Values Commons - Conscious Consuming and the Open Values Standard

Public-interest tools for choosing and organizing by values, built on an open standard and demonstrated in a working app.

Grant brief · live public draft · July 7, 2026 · prepared for aligned grant reviewers

The Problem

Hundreds of daily choices, from what we buy to the apps we use to where we give, are shaped by packaging, placement, feeds, and a persuasion industry that reaches us before our own values do. The tools that promise to help people "choose well" are often funded by advertising, affiliate commissions, brand relationships, or user data. Their incentives are not always aligned with the person trying to make a better choice.

The collective version is no better. When a group wants to act on shared values, such as deciding where to bank, what services to use, or what to stop funding, the available tools usually require someone else's platform, account system, database, and off-switch.

What Exists Now

Conscious Consuming is a complete working reference implementation. It ranks real options by the user's own values, not by a universal moral verdict and never by who pays. A person can weigh climate, labor, privacy, health, affordability, accessibility, and other values, then compare actual products, services, media sources, organizations, and causes on sourced facts.

Current working state:

• 88 categories across food, personal care, home, clothing, learning and media, technology, money, giving, and mission-led businesses.
• 23,689 entries, including open-data food and beauty products plus hand-checked comparisons for choices such as banking, investing, AI assistants, payments, VPNs, clothing, news, and causes.
• 100 guides and 2,919 shareable comparison pages.
• 100% curated evidence coverage by the app's evidence meter: shown facts are measured, certified, cited, or clearly marked as low-stakes convenience notes.
• Static, local-first, installable, and offline-capable. Values and saved choices live on the user's own device.

The larger public good is Values Commons. It is a commons for values, not one common set of values: people bring their own priorities, inspect the evidence, and fork the decision process instead of surrendering it to a platform.

The Open Values Standard is the protocol beneath Values Commons. Conscious Consuming is instance #1, not the endpoint. The same engine already powers two additional illustrative instances: a learning atlas and a messaging-choice guide. They use the same unedited core, just different data and skins.

The standard and ecosystem currently have three practical layers:

• A portable Values Passport. Your values become a nameless file you own. No account, no login, no identity profile.
• Forkable sourced lenses. Facts and ratings are files. A community can correct them, cite sources, fork them, and merge improvements without asking a central platform for permission.
• A serverless organizing loop. Assembly merges many passports into a shared stance while surfacing dissent; Lens Workshop lets communities patch the facts; Slate turns shared values and shared facts into a concrete action list with reasons.

The uncapturable core runs in the browser and travels as files. The optional Community layer for discussion and community ratings is separate, opt-in, account-light, and self-hostable; the core never depends on it.

Why This Is Worth Funding

• It is private by construction. The core does not need accounts or a central store of values.
• It is open and forkable. The engine, data format, and instance pattern are designed so others can stand up new values-guides without asking permission.
• It is anti-manipulation by design. No ads, no affiliate ranking, no brand payments, no dark patterns, no streaks, no engagement farming.
• It serves both individual and collective agency. A person can choose more like themselves; a group can decide together without surrendering the decision process to a platform.

The reason this needs grant support is also the reason it can be trusted: the project refuses the normal business models for recommendation software. It will not sell attention, user data, rankings, or brand access. A grant funds the time and first-contact work needed to turn a finished principled prototype into a living public good.

What A Grant Would Fund

A focused 6-month phase to take the working reference implementation to first real use:

1. Reach a first cohort. Bring Conscious Consuming to 20-50 values-driven users and learn whether it helps with real decisions.
2. Validate the organizing loop. Take one or two real groups through Assembly to Slate for a genuine shared choice.
3. Make Values Commons easier to adopt. Turn the Open Values Standard and the "create an instance" path into a clearer, repeatable on-ramp for other communities.
4. Improve what real users touch. Deepen evidence and usability only where the first users and groups actually need it.
5. Stay independent. Fund focused maker time so the project does not need ads, affiliates, brand sponsorship, or surveillance.

Six months of work

• Month 1: recruit the first cohort and prepare consentful feedback prompts that do not require accounts or tracking.
• Months 2-3: observe real choices in the live apps and document where the commons helps, confuses, or needs better evidence.
• Months 3-4: run one group pilot through Assembly, Workshop, and Slate, keeping blockers and dissent visible.
• Months 4-5: plan a fourth app with an outside community: define the decision, audience, starter facts, values mapping, privacy boundary, and correction route.
• Month 6: improve the adoption guide for people who want to use the commons, correct its facts, adapt the standard, or build an app for another subject.
• Closeout: publish what people tried, what helped, what failed, what changed, and what remains uncertain.

Requested grant: $35,000. Running costs are near zero by design; the grant funds time, outreach, validation, and documentation.

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.
• A practical adoption guide and new-subject brief for communities that want to build an app around another decision.
• Improvements contributed back to open-data sources where possible.
• A clearer public path for other people to use Values Commons, fork the standard, or build a fourth instance.

Who Is Behind It

Built by Bentley Moon-Perkins, a solo maker working on humane, values-first civic technology. The current system, including the flagship app, two additional instances, shared engine, guide/content pipeline, and organizing tools, was designed and built independently.

Why Now

The reference implementation works. Its evidence is strong enough to show. The public site is static and inexpensive to host. The largest remaining uncertainty is whether real people and groups will use it. A modest grant pays for that first contact without compromising the independence that makes the work worth trusting.

Contact: Bentley Moon-Perkins. Current public home: https://valuescommons.org/ with Conscious Consuming at https://valuescommons.org/app/.