Long-term financial sustainability for Loomio

We can charge enough to cover people's time and put bit back into Loomio, but it's not scalable in the way that a SaaS business model is scalable.

I would argue that one main component of Wikipedia is also its diverse and global community of Wikipedians. There are chapters all around the globe. In some way you could see this as educational and accreditation component.

It cannot scale centrally, but if you distribute, it can scale. But it requires different approach.

If what you have to say is private, it's probably something you can afford to make private.

I would caution against such thinking. There are many vulnerable communities who would benefit from using Loomio for their decision making, but cannot be public. They have members who receive threats, are stalked, and in general they have to control their online presence for various reasons.

In fact, being able to be public is a position of a privilege. Many oppressed cannot "afford" that.

The US university funding model has been pretty extraordinarily successful - and while you don't have any buildings that can be named after donors, there might be some sponsorship opportunities?

Be careful here. Endowments are invested and based on their returns you then get income. But then you open a question: how you are investing. Sadly it seems very hard to invest both socially responsible and with high returns (and it is hard to get people who know how to do that). We have many discussions about how our university (University of California) is investing, but not much changes. We are still investing into fossil fuels, Israel companies, etc. (Just few examples of what students find objectionable, without any endorsement of any of those issues.)

In some places, this is called radical transparency, and I am currently working on a platform and software neutral approach called Total Transparency Tools. This is where every transaction is instantly and publicly updated online so that donors can see their impact in real time.

Why not simply upload data to https://opencorporates.com/ ? The platform already exists, and it would be a great example for an organization to upload data regularly by itself. No need really to develop here new stuff. Just upload.

Some data is already there: https://opencorporates.com/companies/nz/3971519

@alanna Thanks for your considerate response.

You wrote: "...what I feel is missing in your version [of the current proposal] is some simple straightforward statement that some people are going to be paying."

Ok, how about this... “Loomio will develop a revenue model that allows it’s service to be used by everyone. This model will request (or require?) support from those who can afford to pay for using it. Those who cannot afford to contribute to the service it provides will be allowed to use it for free”

Again, this is not a huge deal for me. Just enough to push my thumb to the side. :)

I think I have already written about it in a previous discussion in the loomio community group, but just in case here is the idea again: loomio should use crowdfunding of features like Piwik does ( http://crowdfunding.piwik.org/ ), and like some other open source projects also do. They detect a new feature they could develop, explain it and evaluate how much it would cost, and if they gather enough donation promises, they implement it and it profits to everyone.

So loomio users would see these projects, and think that it would really be cool if feature X was implemented so they could use it, and they give money. We can also imagine a less plutocratic version of it, by enabling a paid membership which gives a right to vote on the prioritization of features developed by the loomio team. I would love such a thing and it would give me much more motivation to give money to loomio than a classic donation (and a lot of "crowdfunding" campaigns around there give such ridiculous counterparts that they are in fact just donation campaigns, making fun of the donator by calling them crowdfunding).

The whole thing is about giving sense and concrete output to the money the users pay, and putting them in control of the evolution of loomio, and of how fast it will evolve.

Great ideas @quentingrimaud - I would really like to see financial contributions to Loomio feel more like membership than a transaction. I also want to facilitate people seeing the direct effects of their contributions.

Please let me share my thoughts on this topic:

I think Loomio has to works towards two goals that technically are into different directions: 1. Make money/at least don't make a loss to continue development; 2. Provide the product for free as widely as possible to help make the world a better place.

That implies that: the smaller the group of users who pay for it is, the more % of users can be serviced for free.

There is probably a risk in developing business models that tend to charge a large percentage of users, even if the amount is very small. It will most likely significantly prevent Loomio from growing and 'free' users will think that they're less important and limited.

I'd rater work out a model that focuses on charging larger amounts from fewer premium customers, without limiting any functionality for the free-of-charge users.

That could be achieved e.g. by offering premium support packages for hosted or self-hosted (closed) business environments. If you think a pricing of USD 500+ per year, you probably don't require a huge customer base to finance a full time team of 20 to 50.

There are plenty of very successful examples for that model around.

