Preparing
for PB
Building Your Infrastructure, Resources, and Community Support
Key Skills
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Budgeting
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Project Management
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Outreach & Communication
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Training & Onboarding
At a Glance
At its core, PB is all about bringing communities together to shape their future. It’s an ambitious but essential process that demands careful coordination of time and resources to ensure meaningful participation.
Like any large-scale program PB requires:
- An intentionally planned timeline that removes barriers to participation
- A budget that funds PB operations and ensures a strong, community-led effort
- A clear workflow between your implementation teams, local groups, community members, and a plan to onboard them; and
- An intentional communications plan that spreads the word and shows people how to get involved
There will be contracts to process, ideas to collect, ballots to count, funds to manage, and lots of information to share with the broader community. Although you may be eager to launch as soon as possible, it’s critical to both 1) set aside enough time to plan for the different phases; and 2) develop a thoughtful approach to project management in order to make this a meaningful experience for community members.
Once the PB process has been approved you can start planning the resources and workflows you will need. Thorough planning will leave team members and facilitators feeling well-resourced, on-task, and aware of the questions they will need to answer and challenges they might encounter along the way. A lot of timeline delays can come from an absence of planning before kicking off the process, so it’s definitely worth it!
The amount of collaboration between different community members and government or institutional staff throughout the PB process requires a project management approach that will allow your teams to plug in easily and efficiently. Project Management encompasses the workflows and tools you will use to bring your PB plan to life and allow those supporting or participating in the program to:
Know what is happening at any given moment
Share information with each other
Troubleshoot or adapt if something doesn’t go according to plan.
This chapter highlights the essential steps to plan before launching, giving you practical lessons drawn from our work supporting PB in a wide range of communities and institutions.
One common lesson we’ve learned is to bring the community in early: Don’t wait until the Design phase. Center participants’ needs from the start. Involving community members from the outset helps you plan for accessibility, build trust, and lay the groundwork for relationships you’ll rely on later. For example, before launch, ask Community Engagement Partners about the communications and timeline needs of the people they serve. Their input will help surface the right timeline and processes, and help you establish checkpoints to course-correct during the design phase.
Throughout the PB cycle, this means sharing information clearly and consistently, and avoiding scheduling conflicts with community events. You won’t know if your plans work for the community unless you ask, so invite advocates, potential Steering Committee members, and community-based organizations into planning meetings. Their expertise and vision will shape PB to reflect community needs from the start.
Participatory budgeting is about community-led decision-making. That framework begins with planning
Ready to Get Started?
The PB Handbook gives you everything you need to plan, train, and run a successful participatory budgeting process. Subscribe to access all six chapters, customizable templates, quarterly office hours, and a community of PB practitioners across the country.