Thank you, and goodbye from Kindly

Kindly is no longer active. The app and registrations have closed, and this site now stays up as a record of what a lot of people did for each other when it mattered.

It started in March 2020, in the first weeks of lockdown, as Crisis Heroes. The idea was simple: if you needed a hand, you could ask, and if you could give one, you could offer. Groceries dropped at a door. A prescription picked up. A phone call to someone who had not spoken to anyone in days. We thought a few hundred people in Melbourne might use it.

By the time we rebranded to Kindly in 2022, more than 25,000 people across Australia had signed up. Most of them never met the person they helped. They did not need to.

Along the way we partnered with LivingWorks and several Primary Health Networks to help more people get trained in suicide prevention, we were named a finalist for the Awards Australia Community Group Award, and we ended up on the Today Show, in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and on more local radio than we expected. Every one of those stories was really a story about a volunteer.

The honest reason we are closing is that the need Kindly was built for has changed. The platform was made for a moment when neighbours could not see each other, and that moment passed. Running it well takes time and money, and we would rather close it cleanly than let it fade.

If you are looking for a way to help today, your local council, Vinnies, the Salvos and Volunteering Australia all have ways in. If you are the one who needs help, Lifeline is on 13 11 14, any time.

To everyone who registered, offered, asked, shared a post or told a friend: thank you. You made something out of nothing, in a hard year, for people you did not know. That is the whole story, and it is a good one.

Nic, Matt and Mark