Balance This Budget™ is a browser-based tool that lets your citizens or members make the difficult tradeoffs that result in a balanced budget.
Sending out surveys, asking constituents to stack-rank priorities, and creating open-ended suggestion boxes leave elected officials feeling exhausted and citizens disengaged.
The reason surveys and suggestion boxes don’t work is that they only show half of the equation. Citizens lack the information to understand how their suggestions affect the real budget that you have to balance.
Balance This Budget™ lets you set up a simulated budget scenario, and lets your citizens or organization members balance the budget, making the required trade offs needed to get there.
With Balance This Budget™, you set up a scenario based on your current budget, and then offer options for your citizens or members to adjust revenues and expenditures. You control the latitude by which each item can be adjusted.
For example, you can allow citizens to increase or decrease a departmental budget, decide between several “Yes/No” scenarios for potential projects, model the effect of new tax policies you’re considering, and many other possibilities! You then share a link with your citizens, who work within each scenario to create their desired outcome. The catch? Before they submit their budget, it must be balanced! This ensures that citizen input is informed and realistic.
You can use Balance This Budget™ any time you want informed citizen/member input to budget scenarios. Though it’s perfect for yearly planning, think beyond just your annual budget process!
Balance This Budget™ is perfect for determining how to allocate funding from grants, drafting departmental spending plans, and exploring the possibilities of earmarking funds from a dedicated revenue stream.
Balance This Budget™ is an affordable and smart way to solicit thoughtful, realistic input from each and every submission. We base pricing on population/membership size and the length of time you wish to survey your citizens or members.
To get a price, please submit the inquiry form, or email sales@balancethisbudget.com with the details of your scenario, and we’ll send a quote right over.