People Powered
People Powered is a global membership hub for participatory democracy, serving as a field-building organisation for the practitioners, governments, researchers, and advocates working on citizen participation worldwide. It does not itself run participatory processes — it builds the capacity of those who do, bridging the gap between isolated local experiments and a coherent global field with shared standards, evidence, and infrastructure.
Programmes include the Climate Democracy Accelerator, the Mainstreaming Participation Accelerator, a mentorship programme connecting experienced practitioners with those starting new processes, training modules on participatory budgeting, citizens' assemblies, and legislative theatre, a digital participation resource centre, and the Democracy Stories Lab (launched July 2026, an open call for visual stories about the future of democracy). The organisation also runs the Democracy Narratives Alliance, working on how democracy is talked about — an explicit communications-strategy approach to democratic renewal that is unusual in a field dominated by process design and tool-building.
People Powered's role in the landscape is meta-level: it is the connective infrastructure for the field rather than a frontline practitioner. Its membership model (organisations join, access resources, and shape strategy collectively) makes it structurally similar to FIDE or Democracy R&D but with a broader scope — covering the full range of participatory mechanisms rather than focusing on citizens' assemblies specifically.
Links
- Website: peoplepowered.org