FAQs

The Participataory Budget tool enables participants to allocate funding (or points, if chosen) against specified programs, features, or projects. Project Admins are able to create cards for each budget item and participants can choose which items to fund.

The budget tool can eb used as a stand-alone tool but is best used as part of your overall budgeting strategy. You can use it for a range of projects such as:

• Annual budget planning
• Project selection
• Community projects
• Phased projects
• Grant awards
• Internal initiatives

For Project Admins, the Participatory Budgeting Tool helps to: ill help you to:

• Support your annual budget consultations by enabling participants to Identify which projects or services should be funded 
• Understand particpant concerns around a  long-term plan or strategy and to identify how a related fixed budget should be prioritised for spending on set activites
• Provide additional information alongside other tools such as Places and Ideas tools to increase understanding your participants' participants.   

For example, if this approach was adopted to help plan Highways and Transport infrastructure projects to increase walking and cycling opportunities, your Places tool could show 10 key areas where a need has been identified.  If used alongisde the Participatory Budget Tool, participants could then allocate points to the areas that need the most urgent work.

For participants, the Participatory Budgeting Tool facilitates an understanding of:

• the relationship between available funding and spending
• the bottom-line effects of making specific decisions
• the need for (sometimes difficult) trade-offs
• thier role in helping make those trade-offs

For everyone. the Participatory Budgeting Tool can also:

• enoucrage a more "compromising" mindset 
• facilitate strategic thinking
• create empathy for decision-makers who have to make choices and wrangle with limited spending 

Key Participatory Budgeting Tool attributes inlcude:

• Restricted budgeting:  Project Admins can set a restircted total budget spend using currency or points. 
• Either set units for allocation according to local currency or choose to use a generic points system.
• The tool can be set to encourage prioritization rather than allocation of specific values, which can be useful to understand participant priorities during a project's scoping period. 
• A comments option to encourage open discussion.
• An option to allow image upload to facilitate visual engagement with the budget items.
• Enables the filtering of budget items using specific categories assigne by you as the Project Admin.
• Enables Project Admins to embed this tool in other websites using an embed code or Iframe.  This allows direct data collection or it can act as a banner signposting users to your project page. . 

Some of the biggest challenges of running a participatory budgeting project and thier solutions include:

• Lack of community understanding and awareness - find ways of making difficult information more accessible, provide clear instructions and ensure you have a good communication and comms plan, which includes a "warm up" period.  Have a strong call to action!
• Making financial and other information accessible and digestible - keep written details short, use widgets to provide more detailed information, provide explanatory info graphics, images and videos. Try using the "News" function to provide. breakdowns of key information on different topics. Use imagery in surveys
• Generating interest - needs support from a communications and engagement plan
• Engaging those "seldom heard" - avoid a one size fits all approach in presentation and comms and engagement plan.  Adapt as necessary for communities (e.g. Easy Read, paper copies")
• Increasing two-way engagement -  use the ideas tools for people to upload thier own ideas on how to save money, or make service improvements. Consider using the Place (mapping) Tool to map out community projects and ask the community to prioritise them.

The 3 C's of Budget Engagment planning can help you to avoid many pitfalls and inlcude:

1. Constraints: 
   • Replicating any constraints, which may be legislative or spending
2. Context:
   • Explain importance of budgeting
   • Explain history, rationale and current situation
   • Support with video/visualisations
3. Consequence:
   • Explain any implications of not spending on a service/project
   • Explain any trade-offs?

Finally consider the issue of Communication:

• Create a coomunication strategy
• Create information/key messages for elected members 
• Report back to close the feedback loop (aim for reporting within 12 weeks of a project closing)

Participants can use this tool to:

• Select budget items to read a full description about them.
• Select which items they would like to see funded by selecting them or removing them from the selection list.
• Use the reducing budget total to track their spend as they allocate or remove funding.
• Comment on budget items, where a Project Admin has turned the comments on.

Participants can't see allocations made by other participants. We recommend  inlcuding a report on this tool either singly or in your main project report.  Government guidance suggests reporting on your project within 12 weeks of your project closing, as this helps close the engement loop and build trust with your participants.  

Project Admins (Sub Hub Mangers and Super Admins) can download a CSV export report of budget items within the tool and save this in Excel format.  The report will inlcude both a count and the percentage of users who have allocated to each item.  

We recommend reporting on this tool in your main project report.  Government guidance (opens in new window) recommends reporting back to participants within 12 weeks of a project closing to help close the engaement loop and build trust with your participants.