Meet our new staff & board members (then join them)

Our team at the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) is committed to re-shaping democracy and continues to develop to deliver on this goal. I’m honored to introduce you to seven amazing individuals who recently joined our board and staff. I’m inspired by how these new team members are showing up for a democracy that we believe […]

How to make evaluations awesome and meaningful

While evaluations are an optional part of the Participatory Budgeting (PB) process, they are well worth the time and energy required to conduct them. Christine Paulin, professor at the Université de Moncton, and Jake Carlson, PBP Research Fellow, led a PB Network Study Session to share their insights on PB evaluations. See more below for […]

Finance and Operations Manager

Job Ad The Participatory Budgeting Project seeks a Finance and Operations Manager who loves our mission to transform democracy, and wants to make this work possible by building and maintaining our organizational and financial systems. Our Work The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) is a nonprofit whose mission is to empower people to decide together how […]

How would you spend $35,000 to make PB better?

It is that time of the year again! We need your ideas for how to make PB bigger and better. To practice what we preach, PBP invites everyone who donates to our organization to decide how part of the donations are spent – it’s our own participatory budgeting process, called PB2. Submit your idea today […]

Stand with us this #GivingTuesday to build a REAL democracy

What is your vision of democracy? Your answer is probably far removed from what we’ve experienced in 2017, which feels like democracy turned upside-down. Most of us are infuriated with our political process, and angry that our voices aren’t being heard. And yet, we only look for solutions through the electoral process, thinking that if […]

How to Make Civic Data Work for You

Good data is being used to make better participatory budgeting (PB). In Greensboro, they’ve used the previous cycle’s data to set goals and to figure out where to direct outreach to maximize participation – particularly of underrepresented populations. Research from the New York PB Research Board and the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice […]

Building Innovative Networks for Reimagining Democracy

As we kicked off Summer 2017, we asked if you wanted your participatory budgeting process to be more equitable and effective. We followed up by inviting you to join us for our North American PB Network Summer Implementation Institute – where we partnered with experts to strengthen four key parts of the PB process together. Today, […]

What do you think about our democracy?

Parents voting in school election

Please take this 4-minute survey to let us know your thoughts on the state of our democracy and participatory budgeting, to help improve our work at PBP. As a thank you, we’ll send you our “Democracy is not a Spectator Sport” magnet (just provide your mailing address at the end of the survey). Take the Survey Now! Looking […]

PBP News: International Conference, Trainings, Youth Leaders, and Scaling Up

Get these updates in your inbox: Sign up for our newsletter Join us at our 2018 conference We are proud to partner with a team of civic innovators to present the Innovations in Participatory Democracy Conference on March 8-10, 2018 in Phoenix, AZ. The conference will bring together more than 250 community leaders, government officials and […]

Welcome back-to-school-PB!

Today’s lesson: How to learn democracy by doing democracy As schools reconvene from summer break, more and more are empowering students to directly decide how to spend a portion of their school budget through participatory budgeting (PB). One of the best ways to teach democracy is by doing real democracy; PB in schools does exactly […]