Allow us to re-introduce ourselves: Good Neighbor Lab
It’s our new name and logo!
👋 Hi, everyone! Julia, here.
Short version: we have a new name! It just makes sense given how our work has evolved over the last year. 🙂
Cardboard prototype of a neighborhood bulletin board that I brought to my first Neighborhood Feedback Day in 2022
When I realized that this organization is now building neighborhood bulletin boards *and* running SF Good Neighbor Week, I saw an opportunity (and a need… for my sanity) to bring the many projects I work on together under one umbrella. I also realized that many of the projects I’ve been running over the years are thematically aligned around bringing people together, strengthening neighborhoods, and technology innovation. I’m now leaning into my role as someone building bridges inside the city. This means a broader mandate than the name “Community News Lab” implied. So, here we are… drumroll please… 🎉 Good Neighbor Lab. 🎉
Our mission is still to bring community information, belonging, and joy to San Francisco neighborhoods.
And our program offerings are now broader: Our programs strengthen neighbor-to-neighbor relationships, build resident-to-institution connections, and encourage hyperlocal innovation.
(I always give props to President Jimmy Carter for founding National Good Neighbor Day in 1978... people really like that “Good Neighbor” name!)
✨ And guess what.. our very first holiday fundraiser is live! ✨ Thanks to the Greater Sum Foundation for matching your donations through December 31, 2025. Your donation supports my 2026 Community Art Fund, deepening our community engagement with San Francisco residents and neighborhoods experiencing more social isolation.
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Longer version:
One year ago, in November 2024, I filed paperwork to officially be a tax-exempt 501c3 nonprofit. I was very excited. At the time, I chose “Community News Lab” as our name. That name reflected a specific program I had been leading for a couple years, trying to replace San Francisco’s extinct print newspaper racks with digital neighborhood bulletin boards. I imagined that the nonprofit might grow in the future to include even more experiments in keeping local communities informed.
In our first year of operations, I learned many lessons from being out and about in San Francisco neighborhoods. One of those lessons is that we gave ourselves the wrong name. Face palm. The name didn’t fit for two reasons:
Neighborhood Feedback Day in the Castro with our digital prototype, May 2025
Our initial prototype of a digital neighborhood bulletin board was quite literally focused on taking the local news content that was on the city’s extinct print newspaper racks and making it digital. It was a very “obvious” vision for a technology solution, which made sense before we actually showed it to anyone (… you can tell where this is going). As soon as we started bringing early versions of the prototype out to San Francisco neighborhoods, residents quickly told us that they wanted more content on the bulletin board besides local news. In addition to local news, San Francisco residents want to see content like upcoming events, community resources, local art, volunteer opportunities, local pets, and even fun games. So in direct response to community feedback, our prototype quickly expanded to show a variety of content. “News” no longer adequately captures what we are about.
While we were initially focused on the specific technology solution to modernizing the outdated print newspaper rack, we quickly found ourselves being viewed more broadly by residents than a local news advocacy group or a local innovation group (which is how we originally saw ourselves). At our public events, we were asking residents for feedback on our prototype, and they were asking us questions and asking us for help with other challenges they were facing in their public spaces. Feedback from communities helped me see myself as not only a local news innovator with a cool prototype, but as someone who can play a broader role in strengthening neighborhoods across San Francisco. I also started getting invited to “public placemaking” events and “civic health” convenings, terms I wasn’t familiar with a year ago. This broader view culminated in me founding SF Good Neighbor Week in 2025.
The inaugural SF Good Neighbor Week was a success. So we decided to keep organizing this holiday in San Francisco.
Mayor Daniel Lurie and Good Neighbor Lab founder Julia Gitis at the Proclamation for SF Good Neighbor Week in 2025
When I realized that this organization is now building bulletin boards *and* running SF Good Neighbor Week, I saw an opportunity (and a need… for my sanity) to bring the many projects I work on together under one umbrella. I also realized that many of the projects I’ve been running over the years are thematically aligned around bringing people together, strengthening neighborhoods, and technology innovation. I’m now leaning into my role as someone building bridges inside the city. And I always give props to President Jimmy Carter for founding National Good Neighbor Day in 1978... people really like that “good neighbor” name!
So allow me to re-introduce this organization to you. We’re now Good Neighbor Lab. :) Makes sense, right?
And guess what.. our first holiday fundraiser is live, and thanks to the Greater Sum Foundation for matching your donations through December 31, 2025. Your donation supports my 2026 Community Art Fund, deepening our community engagement with residents and neighborhoods experiencing more social isolation.