@christianmairoll I agree. If Loomio is truly going to enable people to make a positive difference in their communities than, free access is going to be very important.

If only small fraction of people pay, how you prevent them from influencing development much more than those who do not pay? Those who do not pay are in majority, so democratically they should have more say, but because those who are paying are those who fund us, it is hard to assure that.

That's why I like about Wikipedia, it tries to be responsible to all users directly (still not perfect), instead of smaller number of large funders.

I agree strongly with Mitar's comment. The goal is not to minimize the number of people who pay. Quite the opposite. We want as many people engaged and paying or volunteering as possible. The point is just to do so in a way that never excludes or excessively burdens people who cannot afford to chip in.

In summary, my views:

BAD ideas: pay for private, get just a few corporate sponsors, try to formalize some precise rule to discriminate certain entities, making exclusive proprietary plugins

GOOD ideas: make it as easy as possible for anyone to chip in, make it easy to provide ongoing sustaining donations, give clear guidance about how people should pay according to an honor system, focus on groups paying rather than each individual paying, provide special paid services like facilitation or customization…

That's not the complete list of either.

Anyway, as I've said, Snowdrift.coop will be a possibility once we launch, as long as Loomio stays completely FLO. And our mission is to maximize the number of patrons without resorting compelling funding through any artificial restrictions.

@mitar I don't think that payment must be any related with democratic vote power. Quite the opposite actually. Loomio is the community which will mostly consist of free users. That guarantees that the 'free' interests are kept.

Actually a high number of free users are the biggest value of the Loomio project as they represent the advertising for any paid things, however they may look like.

If most users are charged (no matter how small the amount), the project will most likely not get off the ground soon. Think big, imagine several million free users. Only a very very small fraction of paid 'conversion' is required to make a sustainable business then.

But near 100% paid of just a few thousand users will probably not make a growing business and the day will come when another 'everything-free' clone will appear on the market and Loomio is dead.

Strongly recommended lecture on that topic: "Free" from Chris Anderson.

@Christian Mairoll: I am not saying that it must be, but that it will confuse incentives. Yes, in perfect world one would be able to not be influenced by those who are paying, but in reality it is hard to get out of your head that somebody might not pay anymore because. What you do if all paying people (minority) want a feature to which all non paying people (majority) object.

@mitar the answer would be to charge for the feature.

@mikehargreaves Exactly. And that would not be democratic because it would mean that minority had their way just because they can afford it.

@mitar if there were always an element of self-selection, would that address your concern? For me it's more about setting a culture of paying, while allowing people to self-select as needing to use it for free as per their own judgement. We're starting to experiment with this stuff and that's something we're testing (asking people to tell us whether they can pay or not and going with that).

Thanks so much to everyone who’s taken the time to give input into this so far - many many good ideas, critical perspectives and fresh thoughts coming up.

I thought it might be useful to give some more context about the level of resourcing that it currently takes to run Loomio in a bootstrapping scenario, and to give an idea of the longer-term social impact aims of the project and the level of resourcing it’s likely to take.

Right now it costs about $20k per month to run Loomio, in a bare-bones very lean scenario. This covers the core costs (servers, rent), and provides for the bare minimum of development with a tiny team. Currently, our developers are paid about ⅕ of the standard rate for software engineers at their skill level.

Thankfully, we’re in a unique position, having such a committed core team where positive impact is the primary motivator for everyone involved. But we’re also conscious that it’s not sustainable to stay in a situation where people have to make such a significant financial sacrifice in order to work on it. As well, we’re conscious of the lack of diversity that can result from that situation - i.e. it’s very easy to end up with a team that’s exclusively made up of young middle-class people, because anyone that needs to support a family or doesn’t have other means of support just isn’t able to work on the project.

It’s also clear that the positive potential of Loomio is currently constrained by resource limitations. Seeing 40,000 people over the last couple of years join a platform for inclusive decision-making has been amazing, but there’s so much more potential there. To get Loomio into a state where it’s realistic for us to support not just tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of people, and beyond. Given our core purpose, to make it easy for anyone anywhere to participate in decisions that affect them, our long-term goal is to make Loomio so accessible that collaborative decision-making becomes the norm. We want to have the technical capacity to respond quickly to user needs and keep our app development as adaptive as possible. The current state of Loomio is very much a first step, and there’s so much more we can do to really deliver on its potential.

