Crowd Wise

Crowd Wise lets everyone contribute their ideas, and helps them find the consensus about what should be done. Already tried with everyone from football supporters associations, to an arts festival, to a national coalition of charities, Crowd Wise has helped all sorts of people make decisions which are fair, sensible and have the broadest possible support.

Whether it’s used in a two hour meeting, or a two month consultation, for 15 people or for 1,500 Crowd Wise is based around the idea that the best decision is the one that everyone can accept, not the one which attracts the passionate support of a minority. In order to create that consensus, Crowd Wise has two stages.

In stage one, beginning with an open question, which could be anything from ‘what should we spend our money on next year’ to ‘what’s the best way to tackle urban poverty?’, Crowd Wise invites participants to work together to create and refine possible answers. This is a collaborative process, where answers can be merged, split or refined by anyone, in order to create the most interesting, wide ranging and appealing range of possibilities.

Then, instead of voting for their favourite, each participant is asked to rate each idea from best to worst. This reflects that in complex issues, people’s views are rarely black and white. Rather, they may love some options, be able to live with others and find a few completely unacceptable. Votes are then counted (using a system called the de Borda count) in a way which identifies which option has the broadest support. Looking at the results, it’s easy to tell how much support each option has.

Crowd Wise is made for situations where a black and white choice just isn’t possible: where you want to harness the knowledge and imagination of everybody, not just the usual suspects; where you need a decision that reflects the views of a whole community.

Crowd Wise is valuable  for:

• Responding to consultations where there a range of options is offered
• Participatory budgeting
• Conflict situations where people are locked into an either/or mentality
• Elections, which can be organisational as well as political.

“What I really liked about consensus voting is that it allows people to keep moving forward together, even if an individual’s preference isn’t chosen, as it appeals to the greatest mass.” - James Mathie, Supporters Direct