Long-term financial sustainability for Loomio
Alanna Irving PublicSeen by 415This continues to be a very rich and multifaceted discussion. A big thanks to everyone who has participated! Here’s a high-level summary so far (but this isn’t the end! please keep sharing your thoughts).
We asked the community for input about scalable, sustainable financial models aligned with our values and mission
We had a temperature check proposal where the vast majority of people affirmed the basic idea of some people paying to use the software - with some concerns raised about how that might be implemented in practice
We reiterated some basic facts about how Loomio is set up, to consider in the context of business models (with the software under AGPL3 and the company incorporated as a worker-owned cooperative social enterprise with a constitution that puts the social mission first).
Great questions were asked, great ideas were shared, and we had a wide-ranging discussion about not just Loomio’s situation, but the larger questions around funding large-scale mission-driven projects and open-source tools.
We shared details about our current financial situation and why we need to bring in resources
We explained the business model experiment we’re currently testing (asking people to self-select as commercial users, putting them on a free trial, and reaching out to learn from them), and showed the screens new users see.
Some highlights from the discussion
Ideas for revenue streams
“Pay as you can” where people can pay zero, or what they are able to.
Consulting and training around collaboration and engagement. We already do this work and enjoy a bit of income from it, but it’s not scalable in the same way a SaaS business model is, because it relies on people’s time directly.
Online facilitation services, and a network of facilitators that can help groups on Loomio to be effective. This is a potentially scalable idea, and we’re excited about it, too. But it takes quite a long time to build something like that up, and it still only scales to people’s time. We’re taking first steps to develop training materials now.
Straight up asking for donations. People in the community say they are willing to give. But overall, even the most successful donation campaigns only have moderate conversion rates and only turn into significant funds at very large scale. Running a campaign takes significant resources in itself. And we need to be wary of donor fatigue.
There are some innovative funding models out there we should look at, like Gittip, Gartipay, Patreon, Flattr, crowdfunding for specific costs (like features or servers), etc.
Relatively traditional SaaS model, freemium/premium. Need to find a way to make these successful models work that’s aligned with our values. There are some services - like custom domain names - that businesses care about a lot but that don’t affect others that much. However, we never want to deny core functionality to people just because they can’t pay. Ideas like “you have to pay to make your Loomio private” aren’t a good fit for us because we support, for example, activists in politically volatile situations who need private spaces to deliberate.
We should consider and learn from the business models of other free software projects, such as paid turnkey solutions for private servers, or help setting up your instance. Examples: Discourse, Github Enterprise, Wordpress.
Another alternative funding stream could be the Loomio API, with a decision-making engine supporting different UIs, embedding Loomio in other platforms, etc.
Philanthropic funding is a natural fit for our social mission vision, and we have already gratefully received grants and are on track to potentially get a large amount of grant funding down the line. Long term, Loomio needs a business model, even if we’re also supported philanthropically. So it’s part of our plan, but can’t be the whole answer.
Things to consider in implementing a business model for Loomio
Sharing stories and case studies might inspire people to pay even even they don’t strictly have to, to support others who can’t. The idea that you could “sponsor” groups doing great work through Loomio has appeal.
There are ways other than money to support the project, such as raising awareness to potential new users and growing the community. We could ask people to contribute in a range of ways, money being just one.
Transparency around Loomio’s finances is an important factor in people feeling good about supporting the project with money.
Many users here are very positive about their groups paying to use Loomio, since they get a lot of value from it. Some are able to right now, some aren’t, but many want to.
The main people who many expect to pay are those who use Loomio in a commercial context, but many community groups, NGOs, government, and other groups might be able to pay, too. And some people using Loomio in companies won’t be able to pay. It’s not black and white.
Users really want clarity about “how much does it cost” and it’s important that we do good messaging about whatever revenue model we try out.
We have to be careful what we incentivise and what we tax with the revenue model. If we make things we actually want to see more of less appealing by charging for them - like people inviting more users into their groups to collaborate - it could be counter productive. Many software companies focus on getting lots of users before nailing down the revenue stream for a reason.
