About Neighbourly

Neighbourly is a New Zealand owned company founded by a team of individuals passionate about building stronger, safer and more vibrant communities.

Neighbourly's mission is to create an easy way for neighbours to talk and share online, creating more real world connections and ultimately growing stronger, safer and friendlier communities.

In December 2014, Neighbourly.co.nz proudly announced a partnership with Fairfax Media NZ now known as Stuff Limited.

We welcome you getting in touch with us at any stage.

What is Neighbourly?

Neighbourly allows you to stay connected with your neighbours and community using a private neighbourhood website. It's a free service that is designed to make your neighbourhood a safer and better place to live.

Members of Neighbourly use the website to interact on topics such as local events, after school activities, crime and safety, council issues, local services or even lost pets.

Neighbourly also offers a crime prevention service for members within its communities. Members are kept informed of any suspicious activity and can also inform each other instantly of any urgent crime or safety updates via SMS text message.

Once you have signed up as a member with Neighbourly you can do things like:

• Plan a street party
• Alert your community to a spate of vehicle break-ins
• Share a photo of a visiting dog to locate owner
• Discuss what impact Local Council plans will have on the neighbourhood
• Recommend a trustworthy local mechanic
• Ask when the roadworks down by the local park will be complete
• Grab the contact details of a good local babysitter
• Find out which cafe in the area has the best Eggs Benedict
• Share sporting cancellations and updates
• Sell an unused sofa
• Let neighbours know mail has been stolen
• Ask if anyone can loan a ladder for an hour
• Organise a neighbourhood watch group
• Ask for times of the walking school bus
• Discuss local charities and how to get involved

Our Mission Statement

Neighbourly's mission is to continually find ways to help build a sense of community in your neighbourhood. We believe a strong neighbourhood is one of the most important and useful communities in a person's life and we want all of our members to be proud of their small slice of New Zealand!

• We respect the privilege given to us to be part of the neighbourhoods we help build online
• We're for safer, stronger, friendlier neighbourhoods
• We're for using the power of modern technology to drive real world connections
• We believe neighbours should be much more than “the people next door”
• We're for neighbours sharing good times together, and lending a hand during the not so good.
• We believe a lost cat doesn't need to be a catastrophe when a community is looking out for it
• We're for safer streets and street parties
• We're about sharing a summer bbq together, helping out with looking after the kids, and collecting the mail when you are away on holiday.
• We're about neighbourhood watch, emergency response and keeping an eye out for each other.
• We believe fences are sometimes necessary, but online privacy is always necessary.
• We're for helping our members build communities they're proud to be living in
• We believe strong neighbourhoods improve each of our lives and we all have an obligation to do our part to build our own community

Privacy

Our goal is to create more over-the-fence conversations. But we will never forget the need to protect your privacy online. Neighbourly makes it safe to share the sorts of things you feel comfortable sharing in person with your neighbours.

• To gain full access to the site, every neighbour has to verify their address.
• Every neighbour must sign up with their real name and provide real contact information.
• Neighbourly.co.nz is protected by a password and encrypted by HTTPS.
• We will never share your info with advertisers without your permission.

Since Neighbourly became part of the Stuff family in 2017, we have worked together to help make Aotearoa a better place through strong community connections. We still have a dedicated team working to maintain the Neighbourly experience that we know is important to our members, however you can now find our Privacy Policy on the Stuff website here.

Safety

The safety of you and your family is paramount to everything we do at Neighbourly. We have developed a website that achieves this by:

• Every neighbour to verify their address.
• Every neighbour to sign up with their real name, and provide real contact information.
• You choose where your information is shared.
• Neighbourly.co.nz is protected by a password and encrypted by HTTPS.
• Information shared will never show up in Google or other search engines.
• Information will never be shared with advertisers without your permission.

If you have a personal safety concern, report it here.

To learn more about being a member, see our Member Agreement and Privacy Policy.

Using Social Networks Safely

By connecting neighbours with their fellow neighbours and local organisations, Neighbourly can help us all feel safer and more secure in our communities. However it’s important that members of Neighbourly also do what they can to keep themselves safe and secure online.

These eight simple tips ensure that you’ll be doing all you can to stay safe while using Neighbourly and any other social networking websites you enjoy using.

