What 114 Good Neighbor Nominations Taught Me About What It Means to Show Up

Over several days in the middle of September, I had the unusual privilege of reading and scoring  nominations from across the nation for Neighbor of the Year. It was a big job. There were 115 nominations from 34 states to score!

By the end, I had read stories about people shoveling snow, repairing cars, delivering food, checking on older adults, welcoming newcomers, organizing neighborhood gatherings, helping people find housing, mentoring young people, preparing communities for wildfire, and simply becoming the person others know they can call.

Taken together, the nominations offered something more valuable than a list of good deeds. They offered a picture of what neighboring looks like in America today.

And after the public voted on our Top 10 (over 6,000 votes were cast) we ended up with the first Neighbor of the Year in Neighbor's Bank contest. You can read about Judi Carlson of Dunwoody, Georgia online.

The judging rubric asked us to consider six things: positive impact, good-neighbor values, scope of impact, frequency and consistency, evidence and specific examples, and the inspirational or community-building quality of the nominee's actions.

But after reading nearly all of the nominations, several larger themes emerged.

Good neighbors notice

Perhaps the most common characteristic among outstanding nominees was surprisingly simple: they noticed things.

They noticed the older neighbor who could no longer shovel snow. They noticed someone who needed a ride to a medical appointment. They noticed a fallen tree, an overgrown yard, a broken-down vehicle or a family struggling to afford housing.

Corey Everhart, for example, spent his free time repeatedly repairing a neighbor's cars until the family had transportation again. He also mowed yards, removed snakes and provided a safe place for neighborhood children.

The impressive part wasn't simply that he knew how to repair a car. It was that he noticed the need and responded.

Neighboring often starts long before we perform an act of kindness. It begins when we pay enough attention to recognize that someone around us could use a hand.

Showing up repeatedly matters more than one grand gesture

There were certainly dramatic stories among the nominations, but many of the strongest nominees earned high scores because they had been doing ordinary things for a very long time.

Lula Alston-Sawyer leads a weekly gathering in her senior building, visits people who are sick or shut in, serves at a food bank every Sunday and helps with church cleaning every Saturday.

Kenneth Petersen began personally funding outreach to people experiencing homelessness in 2012. More than a decade later, that commitment had grown into the Good Neighbor Fund, helping house individuals and reunite families.

Those nominations reinforced something I have come to believe strongly: Consistency is one of the highest forms of kindness.

A casserole during a crisis matters.

But being the person who is still there six months later matters too.

Some of the best neighboring is very ordinary

Several nominations reminded me that neighborliness doesn't require founding a nonprofit or organizing a major event.

David Solinski takes someone to the store and to medical appointments, shovels snow and carries groceries inside and even puts them away.

Amber Hermanns and her husband had lived on their block less than a year but were already helping neighbors shovel snow and celebrating the arrival of a neighbor's new baby.

Those may seem like small things but they are not. A neighborhood becomes trustworthy one small interaction at a time.

The person who carries groceries today may be the person you call during an emergency tomorrow.

Other neighbors build the social infrastructure

A different group of nominees did something beyond helping individual residents.

They created opportunities for neighbors to know one another.

Bob Nelson organized multiple National Night Out events, Cinco de Mayo celebrations, park planting projects and helped establish a dog park that became a lasting neighborhood amenity.

Gary Smith welcomed newcomers, helped older neighbors with lawn care and worked behind the scenes to organize neighborhood gatherings.

That type of service deserves special attention because it creates what I think of as social infrastructure.

A picnic table isn't social infrastructure by itself.

Neither is a dog park, community room or neighborhood Facebook page.

Those become social infrastructure when someone uses them to create relationships.

A strong neighborhood needs helpers. But it also needs connectors.

Neighboring can make a community more resilient

One nomination stretched my understanding of neighboring in an especially useful way.

Christina Maier lives in a wildfire-prone community in Oregon. She organized neighborhood cleanups, educated residents about wildfire risk, advocated for policy changes, secured grants, helped neighbors preserve insurance coverage and then began sharing what her neighborhood learned with other communities.

That is neighboring too.

Sometimes loving your neighbor means bringing cookies. Sometimes it means helping make sure their house survives a wildfire.

Strong relationships aren't merely pleasant. They can become part of a community's ability to survive disruption.

One person can create more neighbors

This may have been my favorite theme.

The very best nominees didn't simply perform acts of kindness. Their example caused other people to act differently.

Kenneth Petersen's nominator said he has inspired hundreds of people to serve, give and care for others. Michael Hagen's nominator put it even more simply: He inspires me to be a better person.

That may be the highest compliment a neighbor can receive.

The ultimate measure of neighboring isn't only, “How many people did you help?”

Another question might be: “How many people became more neighborly because they watched you?”

That is the ripple effect.

Deep impact can matter as much as broad impact

The nominations also challenged the assumption that the best neighbor must help hundreds of people.

Some nominees profoundly changed the life of one person or one family.

A ride to every medical appointment. A place to live. Regular groceries. Childcare. A home-cooked meal every night. A neighbor who becomes almost like family.

The rubric wisely allowed judges to consider both reach and depth.

Neighboring doesn't always scale. And perhaps it shouldn't.

Sometimes changing one person's life is enough.

Finally, good stories need to be told

One unexpected lesson came from the nominations themselves.

Some nominees were clearly beloved, but their applications contained phrases such as “always helps everyone” or “has the biggest heart” without giving examples.

Other nominations told us exactly what happened.

They gave dates. They described the neighbor. They explained the need. They told us what changed. Those stories were much easier to evaluate.

It reminded me that communities contain thousands of quiet acts of service that are almost invisible because nobody records them.

We need to get better at telling neighboring stories. Not because good neighbors need applause. But because stories teach us what is possible.

After reading 110+ nominations, I came away more hopeful than when I started.

The news may make it appear that Americans have forgotten how to live together. These nominations tell another story.

Across the country, neighbors are still fixing cars, sharing meals, welcoming newcomers, checking on older adults, organizing gatherings, preparing for disasters, mentoring children and showing up when life gets hard.

Most of them will never become famous.

Their names may never appear in a newspaper.

But block by block, driveway by driveway and front porch by front porch, they are holding communities together.

And perhaps that is the most important lesson from all 114 nominations: A good neighbor doesn't have to change the world.

A good neighbor changes the world immediately around them.

WRITTEN BY

David L. Burton

For more information, visit the Engaged Neighbor website. Take our pledge and become part of a movement! Or subscribe to our newsletter. Access some of the research documents written by David Burton, the author of this blog. Or better yet, purchase one of his books off Amazon. Contact David L. Burton via email at dburton541@yahoo.