A model that helps users who pay feel more like members than customers seems like a natural fit for a community-driven project like Loomio run by a worker co-op. Something inspired by a consumer co-op maybe. Involving users in decision-making about Loomio is an important value for us already (and we don’t want to limit that to paying users).
Maybe everyone should get messaging that sets an expectation that they will pay, but if they really can’t, they can opt for free access.
Making access and payment easy (recurring payments, robust user support, great user experience) is key in people feeling good about paying money.
It’s super important we constantly check back in with values and mission alignment - a really successful business financially that fails to achieve Loomio’s social mission and stick to its values is not a success in the sense we care about.
Utimately, successful businesses thrive based on the value they provide to customers, not based on their internal needs. Loomio wants to not only scale up itself, but hopefully generate surplus that can go toward supporting other aligned projects too.
People see the essential tension between needing revenue and wanting as many people as possible to use Loomio. A model where a small number of people pay more and feel good about it, so many more people can pay nothing, might be good. But we need to make sure we don’t then skew our focus toward only the needs of that small number of users who are paying.
Wider issues affecting this discussion
Finding “patient” scaling capital that’s values-aligned is a very common problem for a lot of social enterprises and cooperatives. Out there in the world, mission-driven financing is still under-developed. This is a problem we all should think about if we want more mission-driven ventures to succeed in our society.
We recognise some serious issues with mainstream venture capital funding. This also touches on really big issues with the capitalist system, centralised currency, and other deep problems in society (mostly out of scope for this particular discussion).
There’s discourse going on online about a fundamental shift of users understanding that if they don’t pay for the product, they are the product (such as on advertising-based social networks that sell user data). But no one really has the answers about that yet.
There is a big and diverse community of people out there working on various ideas in the space, including Snowdrift.coop, fair.coop, P2P Foundation and Commons Based Reciprocity Licenses, the Open Value Network, and many others.
Original Post
As we get closer to completing the massive six-month working bee that the generous support of the crowdfunding campaign enabled (on track for the end of November!), we’re thinking a lot about the long-term sustainability of the Loomio project.
We’re a social enterprise, meaning we place our social mission first: making it easy for anyone, anywhere to participate in decisions that affect them. Our software is open source, and helping all kinds of groups collaborate - not just those with money - has always been our vision. At the same time, we think we can best achieve that social mission if we have the resources to scale, and to keep improving Loomio.
We’re figuring out how to make Loomio financially self-sufficient, without resorting to pushing ads on people, selling user data, or other unfortunate business models that so many online tools use. Up to now, we’ve gotten money via donations, loans, and the team doing some consulting around collaboration/engagement - but these are not sustainable and scalable solutions. We’re committed to keeping Loomio free for noncommercial use for all the community groups, social movements, and other people using it to do great things in the world.
Right now we’re writing lots of grant applications and talking to social impact foundations who support tech-for-good projects like ours, so we can find some bridging funds to keep going while we figure out the business model. The funding landscape for social enterprise isn’t as developed as capital for nonprofits or for-profit companies, but we’re committed to pioneering in this space because we think that should change.
We’re finding out more about the many companies, government departments, and other formal organisations using Loomio in their work. Over the next couple of weeks we’re going to try out some ways of making it easy for “commercial” groups like these to pay a modest per-user subscription for using Loomio. We don’t want this to come as a shock, so we’re hosting this conversation with the community now.
If you’re part of a group that is using Loomio and would like to pay for it, we’d love to hear from you. Also, if you have any questions or suggestions about our revenue model, this is the place to share. Transparency and community input is incredibly important to us, and we deeply believe that the answers to complex questions like this are best discovered by listening to all the voices.
Here are some questions for you:
- How do you think Loomio should go about charging some users to use the software so others can use it for free?
- How can we communicate this commercial/non-commercial differentiation so that users can self-select effectively, and both types feel welcome and appreciated?
