Phases of a typical Cobudget process

A Cobudget process tends to go through 5 basic stages: discovery, setup, running & closing the process and reporting. Here is a brief introduction to each of these phases and key resources & templates to help you take your group through these steps of cobudgeting.

To help you design and run great collaborative funding processes, we have also created a 5-step participatory proposal guide, to help you go further with onboarding, engagement, high quality proposal making and accountability. You can see it as guide.collaborativefunding.org

1. Discovery

In this phase we recommend you hold a workshop with your organisation to analyze how cobudgeting can provide value for you and identify where (in which team or process) you can integrate your first Cobudget round. Since this first step is often the most challenging, you may want human support with this first step. If that is the case, you might want to consider bringing in external support. The Greaterthan team would be happy to help you design your Cobudget process, so get in touch here if you are interested.

Resources for this phase: Use cases, Case Studies

2. Setup

Now that you have identified where you want to get started with using Cobudget in your organisation, it's time to setup the detailed parameters of your Cobudget group. By this we mean how Cobudget will be integrated into your existing way of working and agreeing on the basic rules for how you will use it, such as who can join the group, how funds will be distributed etc.

Resources for this phase

Parameters and Policies	The most important template to start with: It guides you through the key parameters & policies that need to be setting up to start cobudgeting.
Choose your 'Money Governance' Model	A presentation with 3 different money governance models you can choose.
Fund distribution models/algorithms	An overview of models you can use to distribute funds among your group members.

3. Run

Now it's time to run your first Cobudget round! This includes facilitating the process from A to Z, such as communicating about it to your organisation members, onboarding them onto the tool, distributing funds to them and giving them support on how to use Cobudget well.

Resources for this phase: Email templates for communicating with your group, How to make beautiful buckets, Creating Engagement

4. Close & Report

Once your round is over, you need to ensure that everything that took place inside the tool is handed over cleanly to an administration for processing and making payments. To measure your success with using Cobudget, it's useful to track metrics about your group and its engagement.