FAQ | Cobudget & Collaborative Funding Guide

How do I start a new Cobudget group?

You can start a new group in 2 clicks by opening your side bar on the left and clicking "create new group." Watch this brief tutorial to see how it works.

How do I invite new people to my group?

Any admin can invite new people to their group with their email address, either one by one, or with a bulk upload. Simply click on the settings tab on the upper right hand corner of your group, and select "invite people".

Watch this brief tutorial to see it in action.

How do I invite large numbers of users to my group?

You can use the bulk upload feature for this, which you can see when you click on the "invite people" button in your settings. Here you can find an easy template for uploading users.

What different use cases are there for Cobudget?

There are many different ways that Cobudget can be used. Check out a few basic use cases here.

Where does the money I see in Cobudget sit?

Cobudget is a governance and decision making tool for how to spend funds, but no real money actually sits in Cobudget. When you start a new group, you need to define where the funds represented in Cobudget are being held. In most cases, groups have a special bank account where they keep the funds they are collaboratively spending.

Can I connect Cobudget to a real bank account?

At the moment, there is no way to sync Cobudget directly to your bank account. Cobudget is a decision-making tool only. The funds that you see in your group may stand for real money, but there is no actual money in Cobudget.

Are alternative currencies available for Cobudget?

Cobudget currently lets you select from the following currencies when starting your group: EUR, USD, CAD, NZD, GBP, CHF, DKK, JYK. There have been discussions about enabling Cryptopayments with Cobudget, and if you are interested in getting involved in this discussion, join in here.

If your currency is missing, get in touch and we will add it on an on-demand basis.

Can we use Cobudget with time instead of money?

This is a common question! Since money in Cobudget is not real, you can of course decide to use the numbers to reflect time instead of moeny. However, Cobudget is not ideally designed to deal with time at the moment, so you may want to look into using a timebanking tool, or do simple dot-voting with a tool like Loomio.

Is there a transaction history that I can view?

Yes, there is a full searchable transaction history in each group in the tab called "activity tab" with every transaction in Cobudget, such as funds being added to accounts and buckets being funded. You can also download the transactions as a CSV file.

What do all the numbers in the activity tab mean?

What are the basic stages of setting up my first funding round?

You can see an overview of key stages for any funding round here, including templates.

What parameters do I need to take into account when setting up my Cobudget round?

Take a look at our parameters template, that guides you through the key questions you need to think about when setting up your round.

What support materials do you have for users?

Check out our how to make great buckets guide for advice on how to pitch your idea and format it beautifully.

Can we get support from experts for setting up and running our Cobudget process?

Our team offers a variety of services to support you with your collaborative funding process. You can see an overview here and get in touch with us at hello@greaterthan.works.

Where can I hear about experiences from other groups with Cobudget?

There are several ways you can learn about how others have been using Cobudget:

1. Take a look at our case studies on our blog.

2. Join our Community of Practice, where users share what they have learned and experimented with through Cobudget. Request to join the Community here.

Where can I learn more about how to design and run a group Cobudget round?

To help you design and run great collaborative funding processes, we have created an open source participatory proposal guide. It takes you through a basic 5-step process setting up and running a funding round, from bringing awareness to your group culture, to onboarding, engagement, high quality proposal making and accountability. You can see it as guide.collaborativefunding.org

How was Cobudget the software developed?

Cobudget is an open source project, that has been developed thanks to the contributions of a number of developers from the Enspiral network.

See Cobudget on Github

Currently, our team is focusing on supporting groups with the practice of Cobudgeting rather than doing technical development of the application, but we work with a number of different development teams when needed.

Do you have a public roadmap?

Yes, you can find our public roadmap here, where you can vote and add new feature ideas yourself.