Alex overhears a friend saying that almost everything on their phone - from a grocery store app to their gym’s app- is scraping their data and selling it to the highest bidder. Their own data is changing hands without them even knowing it.
How is this fair?
After struggling with data discrepancies in their focus groups for the third time, the Forest Fire Service (FFS) concludes it needs more accurate and precise data to understand why so many accidental forest fires happen each year.
While deep in the rabbit hole of data privacy, Alex discovers they can take back ownership of their data and become more civically engaged at the same time through an app called CommonAlly.
They create a free account right away to start their new data ownership journey.
While researching ethical data companies, FFS comes across CommonAlly – a marketplace where FFS can post bounties for surveys and petitions and purchase data ✨ethically ✨.
FFS decides CommonAlly is the perfect place to start their new ethical data journey.
During onboarding, Alex selects the most meaningful causes to them such as women's rights and the environment.
CommonAlly takes their interests and auto populates their marketplace to show relevant polls, surveys, and events calls to action.
Coincidentally, Alex just took a trip to Yosemite, and the first survey they see on CommonAlly is about fire safety laws!
Upon onboarding, CommonAlly scans thousands of profiles to find the most hyper-focused sets of people. Quality > quantity mindset wins.
FFS then confirms their pool of allies and sets a budget for their bounty for a survey about common National Park fire safety laws.
Alex takes the five minute survey and learns that the fire pit they built instead of using the designated pits in Yosemite required a permit and could’ve been dangerous (where do they even get one?).
Yikes! Won’t repeat that mistake.
FFS gets to sit back and relax while CommonAlly does all the work – collecting responses, packaging whatever personal data responders allow to be included, and generating a comprehensive report once the bounty is filled.
After cashing out their impact credits from their first survey, Alex decides to treat themselves to an oat milk latte (and throws in a bagel with lox in there too, why not?)
Alex decides to spend the rest of their CommonAlly impact credits on a donation to their community’s local food bank. Pay it forward!
After receiving their survey report, FFS learns they were wrong to assume that park goers knew to apply for a fire permit. In fact, most people didn’t even know they needed one at all.
Alex goes ham and fills out 15 surveys over the next week and attends their first CommonAlly sponsored beach clean-up, donating half of their earnings to charities they resonate with.
Following their survey results, FFS decides to move fire permit applications to the homepage of their website and adds a question hotline.
Park goers are super appreciative of this change and FFS receives an overwhelming amount of support for improving fire safety knowledge!
For their consistent participation, CommonAlly rewards Alex with an exclusive rank of Super Ally, which includes financial perks, product discounts, event invitations and more!
Following multiple successful bounties, FFS gains access to Super Ally insights and reaches out to some Super Allies, like Alex, to join their community listserv.
In less than a week, they got over 15 new members!
With their newfound knowledge of the immense value of their data, Alex can't help but share with friends this empowering opportunity.
Now that their data is back in their hands, Alex feels like their voice is heard and can tangibly see the true potential of their vote. In both lox bagels and civil impact.
From these insights, FFS uncovers the power of having the bridge between quantitative and qualitative data for market research.
And at the end of the day, FFS feels good knowing they’ve rewarded folks for civic engagement (and that they're preventing forest fires just like Smokey the Bear would've wanted).
