Reflections on NAP1 & NAP2

[savkruger]

Hi, I’m Savannah and I run the Cabin Neighborhood Accelerator Program (NAP). I’m writing this post from week 5 of NAP2, our second cohort. We’ve learned a lot and I’m excited to share the progress with you. Thank you to all of the people who’ve joined me in neighborhood building and gave me their feedback.

Please don’t hesitate to ask questions and share thoughts in the comments. There’s a lot of detail I’m leaving out for brevity that I’m happy to elaborate on. Let’s get into it!

What is the Neighborhood Accelerator Program?

The Neighborhood Accelerator Program is a 10-week online program that helps people create a sense of community in their neighborhoods. We do this by:

1. Sharing case studies of successful neighborhoods
2. Connecting stewards with a network of mentors + peers they can seek guidance from
3. Creating the culture and accountability to do the thing in their neighborhood

How NAP Fits Within Cabin’s Larger Goals

Cabin’s goal is to build a network city of modern villages. From my perspective, training intrinsically motivated people to create community in existing neighborhoods around the world + meaningfully onboarding them into Cabin’s network is an extremely clear and direct way to achieve our goal.

The Cabin Labs team recently set the goal to create 500 neighborhoods in the Cabin network in 5 years. If we continue at the rate we’re growing, we’re on track to meet that goal and sustain those 500 neighborhoods for years to come. See this map for all the NAP 1, NAP2 and upcoming neighborhoods in our network.

High-level Numbers

We’ve run 3 cohorts so far (Cohort 0, NAP1, & NAP2):

Cohort 0 (Feb-Mar 2024)

• Goals: To see if a group structure helps people build communities in neighborhoods and if we should invest more in this direction at Cabin (short answer is yes).
• How did people find us? We personally invited people in the Cabin network we knew who aligned with this vision of building neighborhoods.
• 7 participants: @jxn Jackson Steger, @grin & @dianacornell, @jon & Lauren Alexander, @camlindsay, and myself.
• 6 continuing to build their neighborhood after this cohort ended. (Jackson got an offer to travel that he couldn’t refuse, so put his work on building local community in Venice on pause)
• Key Learnings: There’s excitement for this work and it feels important to us. Gathering in a group to do this work is helpful. We need more structure (loosely run calls every 2 weeks wasn’t cutting it). We need this to thing to feel like a real, official program.

NAP1 (June-Aug 2024)

Applications + Acceptance

• Applicant Goals: 20 confirmed participants in cohort 1. We were 4 shy of our goal at 16 participants.
• How did people find us? Most applicants came through Cabin’s marketing channels (newsletter, twitter, discord, word of mouth).
• 80 total applications received
• 16 participants accepted (20% acceptance rate)
  • Why? I think some people were using an earlier definition of what a “neighborhood” was at Cabin (a coliving rental project in a remote area). Here’s the MVP salespage I made for NAP1 to show you what people saw at this stage.
  • Learning: We need clearer marketing of what this program is, more example stories, and to get in front of the right people next time.

Program Completion

• 4 participants left the during the program. Here’s the breakdown:
  • 2 early departures (1 wasn’t a good fit and 1 needed to move unexpectedly)
  • 2 mid-program departures (1 didn’t align with the mission of helping new people move into their neighborhood and 1 turned out to not be a self-starter)
• 12 participants completed the program, creating 9 neighborhoods (75% completion rate)

Current Status of Graduates

• 2 are facilitating the NAP2 program (@Shani Graham and I)
• 2 are taking the program again (Kathi and Dahveed)
• 5 are serving as mentors in NAP2 + continue to build their neighborhoods ( @jonbo, Bethany Crystal, Forest Gibson, @Dahveed, and I)
• 5 are continuing independent neighborhood building, but still participate when relevant (Grin & Diana, Cam & Shirah, Stephen Horvath)

Mentorship

• We had 4 mentors in NAP1 (@Priya, @Phil Levin, @Graham McBain, and @Shani Graham)

NAP2 (Sept 23 - Dec 1, 2024)

