2024 Policies
Decide how we work together
This proposal is based on opening up individual membership, experimenting with new funding streams and increasing engagement with government:
1. Opening Up Individual Membership: So far, individual membership in PP has been limited to people working on PB who we select to serve on PB practitioner or researcher boards. As PP has grown, this has presented a few challenges:
- We haven’t had a way to include individuals who work on other forms of PD besides PB.
- We haven’t had a way to include people who support PP and are part of the global community of practice but aren’t able to serve on a PP board at the moment (either because of life circumstances or because we can only support so many people on a board).
2. Experimenting with New Funding Streams: At the same time, PP has been faced with limited unrestricted funding for its work and has been overly dependent on foundation funding, which can change rapidly. In our strategic planning we identified sliding scale membership fees as one way that we could experiment with new revenue streams, to secure more stable and unrestricted funding for our work.
3. Increasing Engagement with Government Officials: In PP’s 2023 strategic planning, members identified a desire to better engage civil servants in the organization’s work and membership, to support them and help our programs be more useful and relevant for people in government.
The revised membership model below aims to address the challenges above
About Membership
People Powered has both organizational and individual members. Organizational members are local, national or regional organizations that directly implement, assist with or advocate for participatory democracy programs. Individual members are practitioners, policymakers, researchers or advocates who work on participatory democracy.
Who Can Be a Member
We welcome applications from organizations and individuals that:
Have at least one year’s track record of implementing, providing assistance for, or advocating for participatory democracy programs.
- Are aligned with our mission and values.
- Commit to participate in or contribute to People Powered activities and programs.
Organizations may be NGOs, civil society organizations or social enterprises. They must be nonpartisan - not affiliated with or biased toward a political candidate or party. Elected officials are not eligible for membership.
Individuals may be practitioners, policymakers, researchers, advocates or other supporters of participatory democracy.
Membership Fees
People Powered is a nonprofit organization that is funded by grants and donations. We pool donations in a shared global fund, and our members decide how to allocate them in order to address common needs. Membership fees are not mandatory, but we ask members to make an annual sliding scale contribution if they are able to, to fund our collective work. Below are suggested annual contributions, but we welcome all members regardless of their ability to pay. We also welcome in-kind contributions of time or other resources.
Organizations:
- Any amount is welcome! Below are suggested amounts according to your organization’s yearly income, but please contribute whatever you are able to:
- Budget under $500,000: $50
- Budget of $500,000 - $1 million: $100
- Budget of $1-2 million: $200
- Budget over $2 million: $500
Individuals:
- Any amount is welcome! We suggest you donate $10 to $150 USD annually, based on your capacity:
- $10
- $25
- $50
- $75
- $150
- Another amount
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24 comments
Conversation with Diana Dajer
This is a great proposal! Could be interesting to add participatory budgeting to decide how to invest the fees.
Yes, this is the idea. We tried to communicate this above “We pool donations in a shared global fund (External link), and our members decide how to allocate them in order to address common needs.” If you have other ideas for how to make this clearer that’s very welcome.
Thanks for clarifying! I read the proposal in Spanish due to an automatic translation and the wording was not as clear to me in Spanish as it is in English. I think the way it is written in English works great. Thanks!
Conversation with Alberto Ford
Estoy de acuerdo con ampliar la membresía a individuos que trabajan en democracia participativa en general, no solo en presupuestos participativos.
Respecto de las cuotas de afiliación individual, hemos conversado en persona de que para mucha gente del Sur global, USD 10 puede ser bastante dinero, a lo que hay que sumarle las dificultades que existen en algunos países para simplemente hacer un pago internacional. A eso vuelvo a mencionar lo referido a la diversidad de recursos que las y los miembros ofrecemos en PP que muestran compromiso más allá del dinero.
Por lo anterior, yo no estoy seguro de la conveniencia de solicitar el pago de una cuota individual, pero si se decidiera hacerlo, una forma práctica sería descontar esa cuota del pago por algún servicio prestado a través de PP (por ejemplo una mentoría).
Alberto (and others), @dianadajer noted elsewhere that sometimes in Decidim the automated translations change the meaning of text, so it may be helpful to review the original English language as well, if something doesn't seem right.
In this case, we tried to include text that makes clear that the membership fees would be optional, not obligatory:
"Membership fees are not mandatory, but we ask members to make an annual sliding scale contribution if they are able to, to fund our collective work. Below are suggested annual contributions, but we welcome all members regardless of their ability to pay. We also welcome in-kind contributions of time or other resources."
Is that text helpful for addressing concerns, or is there more that would be helpful to add?
@josh_lerner your text is clear and helpful. Still remains the issue of the practical way to pay the fee. For people of many countries is not easy to pay in USD. I suggest to discount the fee from a service done inside PP (for example, a mentoring or grant).
