Participatory Budgeting/Co-Planning Pilot Tool
Status: Active Last Modified: 2025-08-12 Deciders: Lucas, Brandon, Michael, Wendy Tags: participatory budgeting, civic engagement, tool selection, pb pilot, co-planning
Context and Problem Statement
SimplerGrants will run a Participatory Budgeting (PB) pilot as a mechanism to increase community involvement in feature prioritization. The pilot aims to empower community members to submit ideas, create proposals, and vote on which features the team should build. This requires a lightweight, accessible, and user-friendly tool that allows participants to vote for features that they want to see the team build next.
Due to the pilot’s short timeline and exploratory nature, the team needs to select a tool for the pilot that allows for immediate implementation with minimal technical overhead.
In the process of running the pilot, we have changed the term used to describe this process. We are no longer using “Participatory Budgeting” in favor of “Co-Planning”.
Assumptions
The PB pilot will be limited to 6 participants voting on 7 proposals
Proposals will be selected by members of the SimplerGrants team, rather than submitted by members of the public
Members of the Simpler.Grants.gov team will be assigned to work on the top X proposals over the course of Y sprints
Decision Drivers
Ease of Use: Tool must be simple for both community participants and the internal project team to use.
Low Cost: Free or existing tools are preferred.
Rapid Implementation: Must be implementable in a sprint.
Customizability: Must support flexible question design and lightweight workflows.
No Training Overhead: Minimal user onboarding or workflow configuration.
Options Considered
Google Forms
GitHub
COTS Participatory Budgeting Software such as Decidim
Decision Outcome
The team selected Google Forms as the tool for implementing the PB pilot due to its availability, ease of use, and immediate deployment capability.
Positive Consequences
Free and widely accessible tool already in use.
Very low technical barrier for community participation.
Allows for quick configuration and iteration.
Supports lightweight form logic and structured data export.
Negative Consequences
Not purpose-built for participatory budgeting.
Lacks proposal deliberation or collaboration tools.
Voting limited to basic question types.
Google form’s limited feature set for proposal submission, deliberation, and voting will likely require us to move to a new tool for future PB rounds
Pros and Cons of the Options
Google Forms
Details Free Google Workspace form tool. Supports surveys, multiple choice, short answer, and logic branching. Easy export to Sheets.
Pros:
Readily available and familiar
No cost to implement
Easy to deploy and configure
No account required for responders
Cons:
Lacks collaborative proposal refinement
Not ideal for structured budgeting workflows
Basic voting capabilities only
GitHub
Details Open source hosting platform the project already uses for technical collaboration. Can be used for proposals and lightweight voting via issues or PRs.
Pros:
Transparent and versioned
Supports commenting and discussion threads
Already in use by team
Cons:
High barrier for non-technical participants
Requires accounts and technical fluency
Workflows not designed for budgeting or voting
Decidim
Details Free, open-source participatory democracy platform tailored for civic engagement, including participatory budgeting.
Pros:
Built for civic engagement workflows
Robust support for proposal development, voting, and prioritization
Transparent and customizable
Cons:
Requires time to evaluate and implement
Potential hosting/infrastructure needs
Too complex for rapid pilot deployment
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