PrioritySpend

You've gathered people together to lay the ground for future action that affects them. They could be a work team, a committee, or a community forum. A set of possible options has been suggested. Some might be newly brainstormed, others may have long-standing support. There won't be just one winning option, several can be taken up. But which ones deserve the most investment in time or money? Which ones do people care about most? You've helped organise the people to study the options and talk about them in depth, in a civil and respectful manner. They deliberated about the merits of each option, their costs, and how individuals and the community would benefit or be impacted by their take-up. Perhaps some expert opinion has been sought. Now it's time to make a shared decision about the value and rank of those option items. You can apply a real budget or provide a nominal amount like 100 tokens to spend for the purpose of the exercise.

• PrioritySpend may be used by small deliberating groups or committees to judge brainstormed ideas.
• A design team could apply the poll to decide how many work hours should be allocated to various creative tasks.
• A large company could poll employees about how its training budget could be applied best.
• A local government could offer residents the opportunity to prioritise options for capital spending (this is called participatory budgeting).

PrioritySpend may be accessed on the hosted service at www.priorityspend.org. If your website uses Joomla!, then download the software extension and run your own poll.