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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.

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.

Honest Buildings has created a profile for any building in the world with an address. This platform is the first place that connects occupants, service providers and owners to each other and the buildings where they live, work and spend their time. Type in an address, and the free service instantly finds information about any commercial or residential building in the U.S., including pictures, reviews, Honesty Ratings(TM), open and completed projects, and the people associated with that building, including service providers, managers and owners.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case called Citizens United v. FEC that corporations have a "right" to spend unlimited money influencing elections. Corporations are not people. Democracy is for people.

California Forward's mission is to work with Californians to help create a "smart" government - one that's small enough to listen, big enough to tackle real problems, smart enough to spend our money wisely in good times and bad, and honest enough to be held accountable for results. We're different from other efforts to reform our state, because we believe in the importance of working together and understand that only robust public discussion and the creation of broad coalitions can move solutions forward. California's state and local governments must work better together for everyone. If Californians can come together to restructure the relationships between state and local governments, the experience of other states indicates that in five to seven years, we will begin to see the benefits of better governance and renewed private investment.

Despite the $200 billion per year the US spends in transportation infrastructure, the country has higher traffic fatality rates than any developed nation.

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."

The military spends more than a billion dollars a year to clean up sites its operations have contaminated with toxic waste and explosives. These sites exist in every state in the country. Some are located near schools, residential neighborhoods, rivers and lakes. A full map of these sites has never been made public - until now. Enter your address to see the hazardous sites near you, or select a state. Related story »

If you are trying to organise in a collaborative team, you may be asking yourself: ​ "How do we include people in decisions without spending so much time in meetings?"   "How do we set priorities, distribute tasks and stay aligned on shared goals?"   "If we don't have managers, how do we get feedback, resolve conflict and stay accountable?" ​ You are not alone! We've faced these dilemmas in our own decentralised organisations, and we can help you get unstuck.

Public spaces are an important part of Knight Foundation's work in cities and the communities where we invest. We believe that great public spaces have the power to transform cities. They are where neighbors can meet and residents can enjoy local arts and culture, take a jog or spend time with family. They help to advance civic engagement and the attachment people feel to their cities - both necessities for creating more informed and engaged communities. Recent research by the Center for Active Design shows that public spaces can help to facilitate community connection, trust and involvement.

WE THINQ was born from the need to create a space to explore innovation. The creator, Christian Kreutz has been working as an innovation advisor since 2006. When working with clients he found that the small things were getting in the way of meaningful work. Gathering people together for a workshop or conference devoured organisational resources. Instead of developing great ideas, change makers were spending their time to find creative minds. He found a few online collaboration tools, but these were overloaded with features and complicated to use that they didn't help his clients at all. And so, WE THINQ was born.

Create Collectives for different projects for easy budget tracking. No need for messy spreadsheets! Automatic monthly reports make accounting a breeze.