Photo by Anita Ng
Organizing for PB
Have you noticed all the cuts being made to your city budget? To schools and libraries, fire fighters and social services, and other public spending? Think you could do a better job managing the budget?
Through participatory budgeting (PB), people in over 1,500 cities around the world are directly deciding how to spend public money. In the US and Canada, tens of thousands of residents in over a dozen cities have used PB to allocate over $100 million to key community improvements. This guide offers tools and tips for starting participatory budgeting in your city.
PB is a better way to manage public money. It deepens democracy, builds stronger communities, and makes public budgets more equitable and effective. Building on over 5 years of work supporting PB processes across North America, the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) has created this toolkit to help organizers and advocates start new PB processes.
We hope that the toolkit makes your organizing more successful, and that you send us feedback so that we can keep improving it.