01Ownership
People protect what they have a hand in building. Participation is what converts an audience into owners, and owners into the ones who keep showing up after the campaign ends.
Citizens already want to act.
Commons builds the technology and solutions that let people take ownership of the problems around them, and give institutions somewhere to put that energy. Volunteering, fellowships, funding, governance, events, and the networks and feeds that hold them together.
Why citizen engagement is the work.
Climate, education, livelihoods: every problem worth naming is too large for institutions to solve alone and too distributed for any single organisation to reach. Governments have the mandate without the proximity. Nonprofits have the proximity without the scale. Companies have the resources without the standing.
Citizens have all three, and almost no infrastructure.
What is missing is rarely willingness. It is four quite ordinary things.
- 01
A way to find the work.
Most people who want to help never find a task that fits their time, skills and place. Discovery is the first thing that breaks.
- 02
A way to commit.
A shift, a slot, a pledge or a cohort: something with a date on it, so wanting to help turns into turning up.
- 03
A way to be counted.
Hours logged, gifts receipted, inputs recorded. Effort that is not recorded cannot be thanked, reported or built on.
- 04
A way for the institution to receive it.
The organisation on the other side has to be able to absorb, verify and report what was offered, or the energy is wasted.
Commons builds that infrastructure. We treat participation as a product problem, not a persuasion problem.
What participation buys that nothing else does.
Three returns that no budget line can purchase directly.
01
02Scale
One volunteer is a story. A hundred thousand, routed well and recorded properly, is a delivery system, and it costs a fraction of building one from scratch.
03Legitimacy
Decisions made with people last. Decisions made about them get contested, delayed and undone. Participation is the cheapest durability any programme can buy.
Citizen participation takes many forms.
Commons builds where they overlap: the technology that makes each form usable at scale, and connected to the others rather than stranded in its own app.
Citizens
Three very different institutions, one set of problems.
Corporates with CSR mandates and employees who want to do more than a payroll deduction. Colleges and universities with service requirements and students looking for something real on a résumé. Schools building citizenship into the year.
All trying to route people into the same set of problems, and all doing it on spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups and attendance sheets nobody trusts at the end of the quarter.
Who we plug into
- Corporate employee volunteering programmes
- College and university campuses
- Schools and student bodies
- Nonprofit delivery partners on the ground
What they work on
- Climate and environment
- Education and learning outcomes
- Livelihoods and skilling
- Other SDG-aligned causes, mapped to goal and target
Engage volunteers, grow the cause.
Where most people start: finding the work, committing to it, and having the hours count for something at the end of the quarter.
- 01Opportunity discovery
- 02Shift and slot booking
- 03Skill and interest matching
- 04Verified hour logging
- 05Team and department challenges
- 06Certificates and transcripts
- 07CSR and accreditation reporting
Fellowships drive change now, and build leaders for later.
The only thing your cohort needs is the Commons platform. Commons runs the application funnel, selection, curriculum delivery, check-ins and the alumni network, so a fellowship behaves like a programme rather than a folder of forms and a group chat.
Campaign, application and selection
Campaign pages, outreach sequences and referral links, with source tracking per applicant.
Multi-stage forms with save-and-resume, document upload and eligibility screening, plus automated nudges for incomplete applications and stage deadlines.
Rubric builder with weighted criteria, scoring scales and anchored descriptors.
Blind review, multi-reviewer assignment and panel scoring, with inter-reviewer calibration: score distribution per reviewer, disagreement flags and drift over time.
Interview scheduling, panel notes and a structured debrief.
Applicants by stage, source, geography, institution and demographic cut; conversion and drop-off at every step; time in stage.
Funnel · Fellowship 2027
- Applied
- Screened
- Reviewed
- Interviewed
- Selected
Review panel · calibration
- Reviewers A and C calibrated
- !Reviewer B scoring above the panel
- !6 disagreements to settle
Outreach, applications and a review panel you can defend.
Journey, journals, learning and mentoring
Phases, milestones, deliverables and completion state for every fellow.
Who is on track, who is drifting, and who has gone quiet.
Private journals, public journal posts and prompted reflections.
Emotion and wellbeing check-ins with consent controls, a personal trend view and an aggregate cohort view.
Escalation routing to a named programme contact, with referral pathways configured per programme.
Learning needs capture, skill self-assessment and gap tracking, with curriculum and resources delivered to match.
Peer learning circles and cohort discussion. A mentor pool with profiles, availability, capacity limits and matching; sessions scheduled, logged and reviewed both ways.
