Recipes
Practices with steps: what it is, why it works, how to run it where you live. Every recipe names who it came from. 89 in this collection.
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A Strategy You Can Say Out Loud
If we do TACTICS, then CHANGE, because REASON. If your neighborhood campaign's theory of change doesn't fit in one honest sentence, it…
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Appreciative Inquiry
Stop diagnosing what's broken. Ask the group what's already working and build from there.
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Art of Hosting
A methodology that combines circle, World Cafe, Open Space, and Appreciative Inquiry into a flexible practice for holding complex…
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Babysitting Co-op
A group of neighbor families who trade childcare hours using points. No money changes hands. Kids grow up knowing the whole block.
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Barbershop and Beauty Salon as Community Anchor
Recognize, support, and partner with the third places that already do the relational work of your neighborhood. Often they are barbershops…
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Block Stewards
Be the neighbor who keeps the block connected. Quietly. Over years.
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Bridge Meadows (Intergenerational Housing)
A neighborhood designed around three groups who need each other: foster and adoptive families with children, low-income elders, and shared…
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Buy Nothing Group
A hyperlocal gift economy. Neighbors give and receive items freely. No money, no bartering, no scoring.
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Care Webs
Networks of 20-30 people who check on each other regularly and respond collectively before issues become emergencies.
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Circles USA
A long-term mentoring model that builds intentional friendships across income lines. People in poverty matched with Allies for 18+ months…
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Civic Saturday
A secular gathering modeled on faith services. Songs, readings, a civic sermon, and a recommitment ritual around what it means to be a…
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Coaching: Enabling Others in Five Steps
The practice that makes 'are we stronger now?' come true: help people find their own solutions — inquire, diagnose (head, heart, or…
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Cohousing
A neighborhood designed for community. Private homes around shared indoor and outdoor space. Residents shape the design and run the place.
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Come Out & Play
A festival of street games. Adults and kids play in public spaces. Hide and seek with 200 people. Capture the flag across a park. Big…
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Community Acupuncture
Acupuncture in a shared room, on a sliding scale. Trust-based pricing. People who can afford to pay more support people who can't.
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Community Agreements
A group decides together how they want to be with each other. They write it down. They use it when something goes sideways.
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Community Fridge
A refrigerator in public. Anyone can leave fresh food. Anyone can take it. No paperwork.
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Community Garden
A piece of land. A group of neighbors. Tomatoes, beans, a few sunflowers, a couple of beehives, conversation. Repeat for years.
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Community Land Trust
Separate land ownership from building ownership. A nonprofit owns the land. Families own the homes on it. The result: permanently…
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Community Research Teams
Residents learn records requests, data analysis, and documentation to investigate what's happening and demand action.
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Community Safety Response
Civilian crisis teams trained in de-escalation, mental health response, and care. Sent to calls that police would otherwise handle.
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Community Support Spaces
Regular peer circles where people with shared experiences witness each other's stories and heal together.
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Community-Built Playspace
Fifty to two hundred neighbors show up over a long weekend and build a playground together. By Sunday night there's a place for kids to…
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Community-Stewarded Stories
Community-controlled media infrastructure (training, tools, distribution, revenue) so people tell their own stories on their own terms.
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Connection Infrastructure
Build recurring spaces and rhythms (same time, same place, food, no agenda) that make connection inevitable.
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Creative Interventions
A framework for responding to interpersonal violence (abuse, assault, harassment) without relying on police or the criminal legal system.…
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Crisis Activation
Pre-build lightweight infrastructure (channels, resource maps, story collection, mutual aid) that can activate instantly when crisis hits.
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Death Cafe
An open community gathering to talk about death, dying, and what makes a life worth living. Tea and cake required.
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Deep Canvassing
An extended, vulnerable, story-based conversation at a doorstep that has been shown to shift people's beliefs more durably than any…
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Dinner Party Grief
A small dinner with peers who have also lost someone. Real food, real conversation, no expert.
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Free Store
A physical space where neighbors leave things they don't need and take things they do. No money, no bartering, no questions.
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Front Porch Forum (and what to do if you can't have one)
A respectful digital space for your block. Real names. Real addresses. Daily digest. No algorithm.
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Gift Conversations: Head, Hands, Heart
The ABCD interview: four questions that surface what a neighbor knows, can do, cares about, and belongs to — because 'a gift isn't a gift…
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Good Neighbor Agreement
Write down what neighbors and a nearby business or institution want from each other. Sign it. Check in regularly.
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Improv Games for Community Building
Short, structured improv exercises that get a group laughing, building on each other's ideas, and feeling more like a "we" within thirty…
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Interfaith Bridge
Bridging across religious and spiritual traditions through structured dialogue, shared service, and the long work of getting to know each…
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Intersection Repair
Paint a mural in the middle of a residential intersection. Add benches, a kiosk, a tiny library, a tea station. Reclaim the street as a…
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Jane's Walk
A free walking tour of your neighborhood, led by someone who lives there. No experts required.
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Launching a Team: Purpose, Roles, Norms
Effective teams share three things: a purpose members can recite, interdependent roles so nobody works alone, and explicit norms the team…
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Little Free Pantry
A small weatherproof cabinet of nonperishable food and supplies, placed somewhere visible. Take what you need. Leave what you can.
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Making the Invisible Visible
An erased community coordinates to make its presence undeniable through art, stories, data, and persistent presence.
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Map Your Neighborhood
Gather 15 to 20 neighbors. Find out who has medical skills, who has tools, who lives alone, who needs help. Make a map. Before anything…
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Meal Train
Someone you know is going through something. Set up a shared calendar. Neighbors take turns bringing food for a few weeks.
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Men's Council
Eight to twelve men, sitting in a circle, taking turns telling the truth. No fixing, no advice, no rush.
