281 organizations
How community and civic life works in Atlanta
Atlanta is organized into 25 Neighborhood Planning Units (NPUs) — citizen councils that meet monthly and give official input on zoning, development, and city budgets. Anyone who lives in the NPU can show up and vote; it's the most direct lever ordinary residents have, and most people have never been told it exists. Find your NPU's meeting on the city's planning site or ask at your library branch.
Libraries deserve their own sentence: free meeting rooms, computers, printing, hotspot lending, social workers in some branches — the public living room of every neighborhood. For volunteering, Hands On Atlanta matches people to thousands of shifts; mutual aid networks organize neighbor-to-neighbor help with fewer forms and faster yes.
What to expect when you show up: community meetings run on first names and folding chairs. Come twice — the first time you'll listen, the second time you'll belong.
The Georgia Charitable Care Network is a statewide association that supports free and charitable health clinics serving people who are uninsured or low-income. For everyday people, the most useful thing they offer is a free online 'Find a Clinic' directory and map to locate a nearby clinic that gives care no matter your ability to pay. They also run a program that helps connect low-income Georgians with hearing aids.
Underwood Hills5 services
Concrete Jungle is an Atlanta-based nonprofit that rescues fresh fruits and vegetables that would otherwise go to waste and gives them to people who are hungry. Volunteers pick fruit from backyards, parks, and farms, and the group also grows vegetables on its own small urban farm. Each year it distributes about 1 million pounds of produce to food pantries and soup kitchens across Georgia.
Downtown6 services
Unearthing Farm & Market is a nonprofit urban farm on a once-vacant lot between the Edgewood and Kirkwood neighborhoods, where they grow organic vegetables, fruit, herbs, and flowers. They run a pay-what-you-can farm stand where no one is turned away for lack of money, accept and double SNAP/EBT, and keep a free community fridge stocked with fresh food. The farm is also an open green space where neighbors can gather, volunteer, and connect.
Kirkwood4 services
