Case Studies

150 people across three continents, restoring degraded land—and the decisions couldn't wait for the next meeting.

• Clear record of key decisions
• Structured input from distributed teams
• Multi-stage approvals across time zones
• Decisions separated from communication noise

130 people from 32 countries bought apartments together. Now they have to run a business, a community, and a building — democratically.

• Legally binding cooperative votes
• Full agency for distributed members
• Searchable governance discussion archive
• Member participation tracking

A 60-year-old recruiting company threw out the org chart, gave every employee the same authority as the CEO, and scaled it to 450 people across three countries.

• Self-management scaled to 450 staff
• Decisions proposed, debated, documented centrally
• Equal voice regardless of seniority
• Transparent record of team decisions

When the whole internet depends on your library, you can't make decisions behind closed doors anymore.

• Multi-stakeholder community input
• Transparent archive of every decision
• Delegate voting balances power fairly
• Reach beyond your developer community

Behind Zohran Mamdani's historic mayoral primary win was a decision-making system that coordinated 13,000 members with zero paid staff.

• Binding votes at scale
• Anonymous member voting
• Clear record of every decision
• Full data control via self-hosting

Twenty-eight developers spun out of the Ethereum Foundation with no hierarchy, no executives, and a rule that every decision must have everyone's consent.

• Consent-based distributed decisions
• Legally binding governance decisions
• Every voice heard across time zones
• Official record of decision rationale

An experimental reparations-based fund redistributed over $20,000 to members using cooperative decision-making on Loomio.

• Cooperative fund redistribution
• Democratic proposal voting
• Transparent decision archive
• Member-driven governance

100 households in wine country — growing to 350 — ditched conventional strata management to govern themselves, and they're building the playbook as they go.

• Decisions across neighbourhood clusters
• Transparent community decision archive
• Equal say for all residents
• Self-governance replacing strata management

What happens when 80 developers collectively set everyone's salary — and a single objection can block any decision?

• Transparent team salary-setting
• Searchable decision history and reasoning
• Routine decisions resolved asynchronously
• Equal say through consent process

As the team grew past 20, the old way of deciding things stopped working.

• Consent-based distributed decisions
• Full transparency through documentation
• Templates for recurring processes
• Async strategic and financial alignment

240 participants from 70 countries, speaking dozens of languages, need to reach consensus — and they've never once had to fall back to a vote.

• General Assembly across 70 countries
• Inclusion across all time zones
• Async consensus around live meetings
• Automatic multilingual translation

450 staff, three countries, no positional authority — how does a self-managing company actually make decisions at that scale?

• Self-management scaled to 450 staff
• Decisions across countries and time zones
• Daily distributed decisions at scale
• Transparent record of team decisions

120 open-source developers, fully remote, competing for talent against Silicon Valley — and nothing happens without going through a general assembly.

• General Assembly for 120+ members
• Focused threads save meeting time
• Transparent remote cooperative decisions
• Strategic decision archive with context

A cooperative of architects who design sustainable buildings needed their own governance to be just as thoughtfully constructed.

• Quick approvals outside meetings
• Subgroups focused on relevant projects
• Remote governance document drafting
• Organized proposals, decisions, procedures

500 people each invested $1,000 in a restaurant that gives 80% of its profits to community projects — now they all have to agree on where the money goes.

• 500-founder votes without paper ballots
• Exported data for compliance auditing
• Community project funding decisions
• Filing cut from 10,000 to 100 pages

A political party stretched across vast Western Australia needed to turn hundreds of voices into unified policy — clause by clause, region by region.

• Policy input from regional groups
• Clause-by-clause policy draft review
• Pre-built consensus shortens meetings
• Iterative amendments until consensus

A former refugee who once fled Chile is now pairing newly arriving families with local buddies — and a growing network of volunteers needs to stay coordinated in an increasingly hostile political climate.

• Coordinated buddy-family communication
• Council visibility into community needs
• Daily operational decisions without meetings
• Scaled to three boroughs

700 co-owners, 70 electric cars, 10 cities — and every member gets an equal vote on how the profits are spent.

• Member votes on profit allocation
• Cross-city volunteer coordination
• Every member informed, no email chaos
• Region-specific subgroup discussions

At this Argentine software cooperative, a designer at step six earns exactly what a developer at step six earns — and every four months the whole team decides who moves up.