- Do you have any brilliant ideas about revenue models for Loomio? How would you go about making the project financially sustainable in a way that’s consistent with our values?
I really like pay as you feel pay as you can, with explanations of what that donation pays for and where it is going, and possibly even with transparent budgeting. Subscriptions and regular donations a dollar a month are key.
Also just from other experiences subscribing members tend to get more benefits, and I was thinking those could be training's/conference calls on how to use loomio and get everybody in your group engaged, or by linking up with other subscription based project management platforms.
Keep reminding us. Our group Senator Online, (which is changing its name to Digital Direct Democracy or Online Direct Democracy) has no funds. We are all volunteers and we do not have any bank account let alone money in one.
But eventually we will and we would be happy to contribute. And if things get tight for loomio then let us know and pass the hat around. I love what you do and I gladly contributed to your funding, even though I am not on big money.
Thanks so much loomio. This is a great place because it has the heart of the people who create it.
Sorry, I forgot the main topic. Long term, charge the people who use this in the process of their paid job. Just ask the people who use loomio (for a role that is paid) to give something. You could make it a voluntary amount in the beginning.
Yep we're certainly excited about the 'pay what you can' model, and I'm sure it will form an integral part of our income in future. We've tried it out in the past, but we didn't do a great job of the messaging, and we found it really confused the commercial users.
The rationale behind this group subscription model is that commercial users want a clear, straightforward, consistent answer to "how much does it cost?" We're going to try to provide a simple answer to that question.
In the longer term, we'd like to work on a community-driven gift economy model for noncommercial users who want to support the project. This is just the first step :)
Challenge being faced by many Socents. Almost by definition, Socents develop with sig underfunding, often with clients with limited capacity to contribute financially.
[If this wasn't the case, there probably already would be a commercial prod/service]
Long term need to develop more innovative sustainable business models for socents.
- Also perhaps need Exchange for connecting cash & complementary currency economic models.
eg. Christchurch City Council looking at ways to intro community currency. eg. to swap social contributions for abatement on rates etc. [Participatory Citizenship!]
Enable easier use of instant electronic cash exchange.
regular payroll gifting (via Xero etc)
commodify 'likes' to break the $/hr association.
aggregated micro-gifting
enable bitcoin payments
a few ideas.....
New word. Thanks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SocEnt
Sorry, twitter speak. #socent is commonly used hashtag on twitter for these type of discussions. Apologies for obfuscation.
P.S. Not an abbreviation for [Tolkien] Sociopathic Ent's ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
What about linking money with trolling? If you are trolling in discussions (as decided by the rest of the community), you have to pay for participation.
Alternatively, you could also be paying if you are too often in opposition to what majority of the community wants. If you want to stay in opposition, pay. Otherwise learn to compromise.
Dissenters are an extremely valuable, if not necessary, part of any community. So long as dissent does not become toxic or deliberately harmful/destructive, it has its place in the ecosystem.
Interesting things happen out on the edge of chaos. One of the reasons why the Block option exists. Something which should be used very sparingly though. Small amount goes a long way.
How about organizing a periodic fundraising "Pledge to Loomio" campaign...like public radio does in the US? Develop a budget for the next 6 or 12 months. Set a fixed window of time for the campaign, 3 to 4 weeks.
Have a progress indicator unobtrusively off to the side of each page to show timing and funds raised to date.
Pledges can be a one time or monthly donation option.
Somewhere explain what the funds will be directed towards (someone else mentioned transparency).
Not a hard sell situation. Make it fun. Offer rewards for certain donation levels (a Loomio t-shirt or coffee mug for $35 to $50)....or whatever. Be creative!
In some way show/describe the benefit Loomio has/is offering to its users around the world (who's using it, how, for what purpose, and where). Express the feeling sense of a Global Loomio Community working together towards developing a better world...."As together we choose...together it will be".
Describe your vision for the future of Loomio. Generate buy in for the vision.
Explain that the campaign is to keep the Loomio platform free of advertising, user data mining, etc.
