Solutions
Where Engagement Becomes Action
Run participation processes that are easy to repeat and built to produce real outcomes.
How Polity Works
Polity organizes participation into four simple steps, each building toward a decision you can defend and act on:
Engage
Invite participants, organize groups, manage panels, and build engagement over time.
Align
Find out where people agree, and where they don’t. Surface priorities and trade-offs using engagements that are easy to repeat.
Decide
Walk away with clear, defensible outputs that directly inform policy, programs, and funding decisions.
Act
Turn decisions into shared impact. Through permissioned, anonymized data sharing, Polity connects civil society, philanthropy, and government around common signals to coordinate action where it matters most.
Built on Ethelo’s Proven Decision Engine
Polity builds on Ethelo—an award-winning civic-tech platform used by hundreds of cities and public institutions to find solutions that communities actually support.
For over a decade, Ethelo has helped governments and organizations guide participants through structured engagements that break complex choices into clear components and real trade-offs—surfacing priorities, areas of agreement, and solutions with broad support. The result is transparent, defensible outcomes that leaders can act on with confidence and communities can trust.
Flexible Engagement Models
Single Engagement
A focused engagement for a specific decision, consultation, or event.
Best for
Councils and elected leaders, government teams, foundations, coalitions, and conveners.
Engagement Hub
Turn participation into practice with a single platform for all your engagement needs.
Best for
Governmental Departments, program teams, community-serving organizations, and multi-partner initiatives.
Enterprise Integration
Embedded participation layer into institutional environments and workflows.
Best for
Large government agencies, province/state-level initiatives, social-impact and system change coalitions, nonprofit and civil society networks.
Common uses
- Budget consultations
- Policy or program prioritization
- Funding allocation rounds
- Conference or workshop synthesis
Fee Structure
- Fixed fee per engagement
- Engagement design and configuration support if needed
What it includes
- A branded hub for multiple engagements
- Group management and outreach tools
- Stakeholder segmentation and standing panels
- Engagements templates
- Repeatable decision-cycles
- Automated reporting and analytics dashboard
Fee Structure
- Annual license – tiered by size / number of participants / admin users
- Engagement design, template customization and configuration support if needed
What it includes
- API and system integrations
- Data and workflow interoperability
- White-label or embedded experiences
- Advanced permissions. Team training
How it’s delivered
- Annual enterprise license
- Professional services for customizations tailored to your use case
- Dedicated support
Platform Capabilities
We offer robust platform capabilities throughout each phase of the engagement process
Engage
Build your participant community
- Branded engagement hubs
- Verified profiles & role management
- Audience segmentation & targeting
- Persistent standing panels
- Cycle-to-cycle re-engagement
- Permissions & access controls
- Invitations & outreach tools
- Quantitative & qualitative surveys
Align
Surface shared priorities
- Structured templates & workflows
- Prioritization & ranking tools
- Configurable criteria weighting
- Trade-off & scenario analysis
- Budget & capital allocation tools
- Moderation & facilitation
- Real-time live insights
Decide
Convert input into clear outcomes
- Decision-ready reports
- Agreement & polarization analysis
- Custom dashboards & reports
- Data exports
- Decision records & audit history
- Iterative cycles (Ideate → Deliberate → Decide)
Act
Scale impact across your network
- Opt-in data contribution
- Collective governance structures
- Granular consent controls
- Shared data standards
- Aggregated cross-org insights
- Aligned incentives
- Secure data sharing
Become a Member
Join the cooperative and help shape the future of digital democracy.