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Nextdoor Free Platform for Public Agencies

Engage a built-in audience of real people in your community

Engage a built-in audience of real people in your community

Nextdoor is an essential platform for your modern, targeted community engagement!

Unlock access to an authentic and incremental built-in local audience with an action mindset looking for and sharing trusted information.
Geo-target communications to neighborhoods, specific service areas like wards or flood zones, or communicate all neighbors in your jurisdiction.
Gather feedback, understand intent, and measure indicators of behavioral change with interactive polls.
Your staff initiates and closes conversations and has complete control - neighbors cannot start conversations with you.
Outside posts you or your team initiate or private messages neighbors send you, there are no conversations to moderate.

Which public agencies should be using a free Public Agency page?

Whether you are a large or small agency, Nextdoor for Public Agencies can be used by anyone whose responsibility includes interacting with the public face-to-face, on the phone, via email, on social media.
Executives, public information officers, department managers, community officers or staff, and anyone interacting with the public can benefit from using Nextdoor.
Local agencies may have their own page provided they represent a fully-staffed, top-level department. Some state agencies also qualify, see if your agency qualifies below.
Unfortunately, programs, committees, task forces, sub-districts, and elected officials are not qualified for the Nextdoor Public Agency platform.
See if your agency qualifies

Meet our partners

"Nextdoor has proven to be the most valuable interactive social media platform South Metro Fire Rescue utilizes from a fiscal and interpersonal perspective."

Eric Hurst

South Metro Fire Rescue

"If people in my community don't know who we are, then we have a problem. Nextdoor has become my go-to form of communication with residents."

Corey Dobridnia

Walton County Sheriff

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to get set up with a public agency page?


Our goal is to process applications in under two weeks. The length of time can depend on several factors, including:

  • Jurisdictional Boundary: if an agency’s boundary is not within a specific city, county, or special district, we will ask the applicant to provide a GIS map file of their boundary so that we can use it to create their page.

  • Confirming Employment: As part of our vetting process, we verify the employment of every applicant to ensure that the person on the application is a full-time staff member of the agency. If we can’t easily verify employment online, we may ask you to provide proof of employment.

  • Personal or shared email in the application : For security purposes, we verify the email address of every applicant.  For this reason, we do not allow personal emails (such as staff@gmail.com) or shared emails (such as info@agency.com) to be used in applications.  If we see one of those emails, we will reach out and ask the applicant to provide a personalized work email (such as firstname.lastname@agency.com) to use in the application.

To expedite the process, we recommend applying with personalized work email and, if necessary, having a GIS map file of your agency’s jurisdictional boundary ready to send us. If you wish to send us custom areas to be imported into your page, please follow these instructions.
Why are public agency staff not able to see conversations residents are having on Nextdoor?


Nextdoor is designed to facilitate connections between neighbors. Many of the conversations that take place on Nextdoor (selling a couch, providing a business recommendation, etc.) are not relevant to public agency staff, and monitoring these conversations would require significant staff time. Nextdoor for Public Agencies ensures that staff are able to communicate relevant information with residents, while also allowing for private conversations between neighbors.

Can I invite colleagues to post on my Agency page?


Yes, administrators of the Agency page may invite other staff members to join using the Add Staff feature and you can assign them communicate to neighbors in one service area such as a ward or police district. Each staff member you add will receive a verification email with a link that will allow them to create their profile?

Do I have to use my real name to communicate?


No, but we recommend do you do as. If you choose not too, you can replace the first and last name fields with “Communications” and then “Team” or, for example, “Joseph from” “Communications.” Note the name of your department is automatically displayed above your profile name.

What are the key differences between a Nextdoor Public Agency free page and Ads?

 

Public Agency page (free)

Ads (Paid)

Cadence
  • Ongoing
  • Campaign / Seasonal

Approach
  • Conversational
  • One way / No comments

Reach
  • Algorithm dependent
  • Guaranteed impressions

Targeting
  • Geographic with your jurisdiction via custom polygons you provide
  • Geographic including areas outside your jurisdiction, demographic, and psychographic/behavioral

Management
  • Staff managed
  • Staff, Ad Agency, or Nextdoor Team

Apply for a free public agencies page