Recipes

Practices with steps: what it is, why it works, how to run it where you live. Every recipe names who it came from. 148 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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Accuracy Prompts

Any message (text, image, video) delivered on a social media platform that reminds users of the importance of considering the accuracy of…
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Adding Balanced News

A feed-ranking algorithm that inserts news posts from a set of credible, ideologically balanced news outlets into users’ feeds, increasing…
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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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Ask Users to Write Something Substantive When Sharing Content

Whenever users try to share external content, the platform suggests that they give context to the thing they are about to share. This…
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Audio Option for User Input

A button that allows the users to respond to content with a recording of their own voice.
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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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Batching Notifications

A method that groups smartphone notifications into scheduled batches, delivered at specific intervals, to reduce distractions and improve…
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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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Bridging-based ranking

A bridging algorithm is a feed-ranker that identifies and promotes content valued by people from opposing social groups, as opposed to,…
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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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Caution About Increasing Toxicity

Using a classifier trained on a forum's conversations, alert users when a thread they are about to reply to is likely to become tense or…
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Challenging Stereotypes

A feed-ranking algorithm that promotes posts in which members of one political group express views usually associated with the other group…
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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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Commitment Pledges

Periodic requests sent to participants asking them to commit or re-commit to participating in a group. If they do not commit, members are…
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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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Cooling Down Prompt

Message that prompts users to make decisions after letting their emotions cool down first.
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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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Crowdsourcing Contextual Information (Community Notes)

Attaching contextual information ('Community Notes') to misleading content. Notes are crowdsourced and shown alongside a post when the…
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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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Default Quote Reshare

When attempting to reshare a post, people are directed to "quote share" by default, prompting them to add their own comments. Simple…
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Delay-by-Default Posting

If implemented on a platform, all posts or comments would, by default, not appear to anyone else for a set amount of time (say one hour).…
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Digital Self-Control Apps

Digital Self-Control Apps (DSCAs) are tools - usually browser extensions or mobile apps - that individuals voluntarily adopt to help them…
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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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Disallow Sharing of Unclicked Links

When a user attempts to "share" or "retweet" or equivalent the platform detects whether or not you've clicked the link (and possibly spent…
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Down Votes

Buttons added to comments and posts that allow members in a forum to vote content "down" in a discussion thread
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Downranking Toxic Content

Downranking content in users’ feeds that expresses hostility, particularly toward other groups, or that may be otherwise politically…
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Facilitation guardrails for a neighborhood deliberation

What keeps a deliberative tool honest: ground rules on the page, plain language, small groups over open microphones, a named host, room…
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Fact-checking Labels

Any label or text directly pointing out that content is potentially false based on fact-checker assessments
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Filtering Offensive Comments

Potentially offensive comments are hidden, based on user reports and algorithmic scoring, and require users to click on them to be seen.
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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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Hide Edge-case Content Behind Warning

This is a moderation tool that allows mods to keep disputed content online while not making it easily visible or promoting it.
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Highlight Consensus Posts

This is an algorithm tweak that depends on the structure of the platform. One example of this is Pol.is, which has agree/disagree buttons…
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Highlighting High Quality Comments

In a comments section of an online publication, editors select a high quality comment to be highlighted and acknowledged, for example as…
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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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Increase Exposure to Counter-partisan Content

Increasing exposure to counter-partisan content either by adjusting ranking algorithms or nudging users to follow cross-party accounts.
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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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Labeling: Source Credibility

Labels on articles that indicate the reliability of the news source
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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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Let Mods Suggest Edits to Users

Moderators can be given the option to request that users make a specific change to something that user has written (e.g. removing…
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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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Message that Trolls are Outnumbered

This simple intervention is a message to new users of a platform or new members of an online community that contains three key elements:
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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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Misinformation literacy

Educational content and interactive tools that teach about common misinformation strategies and fact-checking techniques.
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Moderation Tool for Ban Appeals

An automated tool that requires users to provide more information in their ban appeals before they are sent to the moderators.
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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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Norms & Rules Setting

Prominently showing the rules or norms of a platform or online group, either as people are entering an online space for the first time or…
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Nudging Conversations to Groups

Encourage the creators of popular threads on a platform's open forum to form private groups where users can continue their discussion of…
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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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Open-Minded Badge

Badges awarded to users who demonstrate a high level of intellectual humility in their comments and posts.
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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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Peer Awards

A symbolic badge awarded by one community member to another for a post or other contribution
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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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Positive Background Imagery

Adding background images associated with positive emotions in places where discussions happen online.
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Post Guidance

In-time feedback which alerts users as they are drafting content that they may be breaking a forum rule and guides how they can modify…
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Pre-approving Posts

A moderation feature that requires mod approval before posts appear.
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Prebunking Misinformation

Users are shown messages via pop-up, email etc. that that forewarn and refute prevalent and potentially harmful misinformation narratives.
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Preliminary Flagging Before Posting

An AI-powered intervention that prompts users to revise their comment before posting if it receives a high toxicity score. The…
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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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Prompt Letting Others Post

When a user writes the majority of an online conversation’s posts, they will receive a dialog on future attempts to contribute, which…
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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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Quality Scores

A “quality” score displayed on posts and comments alongside popularity cues (e.g., likes, reshare counts).
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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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Regional Identity Tags

A tag that shows the user’s geographic region (e.g., province or country), when they comment or post.
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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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Removal Explanations

Provide an explanation to users when their post or comment is removed for rule infraction.
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Removing Rule-breaking Comments

Deleting a comment that breaks a forum's rules
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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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Respect Button

A button in place of (or possibly in addition to) a "like" button next to a post or comment.
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Reverse Chronological Feeds

Presenting posts and other content on social media feeds in the order they are posted, without the use of an engagement algorithm.
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Shared Humanity Memes

Memes (text and images) that express shared humanity with others.
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Show Content Reach (# of Views)

This counts, and relays back to the user, the number of distinct users who have seen a post or comment that user has made.
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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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Slowdown Modes

After a user posts or comments, they are only allowed to post again after a "cooldown period" has elapsed.
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Social Reference Cues

Text added to misinformation content (post or comment) that indicates the number of people in a user’s personal network who have not liked…
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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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Suggest Constructive Rephrased Messages

Use a large language model to offer users rephrased comments to encourage constructive conversations.
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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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Symbolic Contribution Awards

Symbolic awards - i.e. any awards, like a badge, that are neither monetary, nor of tradable value - that are publicly given to newcomers…
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Talking Circle

Sit in a circle. Pass a talking piece. Only the holder speaks. Everyone listens.
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Thank You Button

A stand-alone button, or reaction, which enables users to express thanks and gratitude.
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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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Thought-Provoking Questions

Posting thought-provoking topic-related questions with a space for users to answer.
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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…
Recipe · Outer Sunset, San Francisco

Today's News: Local News Filtered by What Neighbors Need

A calm, 1 to 4 story local news section for a neighborhood site: a few local RSS feeds, full articles fetched, then a curator (AI or…
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Toggle To Focus Mode

A toggle that lets users easily switch between a simple search mode and engagement-based recommender mode.
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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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Up Votes

Buttons added to comments and posts that allow participants in a forum to vote content "up" in a discussion thread
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Upranking Civility

A feed-ranking algorithm that upranks posts and comments demonstrating markers of civility (e.g., reasoning, compassion, respect,…
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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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Warning that Comments Will be Reviewed by Peers Before Publication

This is a prompt that any given comment will be reviewed by three peers for civility before anyone will see their comment. This should be…
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Warning that Topic is Sensitive

When specific language is detected in a draft comment or post about predefined topics, some visual element warns the author that…
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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.