Be participatory

Overview overview link

Serving the public effectively and inclusively is often at odds with top-down government decision-making. A participatory approach enables us to open space, unlock community leadership and innovation, and share power — especially when we center marginalized community members typically left out of government business as usual.

Problem problem link

Typical government decision-making does not center the experiences, needs, and agency of the community served. Public servants are often not provided the time, resources, or support to engage deeply with the community. Residents often lack the opportunity, agency, and space to weigh in on the issues that directly impact them. This gap erodes public trust in government, ignores community expertise, and sets well-intentioned projects up for limited success.

Solution solution link

By being participatory, we create an inclusive, collaborative culture of governance that connects us with our communities and unlocks shared potential to solve challenges together. By sharing power and centering those most impacted, we build trust and deepen relationships, create stronger lines of accountability and communication with the public, and address community issues at their roots. This mindset also helps us to build new skills, foster stronger relationships, and reimagine government.

Context context link

Create space people want to be in create space people want to be in link

A best practice participatory approach to public service is built on empathy, transparency, clear communication, and mutual accountability. It requires actively creating and sustaining multiple opportunities and channels for people to participate in every step of a process or effort. Critically, it places the experiences, ideas, and needs of those impacted at the center.

This opens up space for a collaborative culture to emerge that engenders trust, surfaces ideas, assets, and obstacles in a community, and fosters a deep sense of engagement and participation.

Be consistent with community-designed outreach be consistent with community designed outreach link

When participatory processes are done well, public servants feel confident and well-equipped to facilitate decision-making rather than tightly controlling it. Through consistent, deep public engagement, community members feel seen, heard, and empowered. The resulting programs and services are fully reflective of the entire community’s needs and desires.

Mutual trust and relationships that deepen over time reveal new opportunities to serve the public well, direct resources effectively, and address issues at their roots.

Adopting a participatory model adopting a participatory model link

You can grow participatory culture in government on any level — within your team, across your organization, and with the larger public. Participatory processes of all sizes have been successful. The best ones strive to maximize impact and broaden participation.

For example, participatory budgeting has been used in over 7,000 places around the world to decide budgets for states, counties, cities, housing authorities, schools, and other institutions. Community members have used this process to decide budgets ranging from thousands to tens of millions of dollars.

This participatory policy-making (PPM) model can be used for any organizational decision or policy. The PPM process model typically includes six phases:

1. Planning: Assemble a steering committee that is representative of the community to write the rules of the process.
2. Idea collection: Engage the community broadly and deeply to gather their ideas.
3. Proposal development: Work with volunteers and fellow staff to build promising ideas into feasible proposals.
4. Voting: Engage the community to vote on the proposals and announce the winners.
5. Implementation: Work collaboratively with government partners and community members to implement winning proposals.
6. Evaluation: Review the process for insights and takeaways that can be incorporated into the next one.

Moving through these steps seeds a culture of trust and participation that often spills over into adjacent projects and departments. This leads to other benefits, like growing the bench of community members interested in serving their government.

Public servants who use this process also develop stronger skill sets in community relationship building, negotiating between stakeholders (including within the agency), communicating effectively and transparently, and modeling inclusive decision making.

To be participatory, we must ensure that every step of a process is:

• Equitable: Act to center community members, especially those traditionally excluded, in the process from design to implementation.
• Accessible: Directly address and remove barriers to ensure that everyone can participate.
• Significant: Ensure that participatory decisions are honored and implemented fully and transparently, not marginalized as “input” by a larger government decision maker.

Mantras mantras link

• Where there is power, share it
• Center the people most impacted

Checklist checklist link

• Seek out others who have used participatory models to learn from their experiences.
• Be iterative. Create an evaluation plan with milestones and metrics throughout to track outcomes.
• Secure internal buy-in from leadership. Invest in facilitation and relational skill building for staff.
• Develop collaborative capacity and dedicated resources for community participation and engagement.
• Build equity, inclusion, and transparency into agency communications, events, and activities.
• Grow a bench of community members that can serve as ambassadors, leaders, and process co-designers.

Questions to ask questions to ask link

• Where in our process can we make decisions together with the community members we serve?
• Who is most impacted by this funding, program, or process? Are we centering them?
• What skills, resources, and support do agency staff members need to successfully be participatory?
• What data and accessible information do community members need in order to make informed decisions?
• How are we modeling and measuring equity, inclusion, and participation in the process?
• What are we learning from the process that we can build on next time?

Learn more learn more link

• Participatory Budgeting Project23
• Participatory Policy-making Toolkit, Democracy beyond Elections24
• Public agenda research on the impacts of Participatory Budgeting, Public Agenda25
• We Decide! Theories and Case Studies in Participatory Democracy, Michael Menser26
• Dollars and Democracy: Participatory Budgeting, Laura Flanders Show27
• Shari Davis: The Power of Participatory Budgeting, Remake Podcast28