Maybe crowd source the campaign...like you're kind of doing already. Delegate...spread the work around to reduce burnout. Ask for donations for the rewards from your users.
All the best...I love what you are doing...and would/will definitely donate.
I'd love to believe that this was possible. The concern is donor fatigue, especially as crowd-funding moves beyond the novelty phase.
The other aspect is staff time & commitment. Talking yesterday to an association which is on the brink because the sheer effort, time/energy of routine external funding apps etc. was eating up too much staff time. Meant they were not able to deliver core services effectively.
Perhaps there is also a psychological element of wishing to believe an idea is economically viable & truly sustainable. Always living on a 'handout' isn't a terribly life-affirming situation. Having someone committing to 'buy' your product feels much more definitive.
An oft repeated line at Startup Weekends is that if it is a great idea but doesn't make any money, it must be a Social Enterprise. We need to be able to change that mindset !
Or just use Gittip/Gratipay: https://gratipay.com/
Looks very similar idea to the NZ site, Givealittle.
http://fundraise.givealittle.co.nz/
Hi, I run a crowd-action app called HandStack that deals with the similar nature of things regarding pricing. We're thinking we'd be free for individuals and grassroots groups, and start charging nonprofits, political campaigns, universities, and religious groups by per volunteer per month. We might do a flat fee for a certain # of volunteers and apply a per volunteer per month fee beyond the flat fee. We're also in the midst of figuring this out, so let's brainstorm together..
We really appreciate everyone who donated to the crowdfunding campaign, and it was amazing to raise some money that way and be able to keep going this year. But it's not a sustainable model - looking at the amount of time and effort we put into the campaign, it was borderline if it was financially advantageous (it was definitely worth doing to raise our international profile, get in the media, make new connections, and engage our community, but you can't repeat that every year). Considering the market value of the programmers and consultants we have working on Loomio, it might have resulted in more money to just have them work other jobs to give back funds to Loomio (some cooperative members are doing that right now). But we don't want that - we want to work on Loomio!
One of the main reasons we decided to be a social enterprise instead of a non-profit or a loosely defined open source project is about scale - in order to really have positive social impact, we need to scale way up and make Loomio available to millions of people. To accomplish that, we can't keep going back for donations forever, unless we find a scalable way to do that.
Here's a great talk by Sue Gardner about the issue of scalability for social impact projects - there's capital out there to rocket amoral profit-driven ventures to scale, but not for mission-driven ones. This is an issue for all of us in society... we need to find a way to support validated social enterprises to scale, if we want to scale their positive impact. It's very interesting that this talk is by Sue, since she was the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, and Wikipedia is perhaps the example of an open collaboration project that has managed to reach scale and massive impact through a donation model. But we need to find a way to support dozens more Wikipedias - it can't be the only one, or we all miss out.
Another interesting talk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2VIoRYPZk68#t=415
I like Gratipay because it makes regular donations really easy. One click and it is done. I haven't seen something so simple. And you then can really do small amounts, but they then pile together. One hackerspace here in Oakland for example receives donations in this way: https://gratipay.com/sudoroom/ $500 per week.
So question, then. What are the barriers to Loomio marketing itself as an app for Android/iOS with the usual minimal (scaled to volume) payment?
Freemium model of limited users on free trial then more open/functionality on payment. If team members sign up individually, paying a few dollars (or equiv), shouldn't be too much of a barrier to participation?
Especially if follow-through on pending collaboration with the likes of airesis etc to add value with range of diverse toolbelt functionality.
Wikipedia has in the past posted a fundraising appeal by Jimmy Wales in a banner ad at the header of their webpage. Seems like setting up a similar ad for Loomio would be relatively simple. Could be an annual appeal that lasts a month or so.
"What if swiping your card on a food purchase also meant solving a social problem in Tonga or Timaru? Ever heard of the “double bottom line?” Welcome to the new world – a lateral way of viewing enterprise, humanity and everything in between."
