Fund It is a participatory democracy tool that gives the community a voice in funding projects and services. It can be a powerful tool for building consensus, educating the public about the costs and compromises inherent in any project, and encouraging them to prioritise the things that are most important to their community. Fund It is both an effective research tool for accurately gauging community sentiment, it empowers users to step into the shoes of decision makers and weigh projects against each other on cost, merit and necessity.

Check out our three examples below using Dollars, Points and points for trade-off.

Configure the Fund It Activity to use points rather than dollars in cases where you don't have exact costings or want to convey relative cost or effort. Using the points format also allows you to take away the stigma often associated to the value of projects, removing the $ amount and potentially removing some of the anger around cost. It can even make it easier for people to understand the importance of a project by removing the cost, this is especially useful with younger members of the community who will see value in a project outcome rather than the cost associated to it.

Points can also be used to find priorities or be used as a trade off tool by assigning an equal point value to all items (1 point), and setting the budget to only allow people to choose one. (See third example)

In this example, items are displayed as panels. This format is ideal when using in a smaller page template, such as a traditional main body / sidebar template.

Use dollars in Fund It when you have reasonably accurate estimates of cost and you want to engage people on how to spend actual money. Be cautious when money is involved, as people can be tempted to try and game the system for financial benefit.

In this example projects are displayed using the 'Grid View' which displays each item as a card. This is great when you have a larger number of project cards you wish for participants to choose from.

Variable Fund It allows you to set a Minimum and Maximum value on each initiative. Whether it be based on Dollars or Points, your community can choose to allocate more budget beyond the minimum to initiatives they are really passionate about.

Points can be used to find priorities or be used as a trade off tool by assigning an equal point value to all items (1 point), and setting the budget to only allow people to choose one.

In this example, using potential slides for a new playground installation, shows the items are displayed in a list. This format is ideal when you only have a few items to select from in a tree off format.