Cooperatives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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 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

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