Just received some promo material from the fine folks at Flint & Steel Magazine, launching Vol 2. Haven't read in detail yet, but sounds like it may have some connection to this topic?
What about non-monetary sustainability through solidarity economy? Developers do not need directly money, but housing, food, and other things.
Some stats about Wikipedia: in fiscal 2013-14, 2.5 million people donated $37 million (avg $14.80/person). Only 3% of Wikipedia users donate. Wikipedia has famously relentlessly optimised its banners and donation methods, requiring a decent investment of resources in itself.
If Loomio could achieve the same results as their wildly successful and highly optimised campaigns the first time we try banners asking for donations (and running the campaign cost us nothing), using the most generous statistics (total registered users, as opposed to active) we would bring in... $20,000. I mean, we would love to get $20,000, but that's not a sustainable solution.
Maybe someday when we have 100x as many users, that model could make sense. But how do you scale to that level without resources in the first place? I'm not knocking donations. In essence, since we'll always offer the core tool for free to those who can't pay, any payment will be a donation. But I think a fully through through SaaS revenue model that gives generous free access when needed is a very different concept than banner adds at the top asking for donations.
I'm not trying to shut down any lines of inquiry here, I'm just sharing some of the realities of the effects of scale.
Interesting @mitar - maybe we could explore the idea of a membership model further. As a community-driven project, thinking of users as "members" more than "customers" might make sense.
I talked with some people interested in cooperatives, but with an interesting twist idea: that you combine worker and consumer cooperative: that buyers of your product are also "shareholders" or members and they also have a say in how you do that.
Maybe we could explore similar idea. At the end it is also a governance question: who makes decisions.
Another idea/suggestion.
Everyone can afford to pay something. If all new users get a free trial period after which they must pay a voluntary amount.
Comercial users are another matter. Those who use loomio for their paid work should contribute more but I imagine some of these people would use it for personal reasons too. If you put a price to host business zones it might discourage the business, unless perhaps they paid per member. But then how would they invite people from outside. Give them the ability to have short term guests? Starts to become more and more complex.
Perhaps commercial clients can have a coy branded version embedded into their existing office software systems. (With a discreet "Powered by Loomio" link)
Also, trending in Market Research is creation of brand orientated, online focus communities. Loomio could be a way to stage aspects of those conversations with committed brand loyal customers.
What about offering you'r expertise in online group decisions for companies that wan't an online collaborative space.
You could offer to install an instance of loomio, style it and deliver advice on how best to use the software to achieve great decisions-making between meetings.
Advice on how the organization get the best workflows, how they avoid death by mail-thread and so on.
Maybe combined with voluntary donations to create new functionality (What if you had a "make it happen" button on you trello list)
It is wonderful watching along in the conversation, both. Ideas for the wider activist and open source user community and also now reaching more into commercial users of Loomio. So many of the ideas are things we have thought of so it feels very reassuring and like we are on track with what we are thinking, but also challenges us to keep looking listening and creating new pathways. For commercial use I would be interested to hear what payment mechanisms people like the most when you do pay for software use, especially if you have an experience of that as part of a group? Some of the things we are interesting in are
- License fee based on small large or huge group categories
- License fee based on specific number of users
- Perhaps based on level of activity
- Or maybe more based on additional features like has been suggested, branding, customised feature set etc.
Hi, I should have gotten involved with Loomio long ago, but I'd been putting it off.
I'm co-founder of Snowdrift.coop — a site not yet operating but working specifically to address the precise issue of long-term sustainable funding for Free/Libre/Open projects. We have developed practical solutions to coordinate all the community of supporters to help projects like Loomio.
We want Loomio to join us as a project as soon as we get launched, which we hope to do by early 2015.
It's too much to get into here, but at https://snowdrift.coop we have discussed all the relevant issues and how our system will address them while running the whole platform as a multi-stakeholder cooperative.
