The steps necessary are:
(1) that an volunteer be working in the neighborhood.
(2) that they find your site
(3) that when they look at your site, it contains significant, unique content.
Submittal is not necessary at all. But its intent is to help make step#2 more likely.
Step#3 is, of course, completely in your own control, based on your own expression of your unique knowledge, and on the basic functionality of your website.
Steps #1 and #2 happen based on the availability and self-selection of volunteers, and that part is under the control of the volunteers who do the work, and partly constrained by the ODP guidelines. It is strictly the individual volunteers: the "editing community" as a whole, and the "trustees" of the "foundation" don't even have any power over that.