Discuss participatory budgeting process

For me, the participatory process for budgeting donations was interesting, and I want to thank the people who decided how to set it up.

I'm not entirely satisfied with how it went, though, which is why I think we should have a conversation about this.

Specific issues for me, which went together:

1) I couldn't find a way to change my vote once I'd submitted

2) The process was not deliberative

If we had had a conversation about which organizations to donate to before the poll was opened, I probably would have voted differently.

In my own case, I used some of my dots for donation to Mastodon, even though I don't feel awesome about the decisions made by Mastodon leadership. My reasoning was that it feels more important to donate to organizations that we use than random other organizations that we might like to support or might use in the future. However, after voting I took a quick look at others' responses and saw that many others had similar feelings, and if I had known that I might not have given dots to Mastodon.

I imagine that others might have been influenced by a more deliberative process in other ways, though.

@Dynamic It is very good timing to have a discussion because we are developing processes at Social.Coop all the time, but specifically now. The Finance Working Group proposed our first Annual Budget this year, which the membership passed. And, the new Organizing Circle began meeting this year, and it will start talking about finance policies soon. The OC and the FWG will meet on Sept 26, 2024.

The good news is that we are all open to discussing ways to do finance policy, and we want to try out new things. We want to be transformative. Let’s be patient with each other as we move forward. We are learning together.

I'll throw in here that I'm not aware of any rule against 'regular' members starting Loomio threads (or proposals). Everyone is also welcome to comment on open threads (like https://www.loomio.com/d/QBtcgaOq/organizing-circle-recaps-2024- or any of the meeting specific agendas) at least for Organizing Circle. I apologize that this wasn't clear!

@Kathe TB

I thought that was the case, but I wanted to check. Things have been pretty quiet on Loomio lately.