I opened up the Medford “needs list” spreadsheet and was blown away by the dozens of rows of requests — for banal household items, out of stock medical supplies and even cash donations. Next to each one was a contact number and next to that, an offer of help from another community member.

Of course, none of these networks is an adequate replacement for swift and urgent government action to provide a safety net to corporations, small businesses and vulnerable workers. But amid the national chaos surrounding the virus, the spreadsheet was a spiritual balm — an uplifting, real-time document of people helping people.

“I am incredibly grateful for all you have done for me during this turbulent time! It is unreal … to see how much this community has banded together!” read one message in the spreadsheet from a person who’d received a Venmo donation to help pay next month’s rent.

The successes might sound small but, in a crisis, they’re life-changing. In one instance, neighbors donated a corned beef meal to an elderly woman who couldn’t go to the store to help maintain a decades-long St. Patrick's Day tradition. One man living out of state asked if somebody could go grocery shopping for his 83-year-old mother. Within 15 minutes, the network had somebody at the store for her. It’s facilitated dozens of prescription pickups. And then there’s old-fashioned cash donations. In one week, the network has redistributed more than $12,690.

Still, Ms. Freedman told me the first week has been difficult. “We’re building the plane as we fly,” she said. Among the group’s worries is making sure the network is reaching the most vulnerable members of its coverage area and crossing language barriers.

“Translation is a big need,” she said, noting that while the network is working on Haitian Creole and Nepali translations of their resource documents, it’s still looking for multilingual staff for hotlines. In the coming weeks, she says, she and counterparts in the area are hoping to continue to connect their neighborhood networks so they can share resources and redistribute money further to those in need.

Thanks to the template system the group set up, replicating the process neighborhood by neighborhood is relatively easy. Anyone with a Google account can look at the documents via the cloud. There are simple instructions on how to copy the forms for a new network or neighborhood pod.