Case Study: The Toronto Centre achieves more inclusive, efficient participatory budgeting with Go Vocal

Toronto Centre scaled participatory budgeting across 14 neighborhoods

The Toronto Centre, a municipal government serving over 120,000 residents, faced the complex challenge of meaningfully engaging its diverse community across 14 neighborhoods in a participatory budgeting process. To achieve inclusive and efficient democratic participation while managing administrative complexity, they partnered with the vendor Go Vocal and implemented its community engagement platform.

Using Go Vocal’s platform, The Toronto Centre established a structured, zone-based approach to manage the process, featuring tools for hybrid online/in-person engagement, transparent project timelines, and an intuitive budget allocation interface. This solution from Go Vocal enabled the city to efficiently reach over 60,000 residents and actively engage nearly 1,000 households. The results were highly successful, with the co-creation of 37 funded projects and the effective allocation of over CA$2.25 million, which strengthened community trust and resident satisfaction.

The Toronto Centre