ELGL members Bang the Table and Balancing Act announce strategic partnership to align best-in-class community participation and budget engagement software for local governments.
August 28, 2019 – Boulder and Denver, Colorado – Bang the Table and Balancing Act today announced a strategic partnership that will empower local governments with best-in-class online community participation and budget engagement tools to better involve community residents on policy, planning and budgetary issues.
As public participation with local government continues to shift to the online space globally, organizations are seeking digital tools that make gathering community feedback on various initiatives more efficient, while providing data that supports community-driven decision making.
Organizations around the globe use Bang the Table’s EngagementHQ platform to listen to, inform, and build community. The Balancing Act software presents a way to incorporate budget allocation and fiscal planning into those dedicated community engagement programs.
This strategic partnership gives Bang the Table exclusive distribution rights of the Balancing Act software in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Governments and municipalities in the US and Canada will also benefit from this partnership because local governments can have a unified solution that provides excellent online community and budget engagement that may be used for public participation, participatory budgeting processes, and transparency making digital community engagement stronger than ever.
“Partnering EngagementHQ with Balancing Act opens the door for a more well-rounded community engagement practice that gives residents visibility and a say in how tax dollars are spent in their community. We’re excited to be partnering with the team at Balancing Act. Their approach and dedication to the practice of budgetary engagement are unmatched and will help our client’s further build trust with their communities.” – Matt Crozier, CEO at Bang the Table
“We’ve seen how local governments are successfully using the EngagementHQ platform to conduct a range of community engagement initiatives – from place-based engagement to community forums and collaborative ideas brainstorming. The combination of EngagementHQ and Balancing Act provide a sophisticated toolset to engage the public around fiscal issues and budgetary planning, making local government more transparent for its residents.’ – Chris Adams, President at Balancing Act
Both companies will be exploring software integration options in the coming months to streamline the participant experience and empower local governments with combined data for more informed decision making.
About Bang the Table
Bang the Table was born in Australia and founded on a deep passion for helping public leaders forge constructive relationships with their residents and stakeholders. Bang the Table’s online engagement platform, EngagementHQ, is being used by over 500 organizations around the world, empowering well over 10 million people with an easy and secure way to participate and inform key decision making, online.
About Balancing Act
Balancing Act is a civic engagement tool that makes public budgets fun, educational, and ultimately, engaging for citizens. It increases financial transparency and community participation in the budget process by publishing an entity’s budget in an easy-to-understand manner, with intuitive graphics and responsive layers of budget detail. Its simulation, allows residents to balance the budget as they see fit, subject to the same constraints public officials have.