The practical consequence is that we’re hesitant to do any sort of public-facing push because we’re worried about not having the capacity to support a big increase in user numbers. This is going to require doubling our team over the next 6-12 months, and transitioning to paying staff something closer to a reasonable wage. Realistically, this will at least quadruple our monthly costs in the next period - so the level of resourcing we’re talking about will be in the ballpark of $80k per month to transition to the next phase, and will increase as we grow, to beyond $150k per month as we start to scale.

Another part of this is that we have the opportunity to undertake social impact partnerships - some of the projects in motion are participatory budgeting in schools, integration with a wireless mesh networking toolkit so Loomio can run on resilient infrastructure, and a research project to assess the efficacy of collaborative decision-making. We want to not just provide digital technology, but also on-the-ground support and training in the cultural practices that enable communities to do collaborative governance effectively. All of this work takes budget.

Hopefully this gives some more context to why we take resourcing this project so seriously. We’re not interested in scale for the sake of scale - but in this case there’s real potential for massively increasing the scope of concrete positive impact Loomio can have, and a responsibility to do what we can to deliver on it.

Wow - nice summary @benjaminknight - thanks for sharing.

Wow this is such a rich thread, amazing to have so many people engaged in helping us work through this challenge!

While it’s useful to zoom right out and consider the implications of different legal structures, software licenses, and high-level business models, the work I’m engaged in right now is zoomed right in to the level of ‘what should the text on the button say?’

This week we’ve deployed an experiment in the ‘pay for use’ category, where we’ve changed the signup experience for new visitors who want to start a group. I wanted to resource this conversation by sharing a bit of detail about what’s involved in this work.

To start with, here’s the baseline data for the period Sept 12th – Oct 27th, before we started the experiment:

• 24.4k visits to the homepage
• 3,776 visits to the Try It page, which directs people to either start a group, join the Loomio Community, or explore public groups
• 1,116 visits to the Group Request page: the form that people use to create their first Loomio group
• 476 people successfully complete that form and start their group

Yesterday (Oct 28th) we changed the sign-up process: removing the “Try it” page, and adding a splash screen after the group request form, that tells commercial users they can have a free trial, and then will be asked to pay $2 per person per month.

Here’s a snapshot of the data, one day into the experiment:

• 1,468 visits to the homepage
• 152 visits to the Group Request page
• 34 people fill in the form and see the splash screen
• 30 of them click through the splash screen and start their new group (6 commercial, 24 noncommercial)

That’s a tiny dataset, so it is too early to draw conclusions, but we can already make useful inferences. For instance, before the experiment started, the baseline conversion rate was 1.95% (24,400 visits to the homepage led to 476 new groups), and so far during the experiment the rate is 2.04% (1468 visits, 30 groups). This tells me at least that the new signup process hasn’t massively confused people (phewf!).

The next job is to take these new commercial signups, and figure out how we can support them to successfully activate their groups. We want them to love Loomio by the time they get to the end of their 30-day free trial, so they’ll feel great about paying a subscription fee. Initially this is a labour-intensive manual process, but once we’ve learned more about what support really helps, we’ll be able to automate it.

I hope this little snapshot is useful! I’m really grateful to everyone for their input so far, please do keep asking questions and helping us think through this complex challenge :)

@richarddbartlett Thanks for the run-down there. Re: these details, I agree that providing a guide like "As a commercial entity, you are expected to contribute $2 per group member" is great but I encourage making it such that both groups who feel this is burdensome and groups who can afford much more can make their own best judgments. Perhaps a "minimum rate, unless you are in poverty — paid by honor system" sort of thing (implies that this isn't a voluntary donation — you are supposed to pay unless you can't) along with a "suggested regular rate" that's a bit higher…

I'm trying to get at making it clear that people shouldn't hesitate to use the system because of cost but that they should feel obliged to pay when they can rather than merely requested. That balance is hard to get at.