• Fair salary scale for all
• Transparent communication at scale
• Equal partner input on decisions
• Discussions leading to clear outcomes

Six people read a book about reinventing organizations — and then convinced a 60-year-old company to tear up its hierarchy.

• All decisions proposed, debated, documented
• Tools aligned with self-organization
• Every employee voice heard equally
• Company-wide consent-based decisions

Scientific papers take years to publish and months to peer-review — so a global team of researchers built a way to share them immediately.

• Async global researcher discussions
• Votes and debates without calls
• Quick onboarding via discussion history
• Discussions, polls, votes in one tool

Fifty makers share one workshop — but marathon monthly meetings were killing the energy they came there to use.

• Proposals shaped before meetings
• More time for creative projects
• Decision repository and archive
• Reduced meeting fatigue

850 teaching positions unfilled, a profession in crisis — and 28,000 union members who needed to debate strike action and reject government offers together.

• 28,000 members debating strike action
• Scattered members included via email
• Member-led campaign direction
• Secret ballots informed by open debate

500 active volunteers scattered across France, constant turnover, and over 2,000 events to coordinate — the movement can't afford to lose its institutional memory.

• Coordinated campaigns across local groups
• New volunteers catch up fast
• Structured info for 2,000+ events
• Consistent messaging despite turnover

Sixty people scattered across the United States spent ten months turning passionate disagreements into a 40-page cooperative charter for protecting the earth.

• Collaborative charter drafted over months
• Subgroups for specialist teams
• Clear communication replacing chaos
• Distributed members aligned continuously

A group of friends in Burlington want to open the city's first community-owned brewery — but first they have to make democratic decisions with investors who range from casual supporters to hands-on operators.

• Single hub for all decisions
• Anonymous investment willingness votes
• Democratic decisions, high and low stakes
• Distributed coordination rebuilds momentum

How do you measure something as vast as a country's human rights performance — and get diverse experts worldwide to agree on the method?

• Global human rights expert consultation
• Group decisions beyond email limits
• Global team updated centrally
• Strategic polling on key decisions

A small lending society in Cornwall funds grassroots renewable energy projects — but reviewing each loan used to eat up entire meetings.

• Online loan assessment saves hours
• Transparent multi-stage involvement
• Assessment records for easy audit
• Timely community energy funding

Twenty people pool their money every month to invest in local co-ops — but going around the circle to allocate funds used to take an hour.

• Democratic fund allocation via dot voting
• Equal participation despite distance
• Faster decisions than in-person rounds
• Accessible for new investors

When Bath lost its charity support agency, a handful of volunteers built one from scratch — no building, no budget, no government backing.

• Volunteers never miss key decisions
• Majority voice surfaced via polls
• Structured threads replace email chains
• Conversation summaries save reading time

A workers' co-op that teaches other co-ops how to be democratic had to figure out how to practice what it preached — with a team scattered across the UK.

• Continuous governance without extra meetings
• Conversations driven to clear outcomes
• Thousands saved on meeting costs
• Faster responses, greater agility

When a software company put salary transparency to an anonymous vote, the CEO had reservations — but the team was unanimous, and it exposed a pay gap they could finally fix.

• Month-long decisions now take weeks
• Safe voicing of all opinions
• Stakeholders in the design process
• Remote discussions reaching clear outcomes

A national workforce capability framework on family and sexual violence was shaped through careful online consultation that drew meaningful, detailed feedback from across the sector.

• Closed nationwide sensitive-topic consultation
• Meaningful multi-sector feedback
• Clear process driving engagement
• Organized threads meeting government deadlines

A globally distributed space industry cooperative found that Loomio replaced scattered Slack and email threads with focused discussions that actually produce outcomes.

• Efficient virtual distributed operations
• Focused discussions replace scattered comms
• Collaborative funding decisions
• Cooperative-aligned governance learning

In the middle of a political crisis, a distributed network of Venezuelan citizens needed new tools to organize — fast, safely, and from wherever they were.

• Distributed citizen network coordination
• Tools for activism and participation
• Decisions via polls and checks
• Effective distributed communication

A five-person web design cooperative stopped dreading their governance meetings by moving discussions and voting online.

