Hi Brittany!
Approaching your question I am assuming you already know how to identify, reach and attract the community members to the budget planning sessions. I am also assuming that the issues or the activities that will be discussed and budgeted have been somehow discussed with the community (or even proposed/formulated/prioritized by them), and the community members will be thus motivated to show up and participate because they believe the issues are meaningful and relevant for the community. These two assumptions are crucial. From the way you phrased the question I gather that you are interested in the practical methods of facilitating the process when the people have showed up.
You might want to start at a more general level of relevant CTB resources in Chapter 1. Creating and Maintaining Coalitions and Partnerships (https://ctb.ku.edu/en/creating-and-maintaining-coalitions-and-partnerships) and Chapter 8. Increasing Participation and Membership (https://ctb.ku.edu/en/increasing-participation-and-membership). At a more practical level, Chapter 3. Assessing Community Needs and Resources (https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/assessment/assessing-community-needs-and-resources) contains a lot of resources on facilitating meetings, collaborative sessions, and community-based planning. I would recommend specifically the following sections and the resources listed in them:
- Identifying Community Assets and Resources: Here are some participatory methods for collecting information about community assets and resources, including people's views of the community.
https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/assessment/assessing-community-needs-and-resources/identify-community-assets/main
- Participatory Approaches to Planning Community Interventions: Here you can see methods for participatory community planning; some of these methods and techniques can be used for budget planning as well.
https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/analyze/where-to-start/participatory-approaches/main
- Qualitative Methods to Assess Community Issues: Here is an introduction to the principals and rationale of many participatory data collection techniques, which can be subsumed under the qualitative methods approach.
https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/assessment/assessing-community-needs-and-resources/qualitative-methods/main
- Conducting Public Forums and Listening Sessions: Here is a more concrete topic on how to conduct the meeting in a way that engages people from the community.
https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/assessment/assessing-community-needs-and-resources/conduct-public-forums/main
One of the resources (The Community Listening Forum Toolkit) here has a dead link. Here is the correct link for it: https://facesandvoicesofrecovery.org/blog/publication/community-listening-forum-toolkit/
- Conducting Focus Groups: Focus groups are a flexible format for group discussions that are focused on community issues. It is a research data collection method, but many of its principles are applicable to participatory planning. There are a lot of toolkits on the page.
https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/assessment/assessing-community-needs-and-resources/conduct-focus-groups/main
- For a particular focus on finances, you can check out Chapter 43 on Managing Finances: https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/finances/managing-finances
including Section 1. Planning and Writing an Annual Budget.
Hopefully this would be a good starting point for your query.
Kind regards,
Nikolay
