Collective Budgeting

Collective Budgeting refers to the participatory and consensus-based process by which the ANANSI Revolutionary Collective allocates incoming funds across labor, resources, and the collective commons. This process ensures that individuals whose labor is directly funded have agency over compensation decisions, while also providing space for the wider collective to contribute input, especially regarding shared or community resources.

Overview

The ANANSI Revolutionary Collective began practicing collective budgeting in 2021, following the redistribution of funds initially received for a tele-performance project funded by The Music Center. When the original project could not proceed as planned, project initiator Kadallah Burrowes convened collaborators to equitably reallocate the funds toward completed labor, a future event fund, and the establishment of a commons. This process catalyzed the founding of the collective and established the foundational model for shared resource governance.

Inspired by Kenyan chama and sacco traditions, as well as the mutual aid frameworks popularized in texts such as Mutual Aid by Dean Spade, ANANSI’s budgeting process emphasizes reparational ethics, transparency, and autonomy over formalization.

Principles

ANANSI’s budgeting process is guided by the following principles:

• Reparational funding: Prioritizing the needs of marginalized individuals and retroactive payments to those whose work was previously gone unpaid.
• Transparency: Financial transactions are publicly viewable on Open Collective.
• Consent and consensus: Budget decisions require the explicit consent of all directly affected individuals.
• Accessibility: Members may engage through live meetings or asynchronously via Loomio.

The term “collective” in this context primarily refers to individuals whose labor is directly funded by a given project or income stream. However, other collective members may offer input, particularly concerning the shared commons.

Practices

Budgets are developed on a per-project or per-income basis. An initial draft budget is proposed at the beginning of a project or upon receipt of funding, offering preliminary allocations across key categories such as:

• Labor
• Resources
• Commons

The typical process includes:

1. The project's catalyst drafts a budget proposal.
2. The proposal is shared with the collective, and all directly involved workers must give consent.
3. Budgets may be revised during the project lifecycle based on changing conditions or needs.
4. A final consent-based review occurs before funds are distributed, ensuring all contributors agree to the allocations.

Loomio is used for asynchronous deliberation and consensus, minimizing the need for frequent live meetings. Open Collective is used to track transactions, though detailed budgets are currently maintained privately and in internal tools such as Notion.

Roles

There are no fixed roles such as treasurer or finance officer. Instead, the individual or group catalyzing a project is responsible for drafting the initial budget, incorporating feedback, and guiding the process through consensus.

Decision-Making

Allocations are determined through collaborative discussion and consent-based revisions. Approximately 16% of incoming funds are typically reserved for the collective commons, which supports future projects, community needs, and emergency disbursements. Retroactive payments for previously uncompensated labor may be incorporated, with responsibility placed on the payee to raise these considerations early.

Despite the absence of a fixed budget cycle, members may request funds at any time from the collective commons, especially in cases of urgent need. Paid projects are often tailored to match members’ financial circumstances.

Disagreements are resolved using ANANSI’s consensus decision-making framework. If needed, conflicts are addressed through the collective’s Conflict Resolution process.

Challenges and Tensions

Challenges have included non-completion of deliverables, resulting in mid-process budget revisions and the activation of the conflict resolution process. The shutdown of the Open Collective Foundation in 2024 necessitated a full liquidation of the collective’s hosted funds and a restart of its budgeting infrastructure.

Evolutions

Initially formal and template-driven, the collective budgeting process has become more fluid over time, relying increasingly on Loomio and a shared understanding among members. While earlier proposals followed multi-step protocols, the current process favors adaptability over strict documentation.

Documentation

• Budget Template:
  • Collective Budgeting Notion Template
• Open Collective Profile
  • opencollective.com/anansi-revolutionary-collective
• Blog Posts:
  • 2023 What’s Update
  • 2022 What’s Update
  • Budget Consensus Arc MVP