The Commons · System diagram

The Flywheel

Three spokes, each its own mini wheel, all turning on one axle. Individuals never pay. Institutions do.

Service Hours Trust And Verification (Karma & Verified Service) Rewards And Opportunity SERVICE LOGGED CHARACTER PROFILE VERIFICATION IMPACT REPORT PARTNERSHIP CHARACTER GRAPH The Verified Record ONE LEDGER THREE PROOFS 1. Serve 2. Verify 3. Redeem 4. Leverage 5. Standing THE USER 1. Post Slots 2. Commons Fills 3. Verify Hours 4. Data And Grants 5. Capacity Grows THE ORGANIZATION 1. Post Offer 2. Members Arrive 3. Read The Graph 4. Hire Or Admit 5. Standing Grows THE BUSINESS Customers meet new businesses. Businesses meet new customers. Users reach volunteer opportunities. Orgs reach more volunteers. Founding Business Partners and Founding Organizations prime the wheel. Density is the precondition, not the output.

This is the model as designed. Items marked ▹ are architected and not yet shipped. The Commons is pre-launch in Los Angeles, and this page shows where it is going as much as where it is.

The ring is the drive. What compounds every turn.
Dashed notes are mutual. Both sides gain at the same time.
The axle

The Verified Record

One ledger, three proofs. The entities never transact with each other. They transact with the record. That is what is defensible, not the rewards.

InService logged by the member, unverified at this point.
OutA character profile. The foreground check.
InVerification from the organization.
OutAn impact report the org never had before. ▹
InPartnership from the business.
OutThe verified character graph. ▹
Spoke one

The User

Service tracking, reward generation, long-term standing. Each rung has to be climbable from the one below it.

  1. Serve. Service hours logged at the point of service, not reconstructed from memory later.
  2. Verify. The organization confirms those hours. Verification is added here, not carried in by the member.
  3. Redeem. Level gated rewards at local partners. Tangible and spendable now.
  4. Leverage. The character profile travels. Admissions, scholarships, hiring, references. This is the middle rung. ▹
  5. Standing. Level 10 Civic Champion, the summit of the ladder. Karma may unlock future rewards, leadership opportunities, and eligibility as programs develop.
Why Leverage is the middle rung. A free coffee is not why someone serves for a decade, and the summit of the ladder is a long climb. The rung that carries a member between the two is the record itself travelling into admissions, hiring, and references. Build that and the spoke turns on its own.
Spoke two

The Organization

Volunteer acquisition, automated reporting, grant tracking and writing. The only entity on the wheel that can verify.

  1. Post Slots. The org publishes what it needs and when. ▹
  2. The Commons Fills Them. Members are routed into open slots. Acquisition without a recruiter on payroll. ▹
  3. Verify Hours. The org confirms service. This is the act that makes every downstream number real. Orgs hold this power, groups do not.
  4. Data Captured, Grants Drafted. Board reporting assembles itself and applications are written against live evidence rather than reconstructed estimates. ▹
  5. Grants Won, Capacity Grows. Funding expands programs, which posts more slots at step one. ▹
Why step five closes the loop. Funding expands programs, which posts more slots back at step one. That return arrow is what makes this a wheel rather than a service an organization consumes. There is a second mechanic worth naming: members who serve several organizations bring those organizations onto the platform themselves.
Spoke three

The Business

Universities, employers, and local merchants. Anyone who has to decide whether to trust a stranger. Customer acquisition for some, admissions and hiring for the rest.

  1. Post The Offer. A Founding Business Partner posts a reward, a scholarship line, or an open role. ▹
  2. Members Arrive. They redeem, they apply, they interview. ▹
  3. Read The Graph. The verified character graph shows what a person has contributed, confirmed by the orgs that hosted them. ▹
  4. Admit Or Hire. Selection made on third party evidence, not on a self reported line in an essay or a resume.
  5. Standing Grows. Recognition compounds with the specific organizations its own people serve, which closes the arrow back to Spoke Two.
Two ways in. A local merchant is reached through neighbourhood density, which is why The Commons starts in one part of one city rather than everywhere at once. A university or an employer needs only the record to be credible, so the institutional side of this spoke can move on a different clock.
The litmus test

Does one turn leave the system larger?

Passes

Every spoke has an inbound and an outbound arrow

No spoke is a terminal. Cut any one and the other two stop turning. That is a real cross side effect rather than three value props sitting next to each other.

Passes

The wheel turns without cash injected each cycle

Verification is work orgs already do for boards and funders. Screening is work universities and employers already pay for. The platform installs the connection rather than buying the behavior.

The standard

Credibility is the whole product

Between redeeming a reward and reaching the summit of the ladder sits Leverage. It only works if the record is credible enough that a university or an employer will act on it. That is the bar everything here is built to clear, and why verification never comes from the member.

The approach

Density first, in one place

A neighbourhood reward economy and an institution reading the record run on different clocks. The Commons builds density in one part of Los Angeles first, because a wheel that turns properly in one neighbourhood is worth more than one that barely moves in fifty.