Case Studies
See how organizations around the world use Loomio to make better decisions together.
Governing the library that secures the Internet
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
An ecovillage replaces strata management with democracy
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
A restaurant where 500 founders decide how profits are spent
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
Governing an open-access scientific preprint platform
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
A makerspace ends meeting fatigue and gets back to making
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
A community lender powers grassroots renewable energy
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
Citizens organize across a country in crisis
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
Consultant creates safe spaces for voices that go unheard
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 prototypes ideas between meetings
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 multi-stakeholder network runs a general meeting that never adjourns
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 commons-oriented collective reinvents international publishing
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 coworking space governed by its community
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
200 artists, 12 buildings, 1 community: Gängeviertel collective
- Equal say for 200 people
- Pre-assembly discussion preparation
- Complex decisions resolved faster
- Organized discussion replaces email lists
How the P2P foundation does high-level coordination
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 run by its guests
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
Scaling a shared vision across countries
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
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