
Report Update: Grant-making through Participatory Budgeting 2025
Our resource for grant making through participatory budgeting has had a make-over. Refreshed and released at the beginning of January 2025, it has been updated to add new content, fix broken links, and reflect Shared Future’s current branding.

Specifically written with community led organisations in mind, it is also useful for front line community development workers, Town and Parish Councils or Local Authorities starting out on using Participatory Budgeting (PB). It condenses our learning from over 15 years of doing PB in the UK.
The guide includes our 10 step model for running a PB grant making programme, supported by extensive templates that you can adapt in its ‘toolbox’. It’s appendices also consider different voting methods, the values underpinning PB and proposals for scaling up PB.
This guide was originally prepared for the Community Development Foundation to support the Community First programme in England, which ran from 2011 to 2015. It was last updated in 2016 by funding provided by the Scottish Government’s Community Choices programme, to support community led organisations wishing to hold a PB initiative in Scotland. It is now in its new improved format.