Cohort 6 · this week
- 31 fellows on track
- !3 drifting on milestones
- !1 quiet for 12 days
Mentoring sessionsLive
- Priya with her mentorCareer
- Peer circle · Bihar fellowsCircle
- Wellbeing check-inPrivate
Who is on track, who is drifting, and who has gone quiet.
Alumni, jobs and giving back
Alumni directory with a verified fellowship record, skills and location.
Portfolios and shareable credentials from the work completed.
A curated board of partner roles, fellowships, grants and study.
Referrals and alumni-to-alumni introductions.
Alumni chapters by city, cohort and cause.
Mentor a fellow, review applications, host a visit or teach a session.
One-time, recurring and cohort campaigns, with contribution history across time and money on the same record.
Outcome tracking and longitudinal reporting, and re-engagement campaigns for alumni who have gone quiet.
Open to mentor
- ASAditi Sharma
- RKRahul Kumar
- MNMeera Nair
- TDTenzin Dorjee
Give back this month
- Mentor a fellowOpen
- Review applicationsOpen
- Host a field visitOpen
- Teach a sessionOpen
The cohort does not end; it turns into the network that carries the next one.
Four products carry the fellowship from first application to lifelong alumni.
Fellowship
The whole journey: campaign, application, selection, cohort and check-ins.
FellowshipLearning
Curriculum, assessments, live classes and verifiable certificates.
Learning Experience PlatformAlumni
A verified directory, chapters, mentoring and ways to give back.
Alumni PlatformJobs
A curated board of partner roles, with AI matching and an agent that follows up.
Jobs and Placements
The people who showed up are the people who give.
Your volunteers, event participants and fellows are your warmest donors. Commons lets you run fundraising in the same place you run everything else, so every campaign starts with people who already know your work. Campaign pages, peer-to-peer fundraising, recurring giving, corporate matching, tax receipts and partner payouts, all connected to the volunteer and event records you already have — for nonprofits and their chapters, peer-to-peer fundraisers on birthdays, runs and memorials, fellows and student groups funding their own projects, CSR teams running employee giving and matching, and campaigns linked to an event.
- 01One-time and recurring giving
- 02Matching and payroll giving
- 03Tax receipting
- 04Disbursal to implementing partners
Five more ways citizens take part.
Governance, events, groups, feeds and the systems that receive it all, on the same record as everything above.
Participatory governance. Most consultations collect input and go quiet. Commons runs the full cycle: publish the decision, gather input by web, mobile or SMS in the languages your community uses, turn thousands of responses into a readable summary, and tell every person what was heard and what was decided. Every input carries a status, and every decision publishes what it heard and what it did about it. Consultations, participatory budgeting, public comment, grievance tracking and closure reporting.
Ward 112 budget consultation- Published
- Input open
- Summarised
- Decided
- Closed
2,846 responses, in 3 languagesStreetlights41%Drains27%Parks18%Footpaths14%City events and participation. Clean-ups, marathons, tree drives, festivals, blood donation camps, ward walks. High volume, logistics-heavy, and almost always run on forms and phone calls. Commons handles registration, waivers, role assignment, check-in at gate speed, and the numbers everyone asks for on Monday. Registration and ticketing, waivers and consent, role assignment, QR check-in and post-event reporting.
Lake clean-up · SundayLive- Gate A check-in opensQR
- Team leads briefedRoles
- Report sharedAuto
Registration- EventHesaraghatta lake clean-up
- RoleWaste segregation team
- WaiverSigned
- T-shirtMedium
Social networks. One-time volunteers are easy to get and easy to lose. Commons lets your community organise itself into groups, from neighbourhoods and campus chapters to workplace teams and cause communities, so people have someone expecting them next time. Groups run their own events, recruit their own members and raise their own funds, which means your engagement keeps growing without your team doing all the chasing. Groups and chapters, profiles and contribution history, messaging, group-hosted events, invites and referrals.
Indiranagar chapter · new this month- KSKavya S.
- AMArjun M.
- FNFatima N.
- RDRohan D.
Chapter activity- Saturday tree drive · 28 going
- ₹42,000 raised for the library
- !6 invites waiting
Peer content, feeds and algorithms. A post from someone you know does more than any campaign email. Commons lets members share what they did, and puts it in front of the right people: neighbours, classmates, colleagues, people who care about the same cause. The feed ranks by location, cause and connection, and is built to drive sign-ups rather than scrolling.