Applications + Acceptance

• Applicant Goals: Get a higher ratio of good applications and goal of 20 people accepted into the program. Achieved both goals.
• 50 total applications to NAP2
• 43 were qualified applications (86% quality rate) An improvement from NAP1.
  • 11 applicants declined due to timing conflicts (on our list to keep engaging and invite to future cohorts)
  • 4 misaligned with program goals (seeking to build purely affinity-based communities)
  • 2 applicants lacked sufficient commitment
  • 1 objected to program cost (despite me offering a scholarship). They suggested we get outside funding or even consider paying participants to do this work.
• 25 participants accepted (50% acceptance rate)

Application Sources

• Word of Mouth: 30% of total applications
• Supernuclear post: 24%
• Facebook posts: 22% (7 came from Shani Graham’s FB posts, 3 from me, and 1 from Dahveed Kieve)
• Cabin’s Twitter: 10%
• People participating again from Cohort 0 or NAP1: 8%
• Cabin’s Newsletter: 4%
• Talk Jon + Grin gave at Edge City Esmerelda: 2%
• 24% of applicants had prior Cabin engagement. We definitely reached a wider audience this time.

Program Participation

• 24 active participants (1 deferral)
• More to come here as we’re only in week 5 of NAP2

Mentorship

• Expanded from 4 mentors in NAP1 (@prigoose, Phil Levin, @McBain, and Shani Graham) to 11 mentors for NAP2:
  • 5 alumni mentors from NAP1 (Jon Borichevskiy, Bethany Crystal, Forest Gibson, Dahveed, and I)
  • 3 continuing mentors (Priya, Graham McBain, and Shani Graham). I didn’t ask Phil Levin to be a mentor again as no one needed his level of expertise in NAP1 and he’s a busy guy. If someone has a relevant question for him, I’ll be sure to loop him in.
  • 4 new mentors (Liam Rosen, Zu Shi, Trish Becker, and Stephanie Klebba)

NAP1 Results

Check out my NAP1 month 1 reflections and month 2 reflections posts for a deeper look at the successes and lessons learned. Here are some highlights:

Oakland: Emergency Preparedness
@camlindsay and Shirah mobilized their Piedmont Ave neighbors to complete FEMA’s Community Emergency Response Team training, preparing their community for earthquakes and fires. They’re now implementing practical preparedness measures throughout their neighborhood.

Hadar: Third Space, Placemaking, and Weekly Shabbat Dinners
@Dahveed Kieve has been hosting weekly Shabbat dinners for months now and his friends and neighbors are now helping him turn his home into a collectively run third space. Folks are starting to host their events there (a sign that his community is growing into the next stage of community maturity). Dahveed received a small grant from vrbs and is creating an app to get neighbors to start placemaking + neighborhood improvement projects throughout Hadar. Here’s a video he created telling his story.

Porto: Parent-Focused Community
@KathiInPorto and Stephen Horvath brought together friends and neighbors for many gatherings in their neighborhood. Kathi now goes on regular walks with neighbors who feel like friends. She’s also has her heart set on creating a coworking + daycare space for parents. As a prototype she has a group of parents who cowork together at a local kid-friendly coffeeshop.

Olympia: Intergenerational Support
Forest Gibson and his partner Jessica bring their neighborhood together each week for communally cooked meals. When Jessica’s elderly parents were in the hospital, their community rallied and supported them. Towards the end of NAP1, the Gibson’s hosted an intergenerational summer camp weekend for their neighbors, friends, and family that looked like a riot. Here’s a beautiful video he made of his experience in the program.

NYC: West 75th Street Innovation
Bethany Crystal has been kicking ass as usual in West 75th St in NYC. She recently hosted Coffee on the Curb with her neighbors, did some placemaking on her block, created the “Egg Test” to test the effectiveness of her community response to asks for help, and made an amazing AI comic strip to tell you her story. You can read more about her story here.

Boulder: Empowering Neighbors to Lead
And in my neighborhood, @jonbo and I now have neighbors who want to build community with us. We recently hosted an extremely cute block party (we were on a team of 5+ folks who put it on - yay for more neighbors being leaders!) and got one of our friends to move into our building. You can read more of our story here on my supernuclear post.

NAP1 + NAP2 Learnings

Here are some of the most important learnings:

Program Structure

• 13 weeks felt too long. We decided to shorten it to 10 weeks in NAP2 especially when we saw the progress participants were making at the 10 week mark in NAP1.
• We’re shifting the cohort model to rolling admissions to accommodate demand. After the deadline to apply to NAP2 passed, we continued receiving strong applications and have had a few cases where people are visibly distraught on calls when they’re told they need to wait till March to join the next program (good signal of PMF). So, we are going to move to rolling cohorts that start each month.
• I continue to add more structure to the curriculum, clarify the roadmap, and add more polish to the program.

