Community Lead of the Week Member Stories

Leading The Way

Written by Josh Lepore

At Nextdoor, our purpose is to cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighbourhood they can rely on. As we continue to strive towards our purpose, we rely on you, the neighbours who make up the Nextdoor community, to create truly local conversations online that help build stronger and safer places to call home. Some of our largest, and most engaged communities see success come from dedicated Neighbourhood Leads.

Neighbourhood Leads are not employees of Nextdoor. Neighbourhood Leads are passionate individuals who care for their community, dedicating their own time to help make neighbourhoods more vibrant, trustworthy, and kind. They are simply neighbours like other members who have been granted additional tools to help their neighbourhood run more smoothly. These tools help them create a warm welcome, promote civil discussions amongst neighbours and grow neighbourhoods.

Getting neighbours to join is the first step in building a successful Nextdoor neighbourhood. The more neighbours on Nextdoor; the more useful Nextdoor becomes for everyone. Once neighbours join, it’s then about making sure they have a great experience in a thriving neighbourhood. 

We’ve recently had some neighbourhoods, spearheaded by dedicated leads, reach a significant milestone in their Nextdoor journey. We’re forever grateful for the tireless effort that all Neighbourhood Leads give to Nextdoor, and to their communities. 

In recognition of their continued efforts, we wanted to give them all a special Thank you, Neighbour. Neighbours helping Neighbours is an important theme in everything we do, and this is no different. We’ve asked a few Neighbourhood Leads to share some of the learnings they’ve had along the way:

Rowville, Victoria:

Will has been with Nextdoor Australia since day 1, and is leading the Country with sign ups – a true growth enthusiast. Will says:

“One of the things that I did to push Rowville’s growth is that I would immediately send invitations via the app each time I was notified that I earned new ones.

If someone has family members in the same household, then that also helps as they can send invitations on top of the ones you’re sending – in other words, the more family members or friends you have in your household or neighbourhood, the higher the output of invites that can be sent out. If you’re from a family of six & all reached the maximum level, then that’s 600 invitations that can be sent at that time & even more can be sent if they use the strategy I used – that covers a lot of ground as most will likely do what I did by clicking “select nearest”.

If someone wants to improve their neighbourhood & maybe surrounding areas, they can take the opportunity to do that themselves by either keeping the area updated on important things or setting up specific groups.”

Kingsley, Western Australia:

Allan is someone who lives and breathes community, having played an important role in helping not only grow the neighbourhood, but making it a community where every neighbour feels included. Allan says:

“When I moved into the Suburb of Kingsley in 2019 we knew just a couple of people who lived here, but we were not socially active with them. So I thought I would jump online and try and find out what groups and associations were established here that we could join and participate in to build up our new community.

Yes, there were plenty of social media groups and a couple of links on the local council’s website, but there was very little personal interaction. Luckily for me, I knew that I could move my address on the Nextdoor App and at least I would be able to see local posts and interact there.

I then immediately started using all the tools that were available to me to encourage people to join our Kingsley Community. Nextdoor posted out 100 letters directly to the mailboxes in Kingsley and with my name on them. From the received letters a few people joined and because they joined, Nextdoor issued me with more letters that they would post out on my behalf to the Kingsley Community. We were on a roll and because these people had joined from a letter with my name on them, it was easy to contact them and say Hi.

There are many tools that you can use as a member or suburb lead to getting the critical mass needed to make your Nextdoor hub vibrant. At the time of writing this I have personally signed up over 1000 members in Kingsley and now run two coffee clubs, an edible gardens club and just starting a Heart Foundation endorsed walking club and all this happened in under two years.”

Mona Vale, New South Wales:

Dale is all about community, having even recently started a local publishing company ‘The Northern Beaches Advocate’ and utilises Nextdoor to share information, connect with neighbours and stay up to date with what’s happening nearby. Dale says:

“For me, Nextdoor is a great opportunity to connect with Neighbours in a very different way to Facebook. It’s far more personal in the sense that people are identified and tied to a physical address and have to use their real name, so it’s not anonymous.

That leads to the potential for a much healthier way of engaging with each other. As a lead I see it as my role to help facilitate and curate the discussion in a way that keeps it productive and civil. 

Growing a neighbourhood requires attention on two things; inviting new members which Nextdoor makes easy through the invitation postcards and seeding the newsfeed with relevant local information so that when new people arrive, they see the value in participating.”

Alphington, Victoria:

Joel has been one of Nextdoor’s biggest advocates, dedicating time to help manage the content in his neighbourhood, and continually seeking opportunities for growth. Joel says:

“One of the most interesting features of Nextdoor is the Urgent Alert, which is a special type of post that reaches Nextdoor members immediately via text message (SMS), in-app notification, and email. Urgent alerts are intended for the rare cases where information is very important and time-sensitive.

If you do any moderation, make sure you Private Message the person you moderated with the reasons why and link to the relevant Community Guidelines. Otherwise they can easily misunderstand what happened and repost the same thing for example.”

Other thriving Neighbourhoods:

Thank you to all the Nextdoor Neighbourhood Leads who continue to help cultivate a kinder world.

Interested in becoming a Neighbourhood Lead? Join here! or contact our Head of Community, Joshua Lepore on jlepore@nextdoor.com.

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