I should add that I have thoughts about all the complex things everyone's discussing here, but it's a little hard to get into all at once. I really strongly discourage the use of commercial restrictions! It does not serve the Loomio community to exclude a business that may not have the resources to pay much just because they happen to be involved in commerce. It's much better to encourage both use and funding contributions. Of course, it makes sense to charge for personal service or for hosting expenses or custom features etc.
I really think the best answer is that we need to partner and keep working to get Snowdrift.coop going and then use it to fund Loomio.
Cheers,
Aaron
@vivienmaidaborn A few thoughts on factors affecting willingness to pay.
Uniqueness. If there are 20 others which do more/less the same, will just grab cheapest (free).
Fit of solution to problem. If yours is the one that does exactly what I want in a way no other does, much more prepared to pay for that.
eg. I pay for one service which I absolutely detest in every way (Meetup, shhuush!) Terrible service/UI/UE but only product that does what it does at affordable level. But I badmouth it at every opportunity!!
Scale of problem solved. If your solution solves a major issue & does it well, hell yeah I'll pay. Minor problem/annoyance, not so much.
Connectivity/Access/responsiveness. Huge bonus if I can connect with 'real' people in solving issues (with product usability etc).
Makes the connection/shared story much more personal. Bit like CSA (community supported agriculture) Will pay more than it's worth, just to help keep them going. (Commodifying 'Likes')
- Structural issues matter eg. ease of payment system, no cascades of spam emails, language, upgrades etc.
eg. Really impressed with websites with unobtrusive 'Live Chat' "Anything we can help you with there, Sir/Madam?"
Trend towards min monthly charges (discount for longer) eases pain of payment & allows matching of cost to periods of peak use.
Data migration. A new one as data becomes more shareable. How easy can I get my data (eg transcripts) out, either for archival use or migration to other platforms.
Community. Nice when product helps create a sense of community.
@alanna Does Loomio have a projected budget for the next financial cycle? Are you comfortable putting out a ($) number that you would like to raise? It might help give some sense of what Loomio is working towards.
One story from my experience, working on one community-oriented project. We are offering free Internet to everybody as a community wireless network and community participates by sharing their Internet bandwidth and donating to the project to grow. Many people asked me why we don't make a business model where we would involve money at different aspects of it: people who are using the network would pay, people who are sharing Internet would get a share, network as whole would get income. That this would increase our market share and we would be able to spread further.
But what they are forgetting is that our 1% market share would not grow to the 30%, but it would be replaced by it. People who are currently contributing would go away, and other people would replace them, because values would be different.
I prefer to have only 1% market share with community who does not operate on money and even if we don't have income keeps the project running, instead of having a 30% market share and then immediately when we would have income issues people would leave because they would not be getting their share anymore.
So the question is what kind of community you would like to build. A paying community which also expects a lot and immediately stops paying if there are any issues, or a community which is more tolerant, because they feel as part of the project, just in a different role.
Interesting discussion as well: https://www.facebook.com/amandapalmer/photos/a.10150851738153375.413686.6565888374/10152547131558375/?type=1
Should we contact Michel Bauwens, he is researching this questions for a long time now.
Hi @mitar I work with Michel at the P2P Foundation and we'r e very interested in the possibility of Loomio/Enspiral being a pilot project for Commons Based Reciprocity Licenses. The Licenses are a means to and end, however, and that end is an ethical entrepreneurial coalition that is self sustaining. http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/a-short-video-on-commons-based-reciprocity-licenses/2014/09/21
Another idea would be to have Loomio be a member of Fair.coop cc @enric2
http://www.shareable.net/blog/faircoop-using-cryptocurrency-to-bring-economic-justice-to-the-world
- This is brainstorming.
- I haven't read all the comments above. This makes me a terrible person. :)
A common revenue model I've seen for free software (and supporters of free software) is to have paid and supported turn-key solutions for private servers. If someone wants to run Loomio inside their business, then rather than having to maintain their own install, they can get one from Loomio. That may be on cloud-provided systems that Loomio provides, or on target machines of the client's choice. Github does exactly this with Github Enterprise ( https://enterprise.github.com/ ), and travis-ci is looking at doing the same.
