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What we do

The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) aims to empower community members to make informed, democratic, and fair decisions about public spending and revenue, by opening up public budgets to meaningful democratic participation. We work with elected officials, public agencies, and community groups in the US and Canada to implement participatory budgeting - a process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. We approach PB as a community-driven process, working with local stakeholders and community leaders to design the process from the bottom-up.

Josh Lerner and Gianpaolo Baiocchi launched PBP in 2009, and we incorporated as a non-profit organization in 2011. We have received institutional support from The Watson Institute, the Institute for Policy Studies, Community Voices Heard, and the Urban Justice Center.