---
title: "Loomio: Making Decisions Together, Wherever You Are"
description: "A worker cooperative built open source software that helps groups make decisions without endless meetings"
summary: Born from the Occupy movement, Loomio has helped thousands of groups make decisions together without endless meetings. It's proof that technology built by cooperatives can serve communities beautifully.
date: 2026-01-04
tags: ["case-study", "decision-making", "cooperative", "governance", "open source"]
categories: ["Participatory Democracy"]
weight: 10
featureImageCaption: "NZEI teachers using Loomio during their 2019 pay equity campaign. Photo courtesy of [Loomio Cooperative](https://www.loomio.com/about)"
---

## What They Needed

After the Occupy movement, activists in New Zealand faced a familiar problem: how do you make decisions together when you can't all be in the same room at the same time?

Consensus-based groups often get stuck. Meetings drag on. Decisions stall. People burn out. Email threads become unreadable. The groups with the best intentions sometimes struggle most with the practical work of deciding things together.

A group of activists and technologists asked: what if there was a better way?

## What They Built

They created **[Loomio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loomio)**—open source software designed specifically for collaborative decision-making.

Loomio provides:
- **Discussions** where groups can explore topics together
- **Proposals** that let members express their position (agree, abstain, disagree, block)
- **Polls and surveys** for gathering input
- **Outcomes** that record what was decided and why

The software is designed around a simple insight: good decisions require both divergent thinking (exploring options) and convergent thinking (coming to agreement). Most tools are good at one or the other. Loomio supports both.

And the organization behind it practices what it preaches: Loomio is built by a worker cooperative, using Loomio to make their own decisions.

## What Happened

Since 2012, Loomio has helped **thousands of groups** make decisions together.

**Users include:**
- Cooperatives and worker-owned businesses
- Nonprofits and community organizations
- Local governments and city councils
- Political parties and movements
- Companies experimenting with participatory management

**The numbers:**
- [Groups in 100+ countries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loomio)
- Millions of decisions facilitated
- Open source, with code contributed by users worldwide

**What users say:**

> "We used to spend hours in meetings going in circles. Now we do the divergent discussion online, and our meetings are just for the hard decisions that need face time."

> "Loomio made our board actually functional. People participate who never spoke up in meetings."

> "As a distributed team, we couldn't do consensus without something like this. Loomio is how we govern ourselves."

## What They Learned

**Process matters as much as tools.** Loomio works best when groups are intentional about how they use it. The software supports good process—it doesn't replace it.

**Asynchronous is inclusive.** Not everyone can make every meeting. Not everyone speaks up in group settings. Asynchronous discussion lets people participate on their own time, in their own way.

**Transparency builds trust.** When everyone can see the discussion, the positions, and how decisions were reached, people trust the outcomes more—even when they disagreed.

**Worker cooperatives can build great software.** Loomio proves that you don't need venture capital to build tools people love. A small, worker-owned team has sustained development for over a decade.

**Dogfooding works.** Using your own tool to run your organization surfaces problems and opportunities that you'd never find otherwise. Loomio is better because the people who build it also depend on it.

## What This Means for You

If your group struggles with decisions—too many meetings, too much email, too little participation—Loomio might help.

It's particularly useful for:
- Distributed groups that can't meet in person easily
- Organizations that value inclusive decision-making
- Groups transitioning to more participatory governance
- Any community that wants to make decisions transparently

Loomio offers free plans for small groups and community organizations. The code is open source if you want to run your own instance.

**Learn more:** [loomio.com](https://www.loomio.com)

---

*The hardest part of working together isn't having good ideas—it's deciding which ideas to pursue. Loomio doesn't make decisions for you, but it makes deciding together a lot easier.*
