It's all so tenuous and unpredictable and dependent on projecting yourself as the right kind of person with the right kind of need. So when you see these organizations, organizations you're told to depend on instead of the state, refuse to help the most vulnerable, well, the truth speaks plainly: they wouldn't help you, either.
Or maybe they would — if you passed their tests. If you showed up the right way, said the right things, bowed your head in prayer, and asked for help with the right amount of shame. In that way, they resemble what remains of our social safety net: they'll only catch you if you contort yourself a certain way. But that's not real compassion. That's recruiting obedience. Real compassion asks no questions and demands no performance. A former co-worker of mine told me that after watching how the man at the mosque responded to Nikale's query — "where are you, what kind of formula?" — she showed it to her young children. "This is how we respond to people in need," she told them. "We don't ask questions, we just give."
And again: I get why not every organization can respond this way. But we cannot deny that many of these responses lack an ethos of care.
Over the past week, news of these videos has spread through various clergy circles. They've been posted in clergy Facebook groups, and people have been calling their own institutions to press them on how they'd respond. A Culture Study reader who's a deaconess at her church told me that these videos have sparked a conversation amongst leadership: all deacons are allotted $200 to spend on community care without requiring the approval of another deacon. Anything above $200 has to go to a vote. They partner closely with various organizations to help people find food and shelter stability. But what is the church's plan if someone like Nikale called? What's the current protocol — and what should it be?
Those conversations are a positive effect of these videos. A negative one is random Tiktok viewers flooding organizations that declined to help with death threats. That's an outsized and inexcusable response. I know this. But then I think of that megachurch receptionist of a church so large, so wealthy, that it has valet parking, sending a caller with a request for formula to a voicemail so that no one in her organization has to confront that sort of first-hand suffering....and I understand the contours of that rage.
I look at this "experiment" from one angle, and I see how it feels like a perverse form of public entrapment. But I look at it from another, and I see a desire for these organizations to experience the same sort of scorn and opprobrium that's been directed toward those who've found themselves slipping down the slope of American society. This, this right here — this what it feels like to be blamed for things you cannot control.
You can see a similar sentiment directed towards ICE and its ruthless campaign across the US. It's there, too, in the direct antagonism of political leaders across the spectrum. There's an electric desire to capture them at their most cowardly and post the evidence online for all to see. Everyone is trying to create a mirror that adequately reproduces the shame these stewards of suffering should feel.
When faced with our political reality, I feel two impulses. I imagine you do, too. One is to help in whatever way I can: spearheading the Culture Study food bank donations from the past two weeks, most visibly, or helping stock our island's newly constructed mutual aid food pantry. But I also feel tremendous anger and a deep, darkening sadness. I do my best to direct it, as we all do: to transform it into writing, or hope, or care for others. But sometimes it builds up into a desperate desire to feel someone caught in their hypocrisy. And that's precisely what these videos provide. They are satisfying to watch. They channel a rage that has been building for years. But I ask myself, and I ask you: what will they change? Will they make us more compassionate with one another — or with the next person to call in need — or even more afraid?
