Before the Red Cross and FEMA even got there, the still thriving Occupy Wall Street hit up it's grassroots connections for donations, and had their people giving relief as Occupy Sandy.
Cooking hot food, initial rescue, phone cards, water, diapers, cleaning property, etc. - they were there as soon as the winds died down.
This is all the stuff that the larger organizations like Red Cross are not good at dealing with due to logistics (collecting food donations rather than delivering MRE, etc) - but is readily dealt with by tons of volunteers (sorting donated coats and shoes by sex and size, etc)
Well done, Occupy.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/11/...ent_re_emerges
Occupy camps at Wal Mart and Amazon wedding registries to garner donations
http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...mart-sandy-aid