Participatory Budgeting empowers communities, amplifies voices, and transforms ideas into action. Partner with Civic Trust to build engaged, thriving cities.
Participatory Budgeting is a democratic process where community members directly decide how to allocate part of a public budget. It fosters transparency, inclusivity, and collaboration, empowering citizens to shape their communities and prioritize projects that matter most to them.
Learn about Participatory Budgeting
Process design
There are multiple ways to implement a PB initiative, each with a different emphasis and intended outcome. You can maximize participation overall, or focus on youth or other disengaged populations. Your PB can encourage civic engagement and education, or focus on building trust and communication with your community. PB can do one or all of these things, but not default. We help you design and implement with specific goals in mind so your PB can have maximum impact where you want to see it.
Technology
Technology use and integration are some of the most important factors in your PB design. An efficient and effective PB platform can save you hundreds of staff hours and significantly boost participation, accessibility, and transparency. We help you understand where to integrate technology, and which digital components will make your PB initiative work best for your population.
Strategic Communications
Expanding democratic participation is at the heart of the PB process. A strong communications campaign is critical for your PB to reach its maximum audience, and achieve full potential. We help you communicate in the right way and at the best times because we believe driving participation is central to gaining PB’s many benefits, and with a public process, it’s also just the right thing to do.
Why do cities do PB?
PB is a versatile process and cities may choose to run a PB initiative in a variety of ways to achieve varying results.
"We hired Civic Trust to help consult and provide technical support as we launched a PB pilot in Atlanta. We're glad we did! Both the idea submission and electronic voting phases went smoothly. Matt and his team are very easy to work with. Our project was a huge success and that owes in large part to the work of Civic Trust.”
-Amir Farokhi, Atlanta City Council Member
Our Mission
To improve democratic participation so that local citizens connect with their leaders, local officials engage with their constituents, and local governments promote inclusiveness and transparency.