Use Cases
There are many different types of organisations and processes that Cobudget can be used for. Our top 4 use cases are:
- Teams & entire Organizations: to collaboratively allocate resources to costs of all types and new projects.
- Cooperatives: to allocate surplus or agree their annual budgets
- Membership organizations/networks: to engage a paying (monthly, quarterly or annually recurring) member community in financial decisions; to allocate grants
- Self-organized Communities & Networks: for funding a commons within a network. They tend to consist of a diversity of individuals and entities (both profit and non-profit) in multiple locations.
More about each use case
1. Teams and Organisations
Cobudget is used for teams or entire organisations to collaboratively allocate resources to costs of all types and new projects.
Common objectives
- To increase engagement among employees in a tangible way.
- tap into innovation potential
How it works:
A fixed budget for an area of the organization is allocated collaboratively. Examples of budgets:
Operational costs: events, travel, office furniture, well-being & team building activities
Strategic projects: innovation, exploring new products / services, prototypes, new ideas (i.e. running a contest)
Operational costs: events, travel, office furniture, well-being & team building activities
Strategic projects: innovation, exploring new products / services, prototypes, new ideas (i.e. running a contest)
2. Membership Organisations and Networks
Cobudget is used to engage a paying (monthly, quarterly or annually recurring) member community in financial decisions. Typical organisations that use this model are Alumni-organisations, NGOs, Cooperatives, Clubs Associations, Coworking Spaces, Makerspaces.
Common objectives
- To increase engagement among your members in a tangible way.
- To relieve pressure on the director team from having to make all budget decisions.
- Put the values of transparency, co-ownership and distributed decision making into practice in a simple way.
How it works:
- A percentage or the full membership fee (monthly, quaterly or annually) is made available to members in a Cobudget group to decide what their fee is spent on and suggest new ideas OR
- a percentage or total of surplus / bonuses are allocated through Cobudget to fund (new) projects
3. Communities and Networks
Cobudget is used for funding a commons within a network. They tend to consist of a diversity of individuals and entities (both profit and non-profit) in multiple locations.
Common objectives:
- Enabling the entities and individuals in the network to fund projects together
- Investing in shared assets and infrastructure (i.e. software, branding)
- Increasing impact and possibilities by tapping into the resources of the whole ecosystem
- Enhancing collaboration between organisations
How it works:
In this use case, there are many different ways that group members could receive funds in Cobudget. Sometimes the mechanic chosen is much like "internal crowdfunding", which means that each group member can add their personal funds to the funding pot, in others, a subset of group members receive the decision making power to allocate funds that are networked-owned. No matter what model is chosen, each network needs to find a solution for managing money flows and legal compliance, which can vary by activity type and country (there is no one fits all solution).