• Meetings cut to 30 minutes
• Focused pre-meeting discussions
• Structured research for key decisions
• Protected governance and culture time

A strategic planning consultant who spent 21 years in foster care now uses online collaboration to ensure every stakeholder is heard.

• Voice for the meeting-silent
• Engage on stakeholders' schedules
• Richer dialogue with attached materials
• Safe, inclusive stakeholder space

A climate action group in a small New Zealand town couldn't wait a month between meetings to act on new ideas — so they started prototyping between sessions.

• Rapid prototyping between meetings
• Consensus without in-person meetings
• Every voice heard, meeting-free
• Faster idea-to-action cycle

A network of cooperative researchers across five countries can never all meet face to face — so they run a general meeting that never adjourns.

• Online governance with nested subgroups
• Continuous general meeting online
• Unheard voices participating effectively
• Cross-language research collaboration

A 75-year-old tech university discovered that its smartest people do their best thinking outside of meetings.

• Ideas from meeting-shy contributors
• Equal voice for introverts
• Faster resolution under tight deadlines
• Written decisions save editorial time

A nine-member dog walking cooperative in New York uses translation and photo sharing to collaborate across English and Spanish.

• Continuous between-meeting discussion
• Auto-translation bridges language barriers
• Visual communication via photos
• Decisions on branding and operations

A Welsh parliamentary committee turned a one-off citizen meeting into an ongoing dialogue that made both sessions more productive.

• Extended discussion between sessions
• Two-way citizen-policymaker dialogue
• Bilingual Welsh-English content
• Online agreement before meetings

A commons-oriented translation collective coordinates publishers in four countries to print the same book locally — without any of the restrictions of the traditional publishing world.

• Searchable archive replaces email
• International network coordinated centrally
• Archived licensing and budget decisions
• Full collaboration beyond decisions

A national government agency replaced the traditional submissions process with open online dialogue, engaging senior IT leaders who would never have participated otherwise.

• Open, transparent policy consultation
• Two-way consensus-building conversations
• Engage hard-to-reach professionals
• Transparent policy document revision

A citizen activism group stopped losing decisions to email threads and started resolving them between meetings with clear deadlines and modifiable proposals.

• Between-meeting decisions email can't handle
• Clear deadlines for input
• Agenda items moved off meetings
• Proposals refined before final votes

A coworking space in Lille discovered that engaging with disagreement — not just counting votes — unlocks better decisions and deeper shared understanding.

• Policy changes in minutes, not months
• Creative solutions surfaced through disagreement
• Commons governance without central authority
• Thoughtful decisions with time to reflect

A global network of open-source researchers could collaborate on wikis and blogs all day — but when it came to collective decisions, they kept going in circles.

• Clear, legitimate decisions faster
• Community-mandated delegation
• Discussion meets structured decisions
• Non-hierarchical without chaos

A co-living hotel in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury uses collaborative decision-making to run a dynamic community of residents, guests, and neighbors.

• Community decisions without meetings
• Living archive of every decision
• Surfaced tensions, aligned incentives
• Online discussion improves offline collaboration

An international collective moved from Facebook and email to real decision-making — and members who had gone quiet suddenly started contributing again.

• Real decisions between international summits
• Re-engaged inactive members
• Clear audit trail for every decision
• Onboarding via discussion history

Five constantly travelling social media consultants found a way to make real decisions together without ever being in the same room.

• Async decisions across a nomadic team
• Thoughtful choices with objective distance
• Routine decisions without meetings
• Richer meetings via pre-discussion

When Hungary's government proposed education cuts, student activists didn't just protest — they translated Loomio into Hungarian and organized a nationwide democratic movement that forced the government to back down.

• Nationwide university deliberation
• Student-teacher-academic coordination
• Transparent decisions withstanding media scrutiny
• Reversed government education cuts

A coalition of direct democracy groups launched hundreds of local decision-making groups covering every region of Greece, turning online discussion into pressure for real political change.

• Nationwide citizen political participation
• Accessible to non-technical citizens
• Transparent voting with participation tracking
• Collective pressure on local officials

Five busy trustees scattered across the city needed to approve loans fast — but couldn't get in the same room. They haven't needed to since.

• Loan approvals without meetings
• Full participation from anywhere
• Complete record of decisions
• $45,000 in loans processed annually