In general if a member isn't able to pay a fee (whether for financial or administrative reasons) I'd personally prefer for PP to take no action at all. It's not necessarily a good use of our time to set up and manage a system for tracking non-financial contributions. But you're right that if members are receiving funds from PP otherwise, they could perhaps deduct a membership contribution from this, to avoid having to do more financial transactions.
You can find in the following link a video which provides a brief overview of the ''New Membership Policy'' https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zpQN8ooWv9n7NFpX9MFBHwM7Lg1Q-4U-/view?usp=drive_link
Conversation with daniel schugurensky
what about participation in governance, including voting rights of individual members?
i suggest adding a short section on governance. my understanding was that organizations have 5 votes, and individuals 1 vote. is this correct?
This is a good point, Daniel. We will include this point in the revision of the policy. Thanks!
Conversation with daniel schugurensky
there is an inconsistency in section "Who can be a member?"
Who Can Be a Member
We welcome applications from organizations and individuals that:
First sentence excludes researchers: "Have at least one year’s track record of implementing, providing assistance for, or advocating for participatory democracy programs."
Last sentence includes researchers: "Individuals may be practitioners, policymakers, researchers, advocates or other supporters of participatory democracy."
I suggest to modify the first sentence, adding 'researching'
exactly, a very importnant suggestion
Adding that point during the revision too. Thanks for pointing that out!
Conversation with Francesca
I think this is a good policy and fees looks very reasonable, it may also be worth exploring time in kind as a contribution too for any organisations who can release staff/members for time rather than monetary value, however this may already be considered and recorded somewhere else so apoligies if so. This would allow to track mentor hours given, research and involvement time in PP boards and research etc.
In relation to involving more government officials - I totally welcome this and Open Governement Partnerships may be a good place to start but again these don't exist across all geographies but based on their transparency it may be a better place to start - they may be more open to collaboration.
Hi Francesca! Yes, this is a very important point. Fees are not mandatory and in kind and time contributions are more than welcomed. Actually, PP and its programs has been built by so many in kind/time donations from members! We haven't recorded the time and in kind contributions, and curious if it would be a good idea?
OGP as an ally to onboard government officials as members sounds like a great idea, and we have worked with them before.
Conversation with Ryan Ong
Perhaps we can add language that encourages members to contribute more if they're able to pay it forward to enable other organizations with budgets that aren't as big to join the network. In the future, we can also document and include how membership fees have been spent historically.
Thank you for the suggestion, Ryan. One of the ideas we have is to spend the membership fees in the annual planning process. Wonder if there are more ideas about how to spend it?
Conversation with Ervyn Kaffah
Maybe we have to decides about the mechanism to get individual members. Are they suggest from 2 or 3 existing members or what?
And sause this is a network, we can make a plan to recruit new members base on region or skills needed..
This sounds like a great idea, Ervyn. We will integrate it into the plan. Thank you for sharing it!
Conversation with selina chen
In relation to member financial contribution, it may be useful to publicise the costs of running the platform so decisions on how much to give can be better informed.
Hi Celina, with ''costs of running the platform'' do you mean cost of running People Powered as an organization?
Conversation with Rocio Annunziata
Disculpen por escribir mi comentario en castellano. Me parece importante incluir individuos y no solo organizaciones. Entiendo la cuota de membresía optativa y no me parece mal, hay muchas organizaciones para las que no es ningún problema contribuir. Me queda una duda sin embargo: hasta ahora entiendo que la mayoría de los miembros individuales estaban en un board o involucrados en proyectos. Al mismo tiempo se está cambiando la gobernanza para tener pequeños comités temáticos. Me pregunto si todos los miembros individuales deberán pertenecer a un comité o habrá miembros que tengan un rol menos activo, y si eso dependerá de la voluntad de cada persona. Entiendo que People Powered puede tener una comunidad amplia que se beneficie con sus productos, una suerte de "público" o red, pero más pasiva. Quería asegurarme de estar entendiendo bien la idea. Gracias!
Yes, that is my understanding: People Powered would be open to individual members, which would hopefully enable us to include many more people in our community. These members would be able to join the different committees and regional hubs, but this would not be mandatory. Some members could be more passive, participating occasionally in activities, and others could participate more actively in committees. This could also change across years, so that if someone has less time one year they could play a less active role, while still remaining part of the member community.
I was not in favour of extending the network to individual members, but this description convinced me! Two comments - good to resonate that the principle of nonpartisanship also applies to individual members, not just organisations. Can political candidates, local councillors become PP members?
Second comment - it seems to me that the level of fees is too low. Looking at the financial health of my organisation, with a budget of $600 000, we can afford to contribute $300 the least. Especially since you are proposing that these contributions be voluntary.
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