September has been an exciting month at Nextdoor. Last Sunday, we celebrated National Good Neighbor Day. This Tuesday, on the National PrepareAthon! Day of Action, we took a big step towards bringing Nextdoor to all municipalities across the country with the launch of Nextdoor for Public Agencies.
Early on, Nextdoor was originally exclusively focused on helping neighbors connect and communicate about local issues. Soon after, neighbors naturally began to see Nextdoor as the lifeline to their neighborhoods to discuss crime and safety concerns. It’s not surprising that residents started requesting local agencies to join the conversation and that local agencies would find this valuable as well. They realized that together they could use Nextdoor to build stronger, safer cities.
Over the past two years, we have been working with select local public agencies to understand their unique needs and challenges. Based on that feedback, we built a world-class service to help agencies easily connect with residents and give Nextdoor members a lifeline beyond their neighborhoods, into their local community.
With this week’s announcement, Nextdoor for Public Agencies provides agencies in any U.S. city or county an online sign-up with agency verification and easy set-up. It is immediately available to public safety agencies including police departments, sheriff’s offices, fire departments/EMS, and departments of emergency management.
This week, we were excited to welcome dozens of new agencies to Nextdoor for Public Agencies, including:
- Jacksboro Police Department – Jacksboro, TX
- Piqua Police Department – Piqua, OH
- Goffstown Police Department – Goffstown, NH
- The Colony Police Department – The Colony, TX
- Mount Pleasant Police Department – Mount Pleasant, SC
- Dayton Police Department – Dayton, MN
- Seminole County Sheriff’s Office – Sanford, FL
- City of Olathe Fire Department – Olathe, KS
- Redwood City Police Department – Redwood City, CA
- Avon Police Department – Avon, CO
- Scarborough Maine Police Department – Scarborough, ME
Nextdoor for Public Agencies gives us the unique opportunity to provide a two-way line of communication between residents and public agencies unlike anything that has existed before. We believe the future of local communication – whether that’s neighbor-to-neighbor or agency-to-community – will take place on Nextdoor.
If your public agency is interested in joining Nextdoor, you can visit https://nextdoor.com/agency to get started.
A very exciting development. I’m sure it will take off in a big way. Congratulations.