Planning for Participatory Budgeting Contributions

Tool for participatory budgeting processes: https://agorapolls.com/

Proposal: Start out with only projects on Open Collective for ease. We can expand to other projects later, perhaps after we have switched fiscal hosts.

In the budgeting thread, there were objections to this restriction, so we removed it.

Forgive me for interfering, but I just got to thinking, if it is useful. I imagine a process that could look something like this (but I defer to @Caitlin Waddick, CaitlinWaddickSocial.Coop @Josh Davis ! Feel free to ignore this!)

• Create a thread in main Social.coop group on Contribution Budgeting. Make clear that this process is advisory, and that the FWG has been empowered to make final decisions, but our goal is to reflect members' input as much as possible. Outline the process here at the outset.

• Immediately create a "Question Round" poll on Loomio in the thread, asking for suggestions for organizations to contribute to. Invite nominators to provide a one-sentence rationale for the nomination, plus a link to where we can contribute. If the contribution is not possible on Open Collective, ask if the nominator is willing to make the contribution and get a reimbursement.

• After the Question Round (maybe a week), create a "Dot Vote" proposal where people can weigh their priorities. Include the rationale statements on each option. Enable participants to still add options if they like. Establish some criteria for how the funds will be distributed, including the minimum threshold of votes for an organization to be included.

• Finally, the FWG will review the results and decide how to most faithfully interpret the input from members. They then implement the results and announce the implementation to the community on the original thread.

Questions:

• Who will take responsibility for contributions that can't be done directly on Open Collective? This requires people to submit a reimbursement request, and I'm not sure it's fair to expect FWG members to do this. Perhaps anyone who nominates a non-OC project should be willing to carry out that contribution and submit a reimbursement request.

• Do we want to avoid making lots of very small contributions? Should we aim to have a maximum number of organizations that we are willing to contribute to, recognizing that lots of small donations could present a large administrative overhead?

It is past time to do the Dot Vote proposal. I have good intentions to get it done yesterday.