From people you know
Kavya planted 40 saplingsNear you · 2 hJoin
Arjun's reading group hit 20 hoursYour team · today
RV College chapter raised ₹42,000Your campus · 1 dGive
Nonprofit and CSR-friendly systems. Programme setup, partner onboarding, budgets, compliance and reporting in the formats CSR teams and boards actually file. Citizen energy is wasted when the organisation on the other side cannot absorb it, verify it or report it, so we build for both sides of the exchange, not just the enthusiastic one. Every system carries your brand.
CSR spend this year · by programme- Education38%
- Climate24%
- Livelihoods22%
- Health16%
Partner onboarding · Sakhi Collective- Due diligence12A, 80G and CSR-1 on fileDone
- Budget agreedThree tranchesDone
- First reportDue in 30 daysNext
Ward 112 budget consultation
- Published
- Input open
- Summarised
- Decided
- Closed
2,846 responses, in 3 languages
Streetlights41%
Drains27%
Parks18%
Footpaths14%
Lake clean-up · SundayLive
- Gate A check-in opensQR
- Team leads briefedRoles
- Report sharedAuto
Registration
- EventHesaraghatta lake clean-up
- RoleWaste segregation team
- WaiverSigned
- T-shirtMedium
Indiranagar chapter · new this month
- KSKavya S.
- AMArjun M.
- FNFatima N.
- RDRohan D.
Chapter activity
- Saturday tree drive · 28 going
- ₹42,000 raised for the library
- !6 invites waiting
From people you know
- Kavya planted 40 saplingsNear you · 2 hJoin
- Arjun's reading group hit 20 hoursYour team · today
- RV College chapter raised ₹42,000Your campus · 1 dGive
CSR spend this year · by programme
- Education38%
- Climate24%
- Livelihoods22%
- Health16%
Partner onboarding · Sakhi Collective
- Due diligence12A, 80G and CSR-1 on fileDone
- Budget agreedThree tranchesDone
- First reportDue in 30 daysNext
Our impact on the ground.
15+Civic Engagement programmes and partners
10 yrsOn the ground
1M+People reached through what we build
10States where this work reaches
The Global Goals it moves.
4
Quality education
Quality education8
Decent work and economic growth
Decent work and economic growth10
Reduced inequalities
Reduced inequalities11
Sustainable cities and communities
Sustainable cities and communities13
Climate action
Climate action16
Peace, justice and strong institutions
Peace, justice and strong institutions17
Partnerships for the goals
Partnerships for the goalsWe deliver across the ecosystem, for the people at its heart.
Communities
The people every programme is built for.
Government programmes
Public systems working at scale.
Nonprofits
Organisations running the work on the ground.
Foundations & CSR
Funders backing outcomes that last.
Innovators
Teams building tools for real conditions.
How can we help?
“We do not start with a proposal. We start by understanding your problem well enough to deserve one. Bring it to us as it is, messy is fine, and we will figure out the way forward together.”
SG
Talk to usSatyam GambhirCo-founder, commons.inc
Civic Engagement programme strategy
Programmes designed with the cost per outcome right before the budget locks.
Service design
Journeys designed around the people moving through them.
Digital platforms
Built to be adapted, extended and used by the organisations doing the work.
Field operations
Deployment, training and handover until your team runs it.
Every product behind citizen participation.
Find, train, deploy and thank volunteers, and show the impact of their work.
Run the whole fellowship journey: before, during and after.
Your own crowdfunding and employee giving platform, under your brand, with every donor relationship yours to keep.
A white-labelled event platform: publish, register, check in and report, all under your own brand.
A white-labelled alumni platform for fellows, volunteers, graduates and former employees: jobs, mentorship, city chapters and an impact cloud.
An AI-first jobs and placements marketplace: curated jobs, AI matching, an AI recruitment agent and updates on email, WhatsApp, SMS and IVR.
A learning experience platform with every content format, quizzes that teach, AI-graded assessments, peer review, live classes, workshops and verifiable certificates.
Surveys for the social sector: build in minutes, collect on web, WhatsApp and an Android app that works offline, check quality as answers arrive.
An SMC app for government schools: meetings, agendas, actions, school development plans and budgets, with power in parents’ hands and AI that learns from other schools.
Project management for nonprofits: organise teams, volunteers and partners into projects and tasks, with lists, boards, timelines, portfolios, goals and a field app that works offline.
Grant management for grant makers and grant seekers: calls for proposals, AI review, due diligence, milestone tranches and reports, plus an AI proposal writer for nonprofits.
Conversational analytics: ask any question about your programmes in plain English and get live reports on learning, livelihoods and more.
Tell us what you are trying to get people to do.
Volunteer, give, turn up, take part in a decision or lead a cohort. We will tell you how we would build for it, and whether we are the right partner.
