Common Agency helps people self-organize their neighborhoods.

We work with local 'Network Stewards' who guide the governance of local 'Neighborhood Networks' and 'Neighborhood Funds.'

Our Neighborhood Networks use digital tools to coordinate neighbors and get them meeting face-to-face, making decisions, and taking collective actions together.

Neighbors who are active both online and offline are invited to participate in allocating their Neighborhood Funds. These can be structured as participatory budgeting, microgrants, loans, mutual aid incentives, and any number of techniques/combinations. We as Common Agency provide exposure and connections with folks who have tried various techniques, so Network Stewards can decide how to move forward.

For this grant, we will focus on the Neighborhood Networks - specifically how to ensure trust of the algorithms directing the discovery process. Studies (both peer-reviewed scientific research and our user research) show that users trust a platform more when they feel they have an active role in how its algorithm works.

Thus, we have been chatting with https://reliabl.ai/ to see if we can incorporate their group data annotations system onto our platform.

This is the first step to stronger collective sense-making as a neighborhood, with the goal to make:
a) logistical information (e.g. 'what kinds of permits do we need to plan a block party?') easier to find and
b) recommendations for matchmaking between neighbors - Network Stewards decide which of these recommendations to use as the neighborhood 'party hosts,' introducing people to each other

With a grant of ~$4,000, we will be able to ask Reliabl to organize co-design sessions with users & potential users, develop an initial tag library, and create UX wireframes for both admins (Network Stewards).

Any extra funds will go towards software development costs (~$22k if Reliabl completes this, though we will do this internally if needed) for the build: both front-end functionality and back-end database structuring.

Join us in working towards a world where we are all proud of where we grow up and grow old.