Ghost of Midnight

State of American Neighbors: We want to be and have good neighbors, but it’s hard!

State Farm funded Keith Hampton to conduct another survey about neighbors, this one of 17,000 Americans. Key findings…

• 86% of Americans say that neighbors affect their happiness at least a little
• 83% of Americans would be willing to pitch in and help neighbors who are struggling financially

However, only…

• 25% of Americans know most of their neighbors by name

So… Americans want and value the idea of being a good neighbor, but it’s challenging… three out of four don’t even know the names of most the people who live right around them.

This is the demand that Front Porch Forum is designed to meet… to serve the majority of Americans who want to be and have good neighbors, but don’t even know most of their names yet. FPF is helping to close this gap in 60 Vermont towns where we now operate. In Burlington, more than half of the households participate on FPF. An independent survey found that…

• 78% feel that FPF makes their neighborhood more neighborly

Or, as FPF member Rebecca Foster said…

The brilliance of Front Porch Forum has been to provide a means of knitting neighborhoods back together. Once a neighborhood has the means to communicate, as it does now, it strengthens the sense of community when we know more about our surrounding areas and engage with more folks, more information, and more opinions.