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Microgrant Gathering
Give a neighbor $50 to $100. They host a gathering. They tell you what happened. Almost no friction. Wide reach.
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Microsolidarity Crew
A small group of 3 to 6 people who agree to show up for each other regularly. The basic unit of modern mutual support.
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Mutual Aid Pod
Five to twenty neighbors pool skills and resources to meet each other's actual needs. No charity, no nonprofit, just neighbors.
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Nap Ministry
Rest as resistance. Communal rest as healing. A practice rooted in Black liberation that frames rest as political work.
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Navigation Networks
Neighbors who've navigated complex systems literally walk others through them.
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Neighborhood Association
A formal structure that gives a neighborhood a continuing civic voice. Elected officers, regular meetings, a defined area, and a…
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Open Space Technology
No agenda. Participants propose the sessions. The room runs itself around a central question.
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Participation Tactics
Twenty-nine small moves that turn a gathering from one-mic-and-a-hundred-listeners into a room where everyone speaks.
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Participatory Budgeting
Residents directly decide how to spend a portion of public money. Propose, develop, vote, implement. Repeat annually.
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Peacemaking Circles
A structured restorative justice process. Victim, person who caused harm, families, and community sit in circle together. The goal is…
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Place as Canvas
Document one hyperlocal place so intensively it becomes a mirror for the whole community's memory and identity.
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Placemaking
A community-led process for transforming a public space. Observe, listen, experiment with cheap quick changes, learn, iterate.
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Playworks (Intentional School Recess)
Treat recess as social-emotional learning, not just unstructured time. Coaches who facilitate inclusive play turn the schoolyard into a…
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Porch Conversations
Sit on your front porch on purpose. Stay there long enough that someone says hi.
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Priority-Setting That Actually Matters
Make a community's priorities actually drive a real decision someone has authority over, then implement exactly as decided.
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Public Narrative: Self, Us, Now
Marshall Ganz's storytelling practice: a story of why you're called (self), what your community shares (us), and why action is urgent…
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Reciprocity Game
A structured exercise for crews that have gotten unbalanced. Surfaces needs, gifts, and patterns of asking and giving.
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Reinvent the Potluck
A potluck with a purpose. The food is the welcome; the structure is the work.
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Relational Organizing
Organizing through existing relationships instead of cold outreach. The work moves through trusted networks, person by person.
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Repair Cafe
A free community event where people fix broken things together with skilled volunteers. Lamps, clothes, bikes, toasters.
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Resilience Hub
Take a trusted local space that is already a community anchor. Add backup power, supplies, training, and partnerships. Now it's also a…
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Skillshare
A one-day community event where neighbors teach each other what they know. Thirty or forty free classes happening in one building over an…
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Story-Sharing Potluck Supper
A shared meal with a story prompt. Goes deeper than small talk on purpose.
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Sunday Assembly
A secular gathering that meets weekly or monthly. Speakers, music, community service, snacks. The form of a church service without the…
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Talking Circle
Sit in a circle. Pass a talking piece. Only the holder speaks. Everyone listens.
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The Asset Map (Not the Needs Map)
Asset-based community development's core practice: before listing what your neighborhood lacks, inventory what it has — residents' gifts,…
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The Campaign Timeline: Foundation, Kickoff, Peaks
Campaigns have a rhythm: a quiet foundation of relationship-building, a kickoff that starts the clock, rising peaks that each build…
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The Connectors Table
Find the people who are already at the center of the room — gift-centered, trusted, joyful about introducing neighbors — and convene them…
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The Debrief: Did It Work, and Are We Stronger?
After every action, ask two different questions: did we move our goal, and did we grow — more people, more skills, deeper relationships?…
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The Hard Ask (and the Three Nos)
Ask for a specific commitment — a date, a time, a role — without apologizing. Organizing is an opportunity, not a favour. And learn to…
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The House Meeting
Fred Ross's instrument: a small gathering in someone's living room, hosted by a resident who invites their own people. Cycles of house…
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The Longest Table
One very long table. Hundreds of neighbors. One meal.
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The One-to-One
A scheduled 30–60 minute conversation between two people, built on stories rather than small talk, that ends with a commitment. The basic…
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The Organizing Sentence
We are organizing WHO to achieve WHAT through HOW by WHEN. One sentence every team writes for itself, so nobody is confused about the work.
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The Snowflake: Distributed Leadership
A structure where leadership is distributed into interconnected small teams, everyone maintains a sustainable number of relationships, and…
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The Sweet Spot Test for Tactics
A good action does three things at once: makes measurable progress toward the goal, strengthens the organization, and develops the people…
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Time Banking
A community-scale system where neighbors trade hours of help. One hour = one credit. A haircut equals an hour of childcare equals an hour…
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Tool Library
A library, but for drills, sanders, ladders, sewing machines, and the table saw nobody can afford to own. Neighbors check things out for a…
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Tracking Down the Power
A wall-and-post-its exercise for recognizing power together: map the actors around your issue, place them on a field of play from 'wants…
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Transition Town
A community organizing approach where neighbors take responsibility for their own resilience: local food, local energy, local economy,…
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Trauma-Informed Community Building
Build community in a way that recognizes the wounds people are carrying. Center healing alongside organizing.
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Village Movement (Aging in Community)
A membership organization where elders stay in their homes and depend on a network of neighbors and coordinators for the support that lets…
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Warming/Cooling Center
A trusted local space that opens during extreme weather to keep neighbors safe. With care, it becomes much more than a…
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Welcome Wagon
A new family just moved in. Bring something over. Stay five minutes.
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World Cafe
A structured way for 25 to 2,000 people to actually have a conversation, not sit through a presentation.