2024 Policies
Decide how we work together
New Membership Policy
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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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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