Cities of all sizes are tasked with creating strategic plans and budgets. Often, this involves collaborating with multiple departments and juggling short and long-term priorities.

Whether you’re working on a 4-year strategic plan, a budget for the upcoming fiscal year, pr a plan for allocating ARPA funds, community engagement can help you set the right priorities for your local residents and stakeholders.

Potential use cases

Here are some of the most common types of strategy and budgeting projects
CitizenLab has been used for:
Participatory budgeting

Participatory budgeting is one of the most direct ways to give your community a say. Your residents can easily share ideas, develop proposals, and vote on their top priorities so you can efficiently allocate your funds.

Budget conversations

One of the biggest challenges councils face is setting an annual budget that delivers what residents need despite budgets getting tighter and demands for services increasing. Engaging residents from the early stages can help you gain a better understanding of your community’s current priorities and make better decisions.

Strategic plans

Plans should be created alongside your community to ensure you’re meeting the needs and aspirations of your residents and stakeholders. Engage them in your planning process to get ideas or break down plans to get feedback on your progress.

Features to support strategy & budgeting

CitizenLab’s community engagement platform helps you launch projects using a variety of consultation methods, without having to juggle different tools.

Surveys & polls

Use a survey to ask your community specific questions and better understand their needs and expectations, or implement a poll to get feedback on a specific topic to quickly understand priorities.

Ideation

Co-create ideas and solutions together with your community members by enabling residents to share and discuss their own ideas on the platform or live in virtual workshops.

Participatory budgeting

Let your community members allocate a budget to their favorite project ideas, and get insights into what they think you should invest in.

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Featured resource to support strategy & budgeting

Read some use cases

We believe that community engagement doesn’t have to be hard. To enable all local governments to tap into the benefits of community engagement, we’ve put together inspirational case studies and practical blog posts showing real examples of how our platform has been deployed as a solution for various use cases.

Tailored solutions for your needs