@benjaminknight @richarddbartlett Thanks to you both for sharing the numbers with us. It really helps me to connect with you...and the community you (we?) are creating.
Loomio Love! :)

FYI here are the actual screens that get shown to people as they sign up:

Non-commercial users:

Commercial users:

@wolftune what do you think of the language here (bearing in mind it's a first iteration)?

@richarddbartlett Those are great initial pages! I would remove the "priority" from "priority support". There's no need to claim that paying organizations get official priority. You can just say "full support" or something like that maybe "dedicated support".

I personally oppose the term "cloud" here and think you should just omit that.

What's "custom privacy controls"? Are you saying community non-profit co-ops, activists etc. will be artificially blocked from having privacy controls that are otherwise available in the software?

You should figure out whether "discounts for large groups" is actually helping any conversion because you'd be better off not offering such discounts.

Although it's a great start, my inclination is to question the per-person approach to funding. It's not extra cost to add someone who just votes once a month or something versus some people who are super active. There may be other ways to qualify. I personally favor the income-based approach, i.e. "$X for entities with income in the range of $Y" and so on.

No easy answers here though. I think you've got a great start.

Really good - this is so much clearer to me that all the dialogue (self note!)

Suggestions -

After: It’s our gift to you.

You could run: Any contribution you pay becomes your gift to others.

Or something like that, a prompt; it felt hanging.

Also I would make it a 60 day trial – even with a passionate ambassador on site it needs that long to bed in. Agree about dropping 'priority'. Challenge everything. Great work all :)

Seems important to value add (+income stream) for orgs/companies etc beyond just provision of tools alone.

Customised consultations to guide development of 'best practices' within org structure to encourage and enable fulsome authentic engagement with all members.

Important to remember this may be quite a new concept for many potential users. (Corporate culture change etc) May benefit from face-2-face enunciation for values clarification etc. Opens itself to fostering mentor relationships (& consult fees for those who can afford it)

Key point of any sales process which (strangely) is often overlooked. Close the sale!! Ask for the money (cash/eftpos/bitcoin etc) Don't Ask, Don't Get (often)

Great feedback thanks everyone!

I'll add something else here which may be of interest re perspective & orientation of terms etc. (which way are you facing?)

In 2005, in Kaikoura (coastal town, east coast of South Island NZ) a community consultation process (hui) was began to develop a marine management plan.

Aim was to seek consensus with wide array of users, including recreational, commercial, and the traditional Maori owners. A huge task which few communities have succeeded in without friction and ill feeling.

The methodology of this project was conducted was quite unique and IMHO, vastly under-reported. The consultative processes used were awesome and ultimately, very successful, resulting in Te Tai o Marokura Marine Management Bill (became law, August 2014). Full history can be found among the pages of

http://www.teamkorowai.org.nz/

I've watched this process for many years. (Sorry, for rambling, I am getting to the point now!)

One of the amazing nomenclature shifts used in the process was as follows: Changing access to certain areas/times etc meant some folk being restricted in perceived 'rights' or freedoms to which they were accustomed. (fishing etc)

Naturally, this could have been a very contentious situation, dividing a community many ways. However, in a stroke of pure genius, these losses, were portrayed as Gifting.

People readily accepted giving up unfettered access, when explained in terms of being, not a loss but their gifting to future generations. (for ecological abundance & sustainability etc)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i22Im_TyLU

Gifting for Abundance: http://www.teamkorowai.org.nz/docs/Te_Korowai_Strategy_August_2011.pdf

Sorry to be long-winded. Intended outcome is this. Charging fees for some users may perhaps be better expressed as Gifting towards both the future development of equitable Social Discourse (Loomio) and to those communities who may not yet be able to afford payments now.

Hope that helps......

@jgrey thanks for sharing that inspiring story! We have often talked about conceptualising Loomio as part of the Gift Economy, and about coming from a place of abundance. Those concepts really resonate. @chelsearobinson and others will probably be interested to learn about what worked in Kaikoura as well in terms of facilitating good public engagement.

