What we learned from our neighborhood gathering experiment in Charlottesville – and how you can host a gathering of your own through our new $50 microgrant.

Original newsletter posted on September 17th, 2025 in The Connective Tissue newsletter written by Sam Pressler.

“What’s one thing that any community could do right now to strengthen local civic life?”

This is the question I kept getting as I was rolling out the Connective Tissue Policy Framework last year. Every time I was asked this, my mind would go to the simple initiatives that excited me most during my research, like Canning, Australia’s microgrants for welcoming newcomers and Boston’s microgrants for neighborhood block parties. And almost every time, I would blurt out something like: “Every community should offer microgrants for neighbors to gather their neighbors — block parties, barbecues, neighborhood Olympics, whatever. The important thing is to get neighbors out having fun, interacting with each other, and working together.”

QQ: Have you ever said something so many times that you became convinced of it yourself? Well, that’s what happened to me. And by the start of this year, it got to the point where I thought to myself, “I need to walk the talk and try this out where I live.”

So, on a bit of a whim this past spring, I launched a microgrant-funded neighbor gathering series for Charlottesville area residents. With the support of three volunteers (Margo Miller, Katrina Sommer, and Evan Vahouny), we built the entire initiative from scratch — from promotion materials, to a toolkit for hosts, to the back-end process and systems. And thanks to the support of the UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy (where I’m a fellow), we distributed $100 microgrants to 30 different gathering hosts who brought together 500 neighbors, almost all of whom committed to taking next steps together after the gatherings.

If I was convinced of the potential of microgrants for neighbor gatherings before trying it myself, I’m finding myself convicted (I think that’s more than convinced) after running this pilot. That’s why I’m writing this piece: to synthesize our experience creating the microgrant pilot in Charlottesville with the hope that it will inspire others to start something similar in their communities.

Why do this now? Because in an era when it feels like distant, unaccountable forces are exerting control over our day-to-day lives — be they government, corporate, or philanthropic — gathering our neighbors to better our shared places can be a small but revolutionary act to reclaim our agency.

How It Worked

If you take one thing away from this section, it should be this: Giving residents microgrants for neighborhood gatherings is really easy to do. When you design for simplicity, create enough structure to give people direction without restriction, and entrust neighbors to creatively gather their neighbors, good things will happen. No logic model, five-year strategic plan, or rigorous reporting forms required.

In our initial design of the neighbor gatherings microgrant, we asked three main questions. How do we design this to be as simple as possible for us to run and our neighbors to host? How do we anchor the gatherings on imagining what’s possible, rather than fixating on what’s broken? And how do we connect people to their shared place, instead of national politics or abstract ideas? The latter two questions informed the theme for the entire gathering series — “possibilities for our shared place” — which we threaded throughout our promotion and facilitation materials.

Our emphasis on simplicity, meanwhile, guided our whole process for developing the host journey. We designed the application to take no more than 3-5 minutes to fill out. If an applicant met our simple qualification criteria, we would distribute funding within a business day of receiving it. Once approved, we would send hosts a “Neighbor Gatherings Toolkit,” complete with a start-to-finish checklist, facilitation guide, comms materials, and FAQs for hosting. Finally, our reporting form was as straightforward as our application. All we asked for was one picture as proof the gathering happened (no receipts required), the takeaways and commitments that emerged from the gathering, and optional suggestions for improvements.

What Happened

The success of this gathering series was far from guaranteed. Just before we launched our application in February, a lifelong Charlottesville resident who is very involved in the community said to me: “I’d be surprised if you got more than five people to host.” I was worried he might be right. In the first two weeks, when we were promoting it through my limited referral networks, we received three applications.

But then we started posting on three of the most active community Facebook pages, and things took off. By the time the application window closed a month later, we had received 70 applications from prospective hosts from across the region. Ultimately, we disbursed $3,000 in microgrant funding — 30 microgrants of $100 each — to hosts representing 25 different neighborhoods, towns, and counties in the area. And between March and April, these hosts held 30 gatherings with approximately 500 neighbors joining.

One of the most pleasantly surprising developments from this experiment was the vast range of gatherings people hosted. While about half of our grantees hosted a shared meal, the other half proposed gatherings of their own. We had two people organize block parties. We had multiple people host seed starting events in the spirit of the season. There were a few gatherings for neighborhood parents of preschool and elementary school-aged children. We even had one dude who hosted a beer tasting event for 20+ people; his primary takeaways were simple yet compelling: “1. People like tasting beers; 2. People like sharing food; 3. People like doing both together.”

Almost all of our neighbors made commitments to take tangible next steps with one another. Most neighbors committed to hosting recurring gatherings in the neighborhood — from potlucks and Shabbat dinners, to annual block parties and seasonal gatherings, to a neighborhood “spirit day.” Many neighbors committed to making tangible improvements to their shared place: building a music stage for a neighborhood market, painting murals on buildings and streets, and petitioning for speed bumps and crosswalks on neighborhood roads. And some neighbors opted to build communications infrastructure and resources, including shared neighborhood list-servs, newsletters, wikis, and photo albums.

