Shared Tables, Shared Community

Community Plate and the Relational Tech Project approach loneliness from complementary directions: one through carefully designed in-person experiences, the other through infrastructure that helps those experiences spread and endure.

Community Plate creates Story Sharing Potluck Suppers that bring people together across lines of difference. These gatherings are intentionally crafted to feel welcoming and low-pressure, more invitation than program. Participants span a wide range of ages and backgrounds, with a format designed to foster connection across social, economic, and cultural divides. Through thoughtful design and hospitality, each supper creates conditions where strangers become neighbors.

The Relational Tech Project (RTP) focuses on what happens next. It began in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset with months of simple, in-person gatherings—neighbors meeting over coffee and donuts. From there, RTP worked with those same neighbors to develop tools that supported ongoing connection, from shared calendars to lightweight systems for organizing gatherings and mutual aid. What emerged was a form of “relational infrastructure” rooted in real relationships and everyday use.

Over time, RTP has expanded this approach beyond a single neighborhood. Through the Relational Tech Studio, these tools and practices are now documented and shared so other communities can adapt them to their own contexts. Rather than replicating a fixed model, the Studio enables connection to spread through "remixing"—neighbor by neighbor, community by community.

This collaboration brings these approaches together. Community Plate’s suppers will become repeatable practices that can travel, supported by a co-created toolkit and embedded within RTP’s ecosystem. The partnership will develop a “Supper Toolkit,” integrate it into the Studio, and seed its spread through microgrants and national activations tied to America’s 250th anniversary.

The model is designed as a pathway: from attendee to host, and ultimately to community builder. As suppers spread, participants take on deeper roles: organizing gatherings, shaping local projects, and contributing to shared artifacts like recipes and stories. This in turn creates a distributed network of people actively building connection where they live.

Community Plate demonstrates that thoughtfully designed gatherings can create meaningful connection across difference. Since 2023, it has hosted 45 Story Sharing Potluck Suppers across Maine, reaching over 2,000 participants. Post-event surveys show that 99% of attendees report making a new connection, 96% experience interactions grounded in kindness and respect, and 90% leave more interested in engaging in their communities.

These outcomes are reflected in lived experience. At one Portland gathering, residents from different buildings, backgrounds, and languages connected over a shared meal, exchanging contact information and continuing relationships beyond the event. Across communities, what begins as a single evening often extends into friendships, mutual support, and a stronger sense of belonging.

The Relational Tech Project demonstrates how these moments can extend and compound. In San Francisco’s Outer Sunset, small gatherings of neighbors have grown into block dinners and larger events, alongside ongoing efforts such as mutual aid groups, peer circles, and shared communication tools. Across its broader network, RTP has engaged more than 2,500 participants through microgrant-supported gatherings, with hundreds of neighbors using community-built tools on a regular basis. It estimates that a single local “relational technologist” can meaningfully impact connection for roughly 100 neighbors, illustrating how small, locally rooted efforts can scale outward.

Together, the collaboration will operate at a different level of reach. By pairing a proven, human-centered gathering format with infrastructure for adaptation and spread, it will transform a local practice into a model that can travel. The partnership can support hundreds of locally hosted suppers across diverse communities, each serving as a low-barrier entry point into connection and a pathway to deeper engagement.

As participation deepens, attendees return, take on hosting roles, and begin shaping their own local initiatives, supported by shared tools and practices. Over time, these efforts will create a distributed network of community builders—neighbors who not only meet, but continue to organize and care for one another where they live.

Community Plate + Relational Tech Project

Shared Tables, Shared Community

Model and Strategy

Impact

Leadership

Karl Schatz

Margaret Hathaway

Josh Nesbit

Deborah Tien