I would suggest that Loomio becomes "free for public projects, paid for private ones" (which is very common in the FOSS-supporting space), but I don't think that fits Loomio's goals. However having paid plans for closed, commercial use feels like it's fine.
Paid customisations that mostly target businesses but otherwise don't affect core functionality are also a potential revenue source. The most obvious of these is domain name customisation; it's not hard to have someone pay a subscription to have their discussions under your-voice.well-established-business.com rather than on the loomio.org domain.
@staccotroncoso I'll be in touch.
I have seen a presentation about Open Value Network from Sensorica. And I think that this view fit very well to Loomio since it do not produce value directly but help people to produce value.
However if you are using crowdfunding or something like that please let the possibility to European people to pay in euros in order to avoid changing fees.
So much great thinking in this discussion! It's really heartening to know that there are so many people engaged in the same challenge as us - figuring out how to align sustainability and scale with building a public good.
I really like Quinn Norton's commentary on the controversy around Ello, which I think has some relevance here. She's articulating the compromised situation that taking traditional venture capital puts startups in, regardless of how good their intent might be in the beginning. This really drives home the importance of Loomio being able to fund itself properly, to maintain independence and stay aligned with the interests of the people using it, and to scale the social purpose.
My 2c.As @staccotroncoso mentions, I think commons-based reciprocity licenses try to get to the heart of the issue. I'm unsure how far away they are from succeeding though, and whether this will work for loomio in the short to medium term.
Currently, we can imagine a conversation with a prospective paying loomio client going something like this:
prospect: "I'm confused I can sign-up and use the hosted service for free but you're telling loomio costs how much per month"
loomio rep: " yes, loomio is open-source software, many groups use the service for free. We're asking your group to pay. Your payment helps keep the tool free for social good groups"
prospect: "oh, so Loomio is a charitable organisation? Give me the charity number so we can get a tax write-off"
loomio rep: "err..not exactly"
A CBRL would allow the the loomio to rep to say with confidence: "Yes, (as it says here on our license) [groups of status x] pay for the software (unless you contribute to the code)."
Of course, the tricky thing is deciding what makes a "group of status x". In the CBRL framework "commons oriented/mission-driven" groups use the software for free (but can donate) and others pay unless they contribute to the code. I can think of lots of edge-cases, and look forward the p2p foundation's work in this area.
cc @chelsearobinson, @vivienmaidaborn, @richarddbartlett
You can have the most perfect license in the world to make sure funds are handled properly once they arrive, but if people aren't pouring money into the system in the first place it doesn't much matter.
I find the discussion of licenses interesting, but I feel like it's kind of answering a tangential question. I actually think Loomio has a pretty robust, fair structure set up already, with the software under AGPL3 and the company incorporated as a worker-owned cooperative with a constitution that puts the social mission first. The worker-owners, the board, and everyone with core decision-making stakeholding will always consider the business model in service to the social mission, and in service to our community of users, not the other way around.
The question on my mind isn't "how do we set up the right structure and license?", it's "since we've got a pretty good structure and license, how should we go about asking people for money to resource scaling?" I don't think that having a better commons-based reciprocity license is going to make people magically throw money at us - we'll actually have to experiment with revenue models and see what works.
+1 to Alanna's comment with one qualification: I don't think the commons-based reciprocity license is better at all. I think it's a silly naive idea that completely misunderstands the situation with AGPL. AGPLv3 is a perfectly fine license that does not in any sense make it likely for Loomio's code to be exploited by evil capitalists. It's the right license, and whatever is imperfect about it, the commons-based reciprocity license is not a better solution.
The commons-based reciprocity license is grasping for a simple rule-based solution to a problem that is not a license problem. The problem is the one everyone is discussing here: how to have sustainable funding with commons-based projects. There's no risk of capital exploitation in the case of Loomio, and the vast majority of all capitalist exploitation of Free/Libre/Open software is done with permissive (aka push-over) licenses like MIT. The GPL family and AGPL in particular does a perfectly fine job of protecting the resource for the commons.
The commons-based reciprocity license idea is unlikely to achieve anything useful and will only cause problems due to incompatibility with the existing commons.
I don't think that a solution can be done just by Loomio, but only by wider movement. That's the problem. The current mainstream way of financing and funding has so many things: it is default for many, it is though in school, it has institutional support (banks, legal frameworks, lawyers understand it, incubators, etc.). No organism/system can survive on its own and the question is how to bootstrap an alternative. It is not by licenses, but by simple things. Sometimes just by having an one-click micro-donation button readily available. Sometimes by education: teaching why is important to donate. But mostly by getting friendly organizations to use Loomio, and getting some value of it, and then Loomio use something from those friendly organizations.
So instead of focusing on getting money from people outside the community, and being free for the community, maybe it should not be free for the community, and we should just ignore and not event spend energy on people outside. But that "not free" does not mean just paying in money, but also paying in some other forms.
Maybe an alternative currency is in place.
There's still value in this perspective: http://questioncopyright.org/how_to_free_your_work
Even though that's not software-focused.
@wolftune I think we're talking past each other.
I also think AGPL does a fine job of protecting the commons from exploitation. If by that you mean keeping control of the software in the commons and facilitating open-source contributions to the source code.
What it doesn't seem to do very well is facilitating those who can afford to pay for the software to do so as I outlined in my hypothetical sales example.
@alanna I don't view the CBRL as addressing structural problems, I see it as addressing sales problems. I also don't hold the question: "how do we set up the right structure..", and I'm fine with Loomio's structure and I don't see it as an impediment. The last paragraph in my last comment was highlighting a difficulty of categorising organisations into paying and not paying, something @vivienmaidaborn's comment hit on up thread. And something further developments of CBRL will have to address.
I don't think the intention of the CBRL is to "make sure funds are handled properly once they arrive" (?) but in fact to "[get more people] pouring money into the system". Nor do I think that it will "magically make people throw money at us". All I'm suggesting is it could make sales easier (I don't mean structurally easier, I mean conversationally easier). Interested to hear from someone who has tried to sell a subscription to loomio (or another FLOSS project) whether or not the fact that its freely available to whoever signs up, makes some organisations who can pay for it reluctant to do so.
In any case a good CBRL doesn't exist yet. But that doesn't mean licenses that designed for a different problem (allowing developers who work for big corporates to share code) will always be appropriate for the current problem (helping FLOSS businesses build a sustainable business model).
- keep Loomio simple and free to let community grow fast;
- make some charged plugins*;
- if you get popular enough, some organisations will want customization for their own purpose: sell them customization*;
*market study strongly adviced for charged services, to know what to develop or who to target
I like Benjamin Knight's link.. As a fellow community organizing startup (Benefit corporation) I have done the revenue calculation and it is easy for a company to survive & THRIVE if they can just charge $3 user/mo.
But there needs to be a bigger shift in users' perspective that they won't have to pay for what they use online.. and that is something that will take more than just a company.
MAYBE there could be an alliance of startups that charge users and promise not to ever sell user data. My startup would be glad to be one!
Pay As You Feel or Pay As You Can
Maybe Loomio could trial a 'pay as you feel or pay as you can' model for commercial and non commercial groups alike. This model includes free and also has an unlimited cap on potential income.
Case studies / user stories could be used as 'inspiration' to act as a guide to payment levels and the mindset being cultivated.
This social proof creates a multi dimensional culture of positive feedback and would highlight the experiences people have had around Loomio and how they have been motivated to support the project and how that has impacted their lives / understanding in positive ways.
Low budget members could be especially encouraged to share the platform with others etc. This system would also provide valuable metrics around who can pay what in various sectors. The other benefit is that when extra funding is needed you can have a campaign to raise funds from existing members to increase participation, this could be a one off extra donation or an increase in monthly commitment.
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Cheers,
Bevan