Why did these microgrants for neighbor gatherings seem to “work?” While there were lots of factors at play, we think it came down to three key dynamics: they provided a permission structure for hosts to organize, an accountability structure for hosts to follow through, and a commitment structure for neighbors to take action after the gathering.

What’s Next

We currently have two distinct questions related to what’s next. The first is systemic: How can this microgrant model be translated into local communities? The second is practical: What’s next for our little neighbor gathering microgrant pilot?

I can say unequivocally that every place should create a microgrant fund to encourage neighbors to gather with neighbors. They may very well be the least expensive, least time-intensive way to cultivate neighborhood connection and membership. Plus, they have the added benefit of showing residents that they are trusted, essentially saying: “You know how to best bring your neighbors together, so do your thing!”

Implementing in your community

But where exactly could such a neighbor gathering fund sustainably “live?” Perhaps within local government, as Boston has done within its Office of Civic Organizing to offer microgrants for neighborhood block parties and “Spooky Streets.” Perhaps it could live within a local, civically oriented nonprofit — like CivicLex’s new Neighborhood Connections program or Warm Cookies’ Civic House Parties. Perhaps it could live within a civic media organization, as Jennifer Brandel spelled out in her recent Medium piece. Or, perhaps most appropriately, it could live within a local community foundation, which almost definitionally should be focused on cultivating the civic ecology of its particular place. Each community will have to figure out the actual “how” of translation and adaptation, but if a goof like me could make it work in a few months with $3,000, I believe you can too.

An Opportunity for You through Connective Tissue

For a while now, we’ve been interested in how a digital newsletter like ours can facilitate local, in-person civic activations. We have a national reach to almost 10,000 subscribers and followers, and many are committed to experimenting with new approaches, practices, and ways of being to help realize our generational project of civic renewal. We’ve already seen you test out our ideas in your local contexts (e.g., activities fairs, welcome kits, homecomings); why not more intentionally fund and support this experimentation? We have no good reason not to.

That’s why, today, we’re re-launching our neighbor gathering microgrants through the Connective Tissue newsletter. We’re funding the initiative with $2,500 from our recent membership launch,* and we’re offering $50 microgrants for neighbors to gather with neighbors to “imagine possibilities for your shared place.” You can host whatever type of gathering you want — a shared meal, a block party, an autumn-themed event, whatever — it just needs to fall between October 2nd and November 9th and connect to our thematic anchors of “possibilities” and “shared place.” If you receive the microgrant (or choose to participate without the microgrant), you will get access to several organizing supports, including our orientation, checklist, facilitation guide, and FAQs.

We’re so excited to team up with the Relational Tech Project on this next iteration of the microgrant. Josh, Deborah, and Sadev incubated this project at a retreat that we hosted in May, and their vision for relational technology — “tools crafted by, with, and for neighbors” that are “made to help us care for and trust each other” — is deeply aligned with the ethos of this neighbor gatherings series and our newsletter. They’ve already helped us translate our Google Doc toolkit from the Charlottesville pilot into a new interactive tool (withneighbors.org), and our long-term hope is that this site can be freely “remixed” and adapted to support local neighborhood microgrant programs.

Apply by September 24th

If you’re interested in becoming a part of this shared experiment and hosting a gathering with your neighbors, apply here by Wednesday, September 24th. The application is simple — just share who you are, where you live, your best guess for your gathering date, and your proposed vision for it. Once the application window closes, we’ll create a pool of “qualified” proposals, run a random selection process, and send $50 to selected hosts by Friday, September 26th. From there, you’ll be able to draw on our support resources, host your gathering between October 2nd and November 9th, and commit to some next step with your neighbors.

The writer Douglas Rushkoff says “borrowing a drill” and “gathering with your neighbors” could “save the world.” We won’t go that far. But creating new possibilities for your particular place starts with knowing your particular place, and knowing your particular place starts with knowing your particular neighbors. So join us, gather your neighbors, have some fun, and commit to a next step together. You may not save the world, but you may very well make your neighborhood a better place to live.

*Note: We’ll likely receive way more demand for these gatherings than we’ll be able to fund. If you want to donate to this experiment, please send us a note ([email protected]). Every $50 contributed is another gathering that we can support.

Acknowledgements: I owe a special thanks to Katrina Sommer, Margo Miller, and Evan Vahouny who supported the development and rollout of the pilot; to Erica Dorn, Elise Granata, Maya Pace, Nathalia Benitez-Perez, Maryam Banikarim, Sally Hudson, and Tim Jones who offered guidance on the initial design; and to Nikki Kain and Stefanie Georgakis-Abbott, at UVA’s Karsh Institute of Democracy who helped make it happen.