Your neighbourhood. Your community.
CommonGround is a local community where people swap time and skills — no money, no strangers, just neighbours helping neighbours.
A neighbour three doors down fixes bikes. Someone on your street gives piano lessons. A retired teacher around the corner would love company. A young family needs someone to watch the kids for an hour.
None of them know each other exists.
CommonGround changes that.
How it works
Sign up with your first name and a clear photo. We also collect your full name, address and phone privately for safety — only your first name and town or area are ever shown to other neighbours. Once enough neighbours have joined your area, your community switches on.
List what you can do — gardening, DIY, tutoring, cooking, tech help, lifts, childcare, or simply a friendly ear. You earn Kindness for every hour you give.
Spend your Kindness to receive help from others. You set the rate: 1 to 3 Kindness per hour. A dog walk might be 1. A skilled repair might be 3. No hour is worth more than three times another — but skill and effort are recognised.
Nobody pays with money. Nobody feels like a burden. Everyone has something to give.
The common currencies
Kindness is time. Give an hour of your skills to a neighbour and earn 1 Kindness. Spend your Kindness to receive an hour of someone else's time.
Every skill is valued between 1 and 3 Kindness per hour — so years of training are respected, but nobody can price themselves out of the community.
You start with 1 Kindness. Everything else, you earn.
Love is gratitude made visible. When someone goes above and beyond — arrives early, stays late, makes you feel truly cared for — you send them Love.
Love can't be earned by working. It can't be spent on services. It just lives on someone's profile as a quiet record of the kindness they've shown.
A person with 300 Love? The community just loves that person. No gaming that.
Your community journey
Browse, explore, and send your first connection requests. Your photo is reviewed by a real person before you can participate.
Complete your first exchange. Now you can message anyone, post needs, join groups, and attend events.
Twelve completed exchanges with a clean record. Now you can host events, leave vouches and become a Buddy.
Thirty-five exchanges, vouches from neighbours, and a vote of support from your community. You steward your area, hold its data offline, and welcome the next generation of members.
Every tier has an appeal process. Every decision made by a real human.
Built for real people
Before any in-person visit, your helper takes a live selfie on their way to you. You see it side by side with their profile photo before you open the door.
They also have a unique 4-word code. They say it at the door. You confirm it in the app. Both checks, every time. No exceptions.
Your full name, address, and contact details are held privately and encrypted. Other members only ever see your first name and your town. If something goes wrong, your information is available to police under lawful process — and only then.
Does this look like the person you're expecting?
Code word
River · Apple · Tuesday · Cloud
Margaret, 81 — Her Community Buddy helps her get garden help without ever needing a smartphone.
Tariq — Offers his mechanic skills on weekends. Has earned enough Kindness to get his whole house redecorated.
Priya — Grows vegetables and trades them for childcare and home repairs.
James — Just moved to a new city and knew nobody. Now he has neighbours.
Sarah — A Community Pillar in her area. Has coordinated over 200 exchanges and holds the offline backup for her community.
Dave — Retired welder. Makes oil heaters for elderly neighbours who can't afford to heat their homes. Earns Kindness. Feels useful again.
How your area switches on
CommonGround works neighbourhood by neighbourhood. When you sign up, you can explore and browse — but posting, messaging, and exchanging Kindness unlocks once enough people in your local community have joined.
This isn't a barrier. It's a promise: when your community switches on, there are already 99 other people ready to help and be helped.
Watch your area fill up. Invite your neighbours. Be one of the first 100.
Membership
£10 / year — locked for life
Join now and your membership price never changes. Ever. Plus a permanent Founder badge on your profile.
Become a Founding Member£20 / year
Full access to everything CommonGround offers. Cancel anytime.
Join CommonGroundNobody is turned away for lack of funds. Contact us for a hardship code — no questions asked.
Have a discount code? Enter it at checkout.
The bigger picture
CommonGround starts in your street. But the same idea works in every street, in every town, in every country.
We're building a world where communities look after each other — where skills and time flow freely between neighbours, where elderly people aren't left behind because they don't have a smartphone, where a welder in Scunthorpe can build a heater for a pensioner who can't afford their heating bill and earn the help they need in return.
No advertising. No algorithms. No surveillance. Just people, time, and the radical idea that we're better together.
What happens when you join
Day 1 — You arrive
Sign up with your first name and a clear photo. We also ask for your full name, address and phone privately — they stay in your vault for safety and are never shown. Tell us a little about yourself and what you love doing. We review your photo within 24 hours — a real human, not an algorithm.
Day 2 — You explore
Browse your neighbourhood. See what people near you are offering and what they need. Get a feel for the community before you do anything else. No pressure.
Day 3 — You offer something
Post your first listing. Gardening help, a lift to the shops, an hour of IT support, some homegrown tomatoes, or simply a friendly chat over tea. Whatever you have — someone nearby needs it.
Day 4 — Someone responds
A neighbour sees what you're offering and gets in touch. You exchange a few messages, agree a time, and confirm the details. Before they arrive, you both get a safety check — a live selfie and a unique code word at the door.
Day 7 — You've earned your first Kindness
The exchange is complete. You confirm it in the app, Kindness transfers, and you're invited to leave a vouch for each other. You're no longer a new member — you're part of the community.
Most members complete their first exchange within two weeks of joining. The hardest part is posting that first listing. Once you do, the community does the rest.
What people exchange
From childcare to carpentry, dog walking to web design, home cooking to home repairs — if one human can do it for another, it belongs on CommonGround.
Questions
Free to explore — you can browse profiles, listings, and your local community without paying anything. When your community reaches enough members and switches on, a membership of £10/year (founding) or £20/year (standard) is requested to keep the platform running. Nobody is turned away — contact us for a hardship code, no questions asked.
Join CommonGround and help build something that lasts.