For funders · public-interest infrastructure seeking first real use
Vote with your money, and organize with others, on a tool no one can buy or shut down.
Values Commons is a public-interest ecosystem for choosing and organizing by values. The working reference app proves the model on everyday choices, while the broader commons carries the standard, portable values, forkable evidence, group decisions, and new domain instances. The hard part is built. A focused grant funds the one thing a non-extractive tool can't bootstrap from revenue: getting it into real people's hands.
What funding strengthens
An ecosystem, not a single app.
The reference app matters because it proves the engine on real choices. The public good is larger: a standard and file-first toolkit that other communities can adopt without asking permission.
Portable values
Values Passports travel between instances without accounts, identity profiles, or a central values database.
Forkable evidence
Sourced lenses can be inspected, corrected, forked, and merged with a visible trail.
Organizing loop
Assembly, Workshop, and Slate let groups move from shared values to shared action while preserving dissent.
Adoption path
Communities can build new domain front doors on the same standard instead of starting from scratch.
First-use path
Three tracks turn the commons into evidence.
A grant should not fund vague awareness. It should create specific traces of use: people choosing, groups deciding, and another community preparing a domain front door.
Individual cohort
20-50 values-driven people use a live instance for real decisions, then report what changed, confused them, or stayed missing.
Shared-choice pilot
One group moves through Assembly → Workshop → Slate for a real decision, with dissent and blockers documented plainly.
Instance steward
One outside community scopes instance #4: decision, audience, starter lens, contribution route, and values that honestly transfer.
Six-month proof plan
Turn support into a usable evidence package.
The grant is not for more speculative features. It is a disciplined phase that produces artifacts a funder, community steward, or future maintainer can inspect.
Recruit the first cohort
Name the use cases, invite 20-50 values-driven people, and prepare consentful feedback prompts that do not require accounts or tracking.
Observe real choices
Document where the live instances help, where people get stuck, and which sourced lenses need the most careful improvement.
Run one group pilot
Take a real group through Assembly, Workshop, and Slate, then publish the blockers, dissent, and decision receipts plainly.
Steward instance #4
Help an outside community scope its domain, starter lens, passport bridge, trust boundary, and contribution route before code begins.
Ship the adoption kit
Publish the reusable on-ramp: how to use the commons, fork the standard, start a patch, or build a domain front door. Open the kit.
Report what was learned
Share the cohort findings, group pilot readout, instance steward packet, and open questions without inflating the results.
The problem
A trillion-dollar industry reaches us before our own values do.
Most tools that promise to help people "choose well" are funded by the very thing they should protect us from — advertising, affiliate commissions, brand relationships, or user data. So their incentives sit against the person trying to make a better choice. And when a group wants to act on shared values, the available tools require someone else's platform, account system, database — and off-switch.
People already want to choose by their values. What's missing isn't willingness — it's trustworthy, unsponsored information, and rankings that aren't for sale.
What exists now
A complete, working reference implementation.
Conscious Consuming inverts the model: your values rank everything, in the open, and you can see exactly why. Weigh climate, labour, privacy, health, affordability, accessibility and more, then compare real products, services, media, organisations and causes on facts that carry their sources. It is static, local-first, installable and offline-capable.
Your values and saved choices live on your own device. There is no server to subpoena, sell, or switch off — and the same unedited engine already powers two illustrative instances — a learning atlas and a messaging-choice guide — proving it's a standard, not a one-off app.
Why it's worth funding
It won't sell ads, data, or rankings — so it needs funding instead.
Private by construction
The core needs no accounts and no central store of anyone's values. Nothing is uploaded.
Open & forkable
The engine, the data format, and the instance pattern are built so others can stand up new values-guides without asking permission.
Anti-manipulation by design
No ads, no affiliate ranking, no brand payments, no dark patterns, no streaks, no engagement farming.
Individual & collective agency
A person can choose more like themselves; a group can decide together — without handing the decision to a platform.
It won't sell attention, data, rankings, or brand access — the usual ways recommendation software pays for itself. A grant funds that independence directly.
The larger public good
Beneath the app is a standard no one can capture.
Conscious Consuming is instance #1, not the endpoint. The larger public good is Values Commons; the Open Values Standard is the protocol underneath it. The standard and ecosystem have three practical layers, and all of them are just files you hold:
A portable Values Passport
Your values become a nameless file you own — no account, no login, no identity profile — that travels to any instance.
Forkable sourced lenses
Facts and ratings are files. A community can correct them with citations, fork them, and merge improvements without a central platform's permission.
A serverless organizing loop
Assembly merges many passports into a shared stance (surfacing dissent); Workshop patches the facts; Slate turns shared values + facts into an action list with reasons.
The uncapturable core runs in the browser and travels as files; an optional Community layer for discussion and ratings is separate, opt-in, and self-hostable — the core never depends on it. A movement here is a folder of files. There is no head to cut off. See how federation-by-file works →
What a grant would fund
A focused 6-month phase: from finished prototype to first real use.
$35,000
Over 6 months. Running costs are near zero by design — the grant funds time, outreach, validation, and documentation, not servers.
- Reach a first cohort. Bring Values Commons to 20–50 values-driven users through the reference app and learn whether it helps with real decisions.
- Validate the organizing loop. Take one or two real groups through Assembly → Slate for a genuine shared choice.
- Make Values Commons easier to adopt. Turn the Open Values Standard, Values Passport, and "create an instance" path into a clear, repeatable on-ramp for other communities.
- Improve what real users touch. Deepen evidence and usability only where the first users and groups actually need it.
- Stay independent. Fund focused maker time so the project never needs ads, affiliates, sponsorship, or surveillance.
What we will report back
- A live, free tool used by a first cohort — with honest evidence of whether it helped them choose more by their own values.
- At least one real group using the values-to-action loop, or a clear account of what blocked adoption.
- Improvements contributed back to open-data sources where possible.
- A clearer public path for others to use Values Commons, fork the standard, or build a fourth instance.
Who is behind it · why now
Built independently, ready for its first real users.
Built by Bentley Moon-Perkins, a solo maker working on humane, values-first civic technology. The whole system — the flagship app, two additional instances, the shared engine, the guide and content pipeline, and the organizing tools — was designed and built independently.
The reference implementation works, and the evidence layer is strong enough to show. What's still untested isn't the technology — it's whether real people and real groups will actually use it. A modest grant moves the project from a finished build to infrastructure people have used in earnest, without giving up the independence that makes it worth trusting.
To continue the conversation: reply to the email that shared this preview. We're glad to give a live walkthrough, answer diligence questions, or hand over the full written brief and the deployable preview to host yourself.