Congratulations to These ClearGov Customers for Winning a 2021 GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award!

As local governments modernize their budgeting process and strive for greater transparency with residents, website-based budget books are becoming more prevalent. What’s more, the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) recognizes this new modern form of budget book and has awarded its Distinguished Budget Presentation Award to many local governments submitting digital budget books in 2021 — including many ClearGov customers! 

We’d like to extend our warmest congratulations to the dozens of ClearGov customers that won a GFOA award this year!

Let’s take a look at our Top 10 list and how ClearGov Digital Budget Book leverages GFOA award criteria to make it easy to create an award-winning budget book. 

Benefits Of A Web-Based Budget Book

What we’ve heard time and again from our Digital Budget Book customers is that the benefits of a website-based budget book far outweigh the antiquated PDF or printed budget book:

Easy to create – ClearGov does the heavy lifting to create your skeleton budget book, then you customize it and add narrative. You completely eliminate manual book creation in Excel, Word, or Adobe.

Easy to update – Changes to budget numbers automatically update in all locations throughout the digital budget book.

Easy to customize – Information and data that is important to your residents can be front and center, while custom narrative gives context to charts and financial figures. 

Easy to share – Your published budget book has its own unique URL so you can easily share it with stakeholders. Changes to the budget data are automatically made in the budget book, so you never have to worry about where you shared the URL.

Interactive – Residents and stakeholders can manipulate graphics and choose the best way to display data that makes sense to them. Individual department pages present high level data that can be drilled down to the level of detail a resident is looking for. 

Engaging – Colorful graphs and charts are automatically created from budget data to help visualize complex financial data. Residents can easily see the financial health of a department, without having to know how to read and understand data in a spreadsheet. 

Printable – If you need to print the budget, it just takes one click! There is no reformatting or manually manipulating the data and graphics into a separate PDF. Print the entire book, or choose specific sections – your choice.

Collaborative – Grant access to your department heads to add narrative to their sections, and work with your team in real time. Eliminate back and forth emails, manual consolidation, and piecemealing sections of the book together.

Connected –  Present your entire budget in one central location. If you use ClearGov’s Operational Budgeting, Capital Budgeting, or Personnel Budgeting solutions, these sections will automatically roll up into your Digital Budget Book presentation.

ClearGov Top 10 Digital Budget Books That Won a 2021 GFOA Distinguished Budget Book Award

As technology evolves and residents desire better visibility into their community’s financial data, local governments have responded with a renewed commitment to transparency and accessibility. Local governments that have modernized their budgeting process are enjoying greater civic engagement, and their efforts are being recognized by the GFOA for their excellence in budgeting. 

We commend these local governments’ commitment to modern budgeting and congratulate them on their award-winning budget books!

Without further ado, here is our Top 10 list of governments that won a GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award in 2021 by using ClearGov’s Digital Budget Book solution:

Cocoa, Florida

The City of Cocoa is located in Brevard County Florida on the East Coast of Central Florida with a population of 19,041. (View the winning Cocoa Digital Budget Book.)

El Mirage, Arizona

Considered the gateway to the Northwest Valley of the Greater Phoenix Metro Area, El Mirage is situated on approximately 10 square miles with a population of 35,670. (View the winning El Mirage Digital Budget Book.)

Indianola, Iowa

Indianola is a city in Warren County, Iowa, located 14 miles south of downtown Des Moines with a population of 15,833. (View the winning Indianola Digital Budget Book.)

Haines City, Florida

Haines City is a city in Polk County, Florida and a part of the Lakeland–Winter Haven metro area with a population of 27,268.

Hamilton, Ohio

Hamilton, Ohio is located 20 miles north of Cincinnati, is the second largest city in the Greater Cincinnati area and the 10th largest city in Ohio. The population was 63,399 at the 2020 census. (View the winning Hamilton Digital Budget Book.)

Prior Lake, Minnesota

Prior Lake is an outlying city 20 miles southwest of Minneapolis next to Savage and Shakopee in Scott County with a population of 26,365.

Social Circle, Georgia

Social Circle is a picturesque City located about 50 miles east of Atlanta along Interstate 20 in Walton and Newton Counties with a population of 4,500. (View the winning Social Circle Digital Budget Book.)

Tega Cay, South Carolina

Tega Cay is a city in York County, South Carolina and is also a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina. The city has a population of 10,412.

Ypsilanti, Michigan

Ypsilanti, commonly called Ypsi, is a city in Washtenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the city’s population was 20,648. (View the winning Ypsilanti Digital Budget Book.)

Yuma County, Arizona

Yuma is a county in southwest Arizona overlooking the Colorado River with a population of 209,468.

Automatically Meet GFOA Award Criteria With ClearGov

The GFOA award criteria is extensive, and it has been nearly 10 years since the criteria was last revisited and revised. The GFOA recognizes that many governments are moving away from the traditional budget document into other forms of budget communication, like interactive web-based presentations. To improve and adjust to changing technology, the award criteria is evolving for the fiscal year beginning January 1, 2021 or later, and for schools with a fiscal year beginning July 1, 2021 or later. 

For local governments that have traditionally created their budget book manually, there are many changes to be aware of, including some new mandatory requirements that will drastically change the information you will have to include in your budget book. 

To make meeting these requirements easier for local governments, the ClearGov product development team has been working to implement the changes since the GFOA first announced them. Now, all GFOA criteria – both new and existing – are built into our Digital Budget Book framework, giving you a foolproof way to meet every requirement. 

Want to know more about the GFOA award criteria changes? Download our eBook for more details and actionable best practices to help you create your best budget book ever. 

GFOA Budget Awards Criteria: 2020 Revisions Changes To Criteria For The Distinguished Budget Presentation Awards Program

See How Easy It Is To Get Started With Digital Budget Book Today

Schedule a free demo to see ClearGov in action, and get ready to create your best budget book ever!