To Pay or Not to Pay?Dilemmas in Public Engagement

I have mixed feelings about a recent article summarizing how communities are using financial incentives to encourage public participation.

On one hand, the reality is unavoidable:
🧱 We’ve built deep barriers to meaningful public engagement.
🕳️ Digging out of that hole will take time, humility, and sustained effort.

💡 The Pragmatic Case for Paying People

Let’s be honest: I have no problem paying people to participate in public feedback—especially when the people we most need to hear from are already under financial strain.

Major consumer brands do this constantly.
🧴 Procter & Gamble pays people to talk about shampoo.
🪥 Toothpaste trials.
🏠 In-home product demos.

Why? Because there’s an opportunity cost to people’s time. And very few people care enough about laundry to attend an hour-long focus group for free.

So why do we expect communities to do exactly that—especially when the stakes are much higher?

🏛️ The Civic Duty Myth

City governments often argue that public feedback is part of your civic duty. But we’re still asking for the same sacrifice of time, energy, and income.

And here’s the problem:
⚠️ We have a distrust crisis.
Many people believe—often correctly—that what they say will be ignored.

If participation costs people money, childcare, or lost work hours, then asking them to “just show up” is neither fair nor realistic.

🚸🚌🍽️ What Real Access Looks Like

It’s elitist—and irresponsible—to hold public engagement events without:
👶 Childcare
🚌 Transit or parking vouchers
🍽️ Food & drink
♿ Full accessibility and accommodations
🗣️ Alternatives for people who are nonverbal or uncomfortable with public speaking

Without these, participation isn’t open—it’s selective.

⚠️ Why Money Isn’t Enough

And yet… a gift card or even a check is nowhere near enough to overcome decades of harm and broken trust—especially for communities that have borne the brunt of technocratic arrogance and top-down decision-making.

There’s also a real risk here:
💳 Turning a damaged social contract into a transactional relationship.

That works fine when we’re talking about toothpaste.
(No one has deep cultural ties to Crest.)

But when it comes to the places we live, work, and raise our families?
💔 We know, deeply, that commitment cannot be bought.

🤝 The Real Work of Engagement

Paying people—especially disadvantaged people—to participate in public feedback is right and appropriate.

But it’s only a first step.

Any incentive must be acknowledged for what it is:
✔️ A gesture of goodwill
✔️ A signal of changed behavior
❌ Not a substitute for trust

True engagement requires intentional actions that:
🌱 Center the community
⚖️ Share power
📣 Close the feedback loop
🔁 Prove—over time—that participation actually matters

That takes more than a gift card.

✨ This reflection comes from Future Here Now, a weekly newsletter from Wise Economy Workshop / Wise Fool Press, designed to help communities, leaders, and organizations prepare for what’s coming next.

Each issue includes:
🔮 Coming Soon — emerging ideas & technologies shaping your future
🏙️ Local Learnings — how communities are responding in real time
🛠️ Do Now — practical steps you can take immediately

👉 Subscribe to Future Here Now for future-ready thinking you can actually use
📚 Buy our books to go deeper into community-centered systems change
🎤 Contact us to explore speaking engagements, workshops, and facilitated conversations on public engagement, futures thinking, and trust-building
🤝 Let’s work together if your organization is ready to move beyond performative participation

💬 Paying people is a start.
❤️ Rebuilding trust is the work.

And the future depends on whether we’re willing to do that work—together.