Participant Selection & Expectations

• After the attrition of NAP1, we needed stricter filtering at the application and interview stages to assess alignment. I’ve added questions like “What steps have you taken to build the community you envision?” to the application to help assess how serious and active someone already is.
• I learned the importance of setting clear and explicit expectations upfront in NAP1. Without that we get the attrition and lack of clarity we saw. I did more of this in NAP2, but plan to go even farther with future cohorts.
• I need to further automate the administrative tasks of my role so I can spend more time on the most human, high impact aspects of running the program. Excited to get @grin’s help on this. I’ve also been learning from program designers of highly scaled programs on how best to do this.

Pricing & Business Model

• We introduced $400 price tag for NAP2. Cohort 0 + NAP1 were free as they were our initial experiments. I think the price likely filtered for commitment, but could have deterred some qualified candidates. Some applicants didn’t see the price on our salespage and later told me they wouldn’t have applied (even though we explicitly offer scholarships) if they had known the cost (not good). I want to figure out a good way to improve upon this situation and would love thoughts here.

Marketing & Outreach

• Word of mouth + the Supernuclear guest post were the most effective marketing channels for NAP2. The guest post became #2 most-read article on Supernuclear’s substack. This tells me that storytelling in front of aligned audiences will be an important strategy going forward.
• Success stories and clear expectations on our salespage help attract qualified candidates.
• We didn’t expect seasoned neighborhood builders to want to take the program but many did. @Shani, Forest Gibson in NAP1 had both been doing neighborhood building for 5+ years and wanted to take the program. Many folks in NAP2 have been doing local community building work for years and still joined.

Network Building & Community

• We’re building a network. The program has grown from 16 people (12 participants + 4 mentors in NAP1) to 47 people (24 stewards & 11 mentors in NAP2 + 12 stewards from NAP1 continuing on). This growth means I needed to design the program into a resilient and mutually supportive network of neighborhood builders. We’re 5 weeks into NAP2 and it’s working. The current cohort shows faster progress than NAP1 at the same stage.
• Alumni mentorship is proving mutually beneficial: graduates stay engaged in neighborhood building conversation with a smaller time commitment and get to be of service to others doing this meaningful work.
• To engage the folks who’ve applied to NAP along the marketing funnel, we’re creating monthly Celebrating Wins Calls led by @JD . These calls are a chance for current NAP participants + alumni + mentors to share wins and lessons learned as a regular accountability structure. The calls also serve as a place to inspire the people just starting out and curious about taking NAP. Our first call in Oct drummed up some excitement and some folks are already hosting events with neighbors and making things happen in their neighborhoods.
• Indexing on storytelling. When NAP1 participants shared their stories on social media and in person with their networks, opportunities and valuable local connections popped up. So we’re making a greater point in NAP2 to encourage participants to share their stories.

All in all, I can confidently say that with each cohort we are learning and improving. In NAP1 the right people created inspiring results in their neighborhoods and are well on their way to creating long-lasting, genuine neighborhood communities. Our program is growing and we’re seeing early signs of demand.

I welcome thoughts, questions, and ideas for how we can improve in the comments here or feel free to reach out to me directly, whatever you prefer. I want to make this program the best it can be so very interested in hearing thoughts.

[jon]

thanks @savkruger—great write up & amazing work building this program!

[Kat]

Hi @savkruger! For the point about pricing disclosure, I wonder if after applicants fill out the initial portion of the application but before they hit submit there could be a button that says “next” that leads to a pop up message that mentions costs/scholarships/scholarship/etc…

An example prompt :

“Quick heads up! There’s a $400 fee for NAP2. We know it’s a commitment, so just making sure it’s clear before you submit. If you have any questions or need to chat about options, feel free to reach out!

Click submit if you’re down!”

[savkruger]

Thanks for this idea! Similarly I’m thinking that in the application there’s a question that says “do you want to pay the x rate, the low-income rate, or request a scholarship?” I think that would make things more explicit and takes out a step in the interview for me.

[Kat]

Cool idea — I like that it’s like a derivative of a “sliding scale” approach, which I think is a great step to being inclusive!