The Importance of Prioritising
Any work that has been undertaken to identify your community needs and opportunities is likely to identify a broad range of ideas from different perspectives. It is therefore important to cluster information into themes, which will then make it possible to identify which themes are the most common.
There are different options for prioritising. If you have used digital tools such as Survey Monkey, these can provide an analysis of the responses, producing graphs or tables of results. You can also use a simply tally of similar responses with a ranking of the most common. You can input your data into tools like Excel to create basic graphs and tables which visibly calculate and identify your most frequent themes and help you to establish your community priorities.
It is important to take into consideration what resources are available to you, as well as appropriate timescales for taking forward actions, as some may be short, medium, or long-term ambitions. It is also important to assess each of your options and review scope for social enterprise as a solution. The Enterprise Assessment Tool will help you to align your needs and priorities with scope for social enterprise solutions.
Participatory Budgeting
Participatory budgeting is one approach where priorities are used in community decision-making. Priorities are identified and budgetary decisions are then made based on communities priorities.
The Ayrshire Participatory Budgeting Toolkit is free to download, and explains all aspects of running a PB process. It includes useful example forms, flyers and evaluation sheets. It also takes you through the entire process, from planning and on the day advice, to after the event itself.
Continue to page 2 for ‘Action Planning’…
