Commons. Get started

Hear from everyone.
See what matters.

Commons is an AI-native listening tool for running consultations with hundreds or thousands of people, by text or voice, in any language – turning what they say into a clear, evidenced report of where people agree, disagree, and what matters most.

Book a walkthrough See a sample report
Two residents reading a community voting board covered in red and green sticker dots
Agree 78% of 412 ✓Confirmed by the participant

Communities have always voted with dots on a board. Commons makes it rigorous – at any scale.

Available to the third sector for the first timeBuilt on the cutting-edge methods behind Taiwan's national digital deliberations, Princeton's collective-intelligence research, and participatory budgeting across Europe.

The problem

Engaging your community is hard to do well.

Surveys reach everyone but skim the surface. Focus groups go deep but reach the few. Full consultation costs a lot, takes months, or never happens. So decisions get made on thin evidence, and the people they affect most go unheard.

You shouldn't have to choose between reaching everyone and hearing them properly.

The step change

What took a research team months now takes days.

Commons runs everything behind one question: collection, transcription, analysis and reporting.

Set up in minutes
One question, one link – no fieldwork team
Listen for a week
Report the moment it closes
Ten voices or ten thousand
The same method holds at any scale
What it does

Ask. Hear. See.

Ask.

Pose one open question to the people you want to hear from.

Hear.

They answer in their own words, by text or voice, in any language.

See.

A clear, evidenced report of what people think and where the priorities lie.

What it makes possible

From everyday listening to the hardest conversations.

Shape services around the people who use them.

Ask the open question, hear the unfiltered answer, and design with evidence instead of assumption.

Set priorities people recognise as theirs.

When budgets are tight, let the community rank what matters most, fairly and visibly.

Take on contentious issues.

See exactly where opinion divides, what each side actually thinks, and where the common ground is – measured rather than guessed.

Prove you listened.

Give boards, funders and commissioners evidence of genuine engagement, with every claim traceable to a real voice.

A support worker and a young girl laughing together, holding bananas as smiles Behind every data point, a person.
How it works

One question to a report you can stand behind.

A voice note
🎙 0:42
Becomes a point
“Buses stop too early for anyone working evening shifts.”
They confirm it
✓That's what I meant
It's themed
Transport & access
And ranked
#2 priority
412 voices
Into the report
Evidence, linked to the voice
1

Type your question. Commons helps you sharpen it.

2

Share a link or QR code. People answer in their own words, by text or voice, in any language, on any phone. No app, no sign-up.

3

Each person confirms their own points before anything is analysed. Nobody's words get twisted.

4

Commons organises and measures as responses arrive: themes, agreement, priorities, divides. You watch the picture form live.

5

When it closes, the report is done.

What you get

Evidence you can act on.

  • One report, three formats: an interactive web report to share and explore, a polished PDF, and a Word document ready for board papers.
  • What people said, theme by theme, in their own words.
  • What they agree on, and how strongly. What matters most, ranked.
  • Where opinion genuinely divides, so you know exactly what you're navigating.
  • Every claim carries its numbers, and opens to the voices behind it.
See a sample report
Commons report

How should we improve the city with £1 million?

1,214 participants3,086 contributions14 languages4,920 votes
Top themes
Safer, better-lit streets34%
Youth spaces & activities28%
Affordable public transport23%
Top priority
#1

Invest in street lighting around the parks.AGREE · 78% of 412
Backed across every age group · opens to 96 voices

Where opinion divides
Close the high street to cars DIVIDES BY AGE
58% agree · strongest under 3542% disagree · strongest over 55
Why you can trust it

Nothing rests on our word.

Behind every finding sit the contributions it came from. We're upfront about uncertainty: agreement always comes with the number of people behind it, and small samples are flagged as small. Taking part is anonymous, and your data stays in the UK.

The methodology matters

Proper method, not a word cloud.

Every number in a Commons report is produced by an established research method, applied properly and published in full.

Agreement

Ranked by Wilson score, so 3 out of 3 doesn't outrank 85 out of 100.

Wilson score interval
Priorities

The Bradley-Terry model with adaptive pair selection, building on Princeton's collective-intelligence research.

Bradley-Terry model
Themes

Found by clustering what people actually said. Weak groupings are flagged as weak; one-offs stay one-offs.

Semantic clustering
Divides

Reported between groups only when statistically significant, never on a hunch.

Significance-tested
Opinion groups

Mapped using pure mathematics, no AI – showing each camp in its own words and the statements that bridge them.

No AI in the path
The ballot

At scale, selected by the Method of Equal Shares, carrying a formal guarantee that every sizeable viewpoint gets a seat.

Method of Equal Shares

The full methodology is linked from every report. Read the methodology →

Where we are now

We're building this with the sector.

Live today
  • Web and voice participation, in any language
  • Import and analyse past consultation data
  • Participants confirm their own points
  • Themes, agreement and priority ranking
  • Fair ballot selection at scale
  • Evidence-linked reports: web, PDF and Word
Completing validation
  • Opinion-group mapping and bridge statements
  • Ask-the-report AI assistant

Join the pilot. We're looking for a small number of charities, funders and support bodies to pilot Commons on a question that matters to them, with us alongside.

Get involved in the pilot

Built by Social Value Lab.

Social Value Lab helps organisations plan, measure and communicate their social impact.

We believe that good listening and good evidence shouldn't be a luxury. The methods behind Commons have long been available only to organisations that could afford specialist researchers. We're putting them within reach of anyone who needs to understand the people they serve.

Commons is part of a family of tools from Social Value Lab.

Start listening.

One question. Every voice. Evidence you can act on.

Book a 20-minute walkthrough See a sample report
Or create a free account and try it yourself.