1. Use Neighbourly Settings to help you manage your Neighbourly profile in a positive way. You can choose how much or how little you share with the good folk who live around you.
2. Always use common sense when posting. If you wouldn’t tell your neighbours something in person, then it’s generally best not to tell them online. Only share personal information that you are happy for your neighbours to know.
3. Only use private messages to tell your neighbours that you’re going to be going away or leaving your home empty for any period of time. You may also wish to consider whether you alert your community to the fact that you live alone.
4. Neighbourly is designed to be a constructive positive environment, If you have a problem with a fellow member's behaviour, simply contact us and we'll let you know how we can help. Remember, once your post is online it can be found by anyone in your neighbourhood, unless you remove it. Your online reputation is worth protecting so think before your post.
5. Keep an eye on Neighbourly Site Announcement emails. These include important website and app updates and general site information. Important safety and privacy information will be included in these as well as posted on the Neighbourly noticeboard.
6. Your Neighbourly password shouldn’t be shared with anyone - and should also be changed on occasion. We recommend choosing a password with a mix of alphabetical (upper and lower case), numerical and symbol characters. Neighbourly staff will never ask you to disclose your Neighbourly password.
7. If you feel harassed, threatened or uncomfortable on Neighbourly, please talk to your Neighbourly Leads or contact Neighbourly. You can also mute a user if you don't want to hear from them.
8. Parents or guardians of younger Neighbourly members are encouraged to monitor their Neighbourly usage, read through the Neighbourly Guidelines for Neighbourly Behaviour and ensure they understand and abide by these.

Neighbourly Guidelines

We created Neighbourly because we all want to be part of communities we are proud of. And we believe that a neighbourhood is one of the most important and useful communities in an individual's life.

We believe neighbours should want to look out for each other, and ultimately be neighbourly!

To us being Neighbourly means:

Respecting your neighbours

• Provide truthful information about yourself – use your real name (not an alias, pseudonym or abbreviation) and upload an appropriate photo of yourself to your profile
• Be honest, authentic, and straightforward in all actions
• Show tolerance to each other, even if you don't share similar opinions. Assume good intentions in others
• Only share posts from Neighbourly with the author's permission
• Practice moderation and do not post in a way that dominates conversation
• Send a private message or post to a Group if a limited audience is more appropriate

Sharing helpful information

• Answer your fellow neighbours' questions
• Share information about crime and safety issues
• Discuss community-wide issues without campaigning
• Spread the word about neighbourhood events and make all feel welcome
• Sell, share, or give away items that you no longer want or need

Supporting your neighbourhood

• Recommend great local businesses and service providers without spamming or inappropriate self-promotion
• Strengthen your community by inviting your neighbours to join Neighbourly
• Create neighbourhood interest Groups (and invite your neighbours to join!)
• Provide support to neighbours in need

Being a good neighbour / Neighbourly conduct

Bullying, name-calling, harassment, offensive language, threats, breaching the privacy of another member, spamming or discrimination of any kind is considered un-Neighbourly and will not be tolerated.

Any photos, comments and/or any other material deemed unproductive or offensive by a Neighbourhood Lead or the Neighbourly team will be removed at our discretion.

Breaching the Guidelines for Neighbourly Behaviour may result in your Neighbourly account being temporarily or permanently deactivated.

Safe Neighbourhoods

Neighbourly encourages all members to be familiar with our Using Social Networks Safely tips.

If you or anyone in your community is experiencing un-neighbourly behaviour on the site, please 'flag' the offending content, speak to your Lead or contact Neighbourly.

If you feel you are in an unsafe situation please contact your local police station or dial 111 if an emergency arises before contacting the Neighbourly team.

The Neighbourly Backstory…

It was a chat over a couple of drinks that got co-founders Shane Bradley and Casey Eden thinking…

They realised they knew more about what their friends on the other side of the world were up to, than about the people living right next door to them. While lamenting the good old days of street barbies, delivering homegrown tomatoes down the street, 'helping' put up the neighbour's fence, and running next door to borrow a cup of sugar for Mum's cake, they agreed there was no reason why we couldn't live in those communities once again.

Neighbourly was born from the simple belief that we could all benefit from knowing a few more of the people living around us.

New Zealand is a pretty amazing place to live. But it's also a very different place to the country we grew up in…

In those days we didn't have Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. We communicated with our friends around the world via snail mail or paid through the nose for a phone call with whopping delays and a crackling line. And we certainly weren't following the fortunes of Lady Gaga.

Our 'social interaction' relied on the people we physically met or talked to each day and a good amount of these interactions took place with the people who lived around or next door to us. Life was simpler. We chatted to our neighbours. We hung over the back fence and talked about the weather. We borrowed a cup of sugar. We asked them to 'mind the kids'. We swapped a bag of lemons for a bag of homegrown tomatoes. You could even call the Neighbourhood the 'original social network'.

These networks also looked after one another – and kept an eye out for each other. In times of need, communities rallied together and dealt with issues collectively. Neighbours could rely on each other.

At Neighbourly we believe everyone still wants to be part of a strong community – however these days our busy lives often get in the way. Many of us have simply forgotten how to meet our neighbours – and for some of us the thought of walking next door is terrifying. We're more comfortable jumping online and catching up with our friends across the country and around the world – rather than chatting over the back fence.

Neighbourly is a tool that makes it easier to kickstart relationship building in our communities. In an ideal world we'd pop next door and introduce ourselves to our neighbours – but this simply isn't how most of us do things these days. Neighbourly makes meeting the neighbours easy. It helps get that 'difficult' first introduction out of the way – and hopefully even starts a few face-to-face interactions.

By meeting just a couple of extra people living around us, we'll start to build a stronger, safer and friendlier place to call home. Because when neighbours connect good things happen.