@stevecoffman

It really helps me to connect with you…and the community you (we?) are creating.
Loomio Love! :)

WE WE WE WE !!!! <3

I've followed this discussion with interest team. I represent an organization that uses Loomio. Although we are a not-for-profit (read social profit) we readily recognize the need to purchase the tools required that help us to achieve our purpose (flourishing lives for people with lived experience of mental illness). One of the tools that we are having increasing success with and benefit from is Loomio and for as long as it remains a critical part of our business tools we will continue to be happy to purchase it. Should this contribute to allowing other entities to access it without payment (as their circumstances don't allow) then that is simply value-added from our perspective.

Thanks for chiming in @rossphillips - as one of the organisations that has contributed financially to Loomio, you have a really important perspective. I'm so glad that Loomio is providing value to your organisation and aiding you in your important work in the community! I hope you know that your financial support of Loomio has been extremely appreciated.

This is exactly the dynamic I hope to set up in our business model - the people who pay feel great about the value they receive and about helping give access to Loomio to others who can't pay, and the funds go to improving Loomio for everyone.

This 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.

@alanna A marvelous summary!

One minor clarification: you wrote "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."

First, Gittip is now Gratipay (they just changed names). They are not so innovative, it's just plain old regular-donation, same as been done for generations, but it's both a convenient option for that and one that's relatively community-oriented. Patreon offers a per-release-of-something model but is otherwise the same as Gratipay but totally proprietary, higher-fee, and not so community oriented. Flattr will never offer enough to actually cover costs, it's just minor tips. Of those, Gratipay is clearly the more aligned better option. But as it isn't a new model, you really could just bypass it. Having people directly fund you with a weekly or monthly amount is the same thing as using Gratipay. Gratipay offers little beyond that to make any difference.

There are additional options for bounties such as FreedomSponsors.org (my favorite of the options) — that's for people saying they'll pay for particular features. And there's many competitors in that space, but it's never shown to be a truly sustainable substantial approach although it's been tried over and over for years. I do think including it is a fine idea, but don't expect too much.

At Snowdrift.coop, we reviewed all these sites and options, so you can review our research at https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/othercrowdfunding

Of course, I still believe that Snowdrift.coop offers the truly innovative solution that could be the entire answer here, but, as I've said, we're not operational yet. We hope to have our early beta launch within the next few months.

Awesome summary @alanna.... Thank you!

The item that resonates most with me:

"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)."

I think some version of a co-op would be ideal. Owner/members are much more likely to have a vested interest in supporting Loomio, particularly if (we) are included in visioning, decision-making, development, etc.

We have a very successful food co-op where I live. Anyone can shop there but members get to vote...(and there are a few regular discounts for members that make it very attractive to sign up). The one time fee to join can be spread out over a years time, making payment very easy.

Perhaps there could be other non-monetary ways for someone to contribute (pay) for their membership, if they really want to be a member and really can't afford to pay $.
(This is probably a really bad idea...but it would be great if there was another option that didn't rely on $.)

I realize a membership fee alone would not raise sufficient funds to support Loomio, but it could be an integral piece in raising capitol necessary to scale. And, in my mind, the loyalty that comes with the we own it factor would be huge.

As together we choose....

Hmm, i think I'm going to remove myself from this discussion. . I hope you all checked out tribe.net ( http://tribe.net ) and their model. It is the only one where pay or not pay isn't an issue in the energy of the collective i have ever found on the internet. IMHO, this discussion has already shifted into a tiered mindset which doesn't bode well for stated intentions and their implementation to achieve their end. I don't have time to pick out the details and it just may be a misunderstanding of strangers. yet, at face value just reading the thread i find the pervasiveness in the mindset growing. Good luck.

@stevecoffman "I think some version of a co-op would be ideal."

Mondragon Worker Corporation Model, perhaps?

Putting the 'Co' back into 'Corporation'. [Co-oporation?]

"Corporation and federation of worker cooperatives"

A loose coalition of collectives & co-ops with some shared fundamental principles & values.

http://www.mondragon-corporation.com/eng/co-operative-experience/our-principles/

(Cited as example of 'best practice' rather than suggestion of complete adoption by Loomio)

@elaineclermont this is from tribe.net:

Our intention is to derive revenue from commercial uses such as job postings.

