Neighbor Organizing Playbook
This playbook is a practical step-by-step guide for setting up a self-reliant network. This approach avoids red tape and puts the planning directly back in local hands where it belongs.
Step 1: Form Connections
If there is not already an ongoing link between the people in your area, start by opening a conversation. Spend time going around your street, rural road, or apartment hallway. Talk with your immediate neighbors over the fence or on the porch to understand the shared interests, immediate needs, and unique character of your local area.
Step 2: Create an Easy Starting Point
Use a simple, offline contact list to start coordinating neighbors. Agree on an accessible method to communicate, such as a group chat over text or Signal. Real progress happens with easy access so that everyday people, not outside experts, can safely run their own networks.
Step 3: Set Up Your Offline Spreadsheets
Gather information about your local area using our simple, private setups. Keep these files on your local computer hard drives or printed out on physical paper. We avoid outside software tracking to protect household data from outside groups and organizations.
- The Neighborhood Toolkit Template: List local tools, skills, and knowledge across your neck of the woods.
- The Exchange Log Template: Keep a simple, transparent record of day-to-day assistance that is shared.
Step 4: See Your Resources and the Big Picture
Once the neighborhood network is set up, a local area stays resilient by looking at the bigger picture in a couple of ways:
- Public Resource Guide: For shared resources near your neighborhood space that are open to the general public, use The Neighborhood Index Template as your directory. This tracks public resources such as little free libraries, community fridges, or neighborhood pantries so anyone can access them easily.
- Navigating the Big Picture: To keep an eye on outside changes affecting your street, use the Big Picture Framework. This provides a plain template to track larger trends, developments, and local news, allowing you to connect the dots and look out for each other.
Step 5: Keep Things Moving and Rotating
Prevent centralized authority or burnout in your neighborhood network by rotating basic tasks regularly. Use our Sharing Tasks Fairly layout to ensure tasks shift between different households, keeping your local grid healthy, fair, and self-reliant.
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