Thank you to everyone who took the time to complete the SurveyMonkey and/or attend one of the Community Budgeting Focus Groups. 

This is a brief summary of the results of these.

160 people responded to the SurveyMonkey on Community Budgeting.

  • 37% from Clydebank
  • 29% from Dumbarton
  • 24% from Alexandria, Renton and Balloch
  • 10% from Old Kilpatrick

Almost 60% of respondents had attended previous Community Budgeting voting events.

We asked if funding should be allocated according to the percentage of the population living across West Dunbartonshire. 

Opinion on this was split.  40% of respondents answered yes and 41% answered no with 18% selecting don’t know.

We asked respondents to rank key priorities that funded community groups should meet.

The options were ranked as follows:

  1. Encouraging more people to be active in their local community
  2. More opportunities for young people
  3. Reduce Social isolation
  4. Increasing skills and capacity within communities
  5. Addressing inequalities within communities

In addition, through focus group discussion, Health and wellbeing was identified as a priority.  This has been added to the list of priorities on the Community Budgeting application form.

The majority of survey respondents and those who participated in Community Budgeting Focus Groups agreed that the maximum application amount should be £5000.

Also, only that one application can be made per group or organisation.

Focus Group participants asked why the available funding was split into capital and revenue funds, as this caused confusion for applicants?

As a consequence, Community Budgeting 5 will not ask whether applicants are requesting capital or revenue funding.  The available funding can be used for either. 

Most respondents and participants agreed that email was the easiest way to submit Community Budgeting application forms. 

As all voting will be online, we asked respondents to rank voting method options from best to worse.  These were ranked as follows:

  1. Ranking projects from 1-10
  2. One vote per person
  3. Multiple votes per person

As there will be no voting event and all votes will be cast online, we asked what is the easiest and fairest way for groups top present their projects online.  The available options were ranked:

  1. Short written statement with photos/videos if available
  2. Short video
  3. Audio clip
  4. Other

Other suggestions included:

A combination of all of the above, depending on the skills of the individual groups.

Other actions agreed through Focus Group discussion and survey responses:

  • All local groups should be notified by letter and follow up phone calls to encourage applications.
  • All applications receive an acknowledgement email when received
  • Information should be in an accessible format & available in other languages on request
  • Community Budgeting should be promoted widely.