I don't think this is a model that would make sense for Loomio.

. . .

@alanna ... that's great news about the radical or 'extreme' transparency options. However when I tried to click https://www.loomio.org/d/www.mixprize.org/story/collaborative-funding-dissolve-authority-empower-everyone-and-crowdsource-smarter-transparent there was a broken link error.

But I did find what I presume to be a copy?
http://www.managementexchange.com/story/collaborative-funding-dissolve-authority-empower-everyone-and-crowdsource-smarter-transparent

Some brave stuff there, particularly the emergent management groups firing themselves. And the different "bucket" categories embraces different types of funding approaches - wunderbar!

Sometimes I've found myself in the position of helping advocacy efforts and ending up being asked "why don't you do it?"

Hopefully this move to Loomio will encourage others to set discussions and proposals. And that will lead into discussions around budget transparency.

Fingers, toes, eyes crossed , )

. . .

This is an interesting discussion. You talk about funding. Lets talk about value.

What is the value of Loomio? Here is a few aspects I see.

There are, I am certain, hundreds of potential use cases we all know about. Loomio is an alternative to each of these. Here are a few, top of mind.
- Important decisions get delayed because we can't find the time to get together to talk it out / because we can't schedule everyone across 10 time zones/ because it is too expensive to get everyone together.
- The introverts in the group, who are among our best thinkers, never have the time to put in a word edge-wise.
- The conference room is booked until 3 pm - we have to make a decision (even if that means we have to decide before having considered all the important aspects)
- Why discuss this - the boss will simply push through his/her own decision...
- We went down one rabbit hole in our discussion, but we forgot to look at other important aspects.
- We meet and discuss, we "talk about", but we never get to a decision.
- I don't want people sitting on the fence about this. Either you support this decision, or you don't for good reason. Lets hear it. Let's get this right, and be a team.
- Okay, our small team is not representative of our stakeholders, and we need their input. They need to have a voice. How do we do that?
- We want feedback from our top customers/suppliers/designers about next year's roll out.
- etc.

Each of these use cases has a huge associated cost of NOT using Loomio. That cost is easy to estimate in situation, and could be used to support a strong value proposition.

In other words, not using Loomio costs the organization money. So the use of Loomio should easily be funded within current operating expenses.

For-profit and government organizations have operational budgets - there is no reason they should not be paying. But they won't if they can get away with it. That is because all their metrics are oriented on reducing costs and/or maximizing revenue. Therefore, you cannot base your business model on people "offering to pay".

So, offer organizations/governments some form of branding using sub-domain redirection and a logo so the UI looks somewhat like them, and sell them a yearly subscription, paid up front, based on the number of employees. Discount the first year to get them to bite, but don't sell it by the month. Changing organizational culture takes time, and one month isn't enough. It'll get hard before it gets better, so you don't want to prompt a renewal decision while it is still hard.

The subscription would include a few hours of consulting up front to launch the "Loomio program" and a review after 3 and 9 months to make sure they are not making gross mistakes, which they will. The metric is the number of successful proposals by time period. They should have more of them month by month, otherwise, you won't be able to renew the subscription at the end of the year.

The other purpose of the 9th month review is to renew the subscription for another year or more.

At both reviews, ask for referrals to other potential organizations they know about. If they do, you could offer them a supplementary discount.

Organizations love to have third parties write stories that present them in a good light. So publish success stories about organizations "Doing Loomio" and accomplishing great things in employee engagement and innovation, devising and deploying great strategies, implementing a bottom-up flow to balance top-down decision making flows, etc.

Within the organizational subscription space, have gamification metrics that recognize employees that contribute a lot, in the various ways that they can (new topics, new proposals, voting on proposals, showing up and posting comments, liking and getting likes, etc. This creates "reputation" that can be tied into the appraisal and reward process.

If this helps keep Loomio free for non-profits, individuals and community groups that create great things out of nothing, that would be a good thing.

@jeandaniel I love your articulation of some of the value Loomio generates — thanks!

Yes @jeandaniel I really loved the turning the conversation on its head you did just then, seeking value not funding. One thing that makes me value Loomio is seