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Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. Most examples involve city governments that have opened up decisions around municipal budgets, such as overall priorities and choice of new investments, to citizen assemblies. In other cases, states, counties, schools, universities, housing authorities, and coalitions of community groups have used participatory budgeting to open up spending decisions to democratic participation.

"Participatory Budgeting is perhaps the greatest innovation in municipal governance in the United States in the last five years, and it has grown rapidly. Originating in Porto Alegre, Brazil-where 20 percent of the municipal budget is now allocated this way-PB has spread quickly throughout Brazil and Latin America over the past two decades. It's currently in place in roughly fifteen hundred municipalities throughout the world, but U.S. municipalities have been late adopters." This is one of the best community empowerment tools out there. Trouble is most communities aren't empowered enough to implement it.

National Priorities Project is a national non-profit, non-partisan research organization dedicated to making complex federal budget information transparent and accessible so people can prioritize and influence how their tax dollars are spent. Read on to learn more!

We support public sector and community groups in developing participatory budgeting processes in their local areas within the UK. We are working with the Department for Communities and Local Government in rolling out and supporting their programme of participatory budgeting pilots.

The Center for Priority Based Budgeting™ (CPBB), a Denver, Colorado-based, mission driven, organization established in 2010, provides technical and advisory services to assist local governments, school districts and other non-profit agencies achieve Fiscal Health and Wellness through Priority Based Budgeting. This creative and innovative process, developed by CPBB, enables communities to reassess their priorities in order to make sound, long-term funding decisions. Establishing a non-profit solidifies CPBB's mission of being a trusted advisor and a dependable, objective resource, assisting local government leaders who are seeking service excellence, transparency to their stakeholders and a strong desire to achieve the Results that are important to their community.

OUR MISSION: The California Budget Project engages in independent fiscal and policy analysis and public education with the goal of improving public policies affecting the economic and social well-being of low- and middle-income Californians. The CBP believes that information can help give voice to those who often go unheard in budget and policy debates. "Knowledge," as the saying goes, "is power." Since 1995, the CBP has worked to make the budget more understandable and to shed light on how budget and related policy decisions can affect the lives of low- and middle-income Californians.

This publication draws on examples of public engagement in city and county budgeting throughout California and describes six general approaches that local agencies use, often in strategic combination, to involve residents in the budget process.

HOW IT WORKS MUNICIPALITIES SUBMIT PROJECTS TO CITIZINVESTOR.COM. These are projects that have already been scored, department-approved and only lack one thing - funding. Projects range from building a new park to installing speed bumps or adding a few parking spaces to your neighborhood library. The list of these projects for any city is nearly endless. Currently, these projects sit on a long-list behind other budget priorities, especially now when local government budgets are tighter than ever before. CITIZENS INVEST IN THE PROJECTS THEY CARE ABOUT MOST. For the first time ever, we are giving citizens the opportunity to tell government exactly where they want their dollars spent. Citizens can find projects that their local government has posted on Citizinvestor.com and pledge to invest any amount they wish towards the project. Not only can citizens invest in projects from their local governments, but Citizinvestor also gives citizens the opportunity to petition for new projects that local government either hasn't thought of or hasn't approved. ONCE A PROJECT IS 100% FUNDED, THE PROJECT IS BUILT!

The California Budget Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research group working to improve public policies that affect low- and middle-income Californians through independent research, budget and policy analysis, and public education. Since 1995, the CBP has served as a resource for policymakers, advocates, community leaders, interested citizens, and the media.

How does it work? We give you 602 million dollars. It's your job to balance the budget while funding the many important responsibilities of city government. We'll give you some guidelines - what do the departments do? What happens if you give them more-or less - money?

We are a nonpartisan research and policy institute. We pursue federal and state policies designed both to reduce poverty and inequality and to restore fiscal responsibility in equitable and effective ways. We apply our deep expertise in budget and tax issues and in programs and policies that help low-income people, in order to help inform debates and achieve better policy outcomes.

Series of articles in support of the Self-Directed Services and Personal Budgets project in Australia

The Guide shows how to get your school working with Participatory Budgeting (PB). The PB process creates an experiential learning environment for community engagement at a local level. Students are challenged to think about community needs and issues, exploring their environment. They are then empowered to design and implement a solution, taking shared ownership of their school community. They will gain a new attachment to their community; a sense of pride that comes with civic contribution. And they will build a stronger, more collaborative relationship with school administration, one another, and the community at large.

From 2014 to 2015, more than 70,000 residents across the United States and Canada directly decided how their cities and districts should spend nearly $50 million in public funds through a process known as participatory budgeting (PB). PB is among the fastest growing forms of public engagement in local governance, having expanded to 46 communities in the U.S. and Canada in just 6 years.

As most of you know, it was our desire from the very beginning of our partnership to create a not-for-profit environment that could support and sustain our work in not only providing advisory services to local governments across the country but also to find ways to continue our research efforts to better understand the fiscal conditions that are impacting local governments from coast to coast. Utilizing a business development technique found in the private sector, the Center was being "incubated" by another successful not-for-profit organization that also serves local governments. Graduating from the incubator in 2013, CPBB is now working with over 60 organizations who have implemented or are currently implementing the processes and tools of Fiscal Health and Priority Based Budgeting.

The PBNYC example reminds us that pilot programs are useful testing grounds, but promising experiments are unlikely to translate into large-scale successes without careful effort. Such a transformation requires shifts in strategy and tactics, matched with steadfastness in mission and values. Those interested in government innovation can learn a lot from watching PBNYC as it charts this course for participatory budgeting processes around the world.

Across the country, and throughout the world, many large and small groups of individuals and families, in partnership with businesses and governments, are in the process of making a new system - where people know what they are entitled to and can allocate the money that is assigned for their benefit.. This system is called Self-Directed Support, or Consumer-Directed Care. Variations of these terms are used in Education and Health Care. Internationally, this trend towards personalisation of funding is well-advanced. In Australia it is beginning in disability, accident compensation, aged care and soon in technical and vocational education. But Australian governments and institutions have been very slow to pick it up. We aim to pull them into the 21st century.

Our local governments are struggling to serve us all. Budget cuts and bureaucracy aren't helping. With the combined power of the web, technology, and our voices, the tools for change are in our hands. Open Impact is calling on you to lead the charge for revolutionizing the way our city governments deliver services and interact with residents.

The fundamental question revolves around what interest rate to use to calculate the cost in today's dollars of the government's future receipts. The government makes loans today and receives interest payments and principal repayments over a period of as much as thirty years. The only way to make a fair comparison between different loan programs, or between a grant program and a subsidized loan program, is to calculate the cost in today's dollars.

Fiscal policy can be a matter of life and death David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu "Then the president of Iceland took a radical step: asking the people what they wanted to do. In March 2010, 93% of the Icelandic people voted against financing a bailout for foreign savers of Icesave Bank through draconian budget cuts. Instead, Iceland stabilized healthcare spending. Thanks to this boost to the nation's universal healthcare system, no one lost access to healthcare even as the cost of imported medicines rose as an effect of the devaluation of the Icelandic Krona. There was no significant rise in suicides or depression. Nor were there any significant infectious disease outbreaks. Indeed, last year GDP growth was 2.7%, and unemployment rates have fallen below 5%. Having seen the results, the IMF turned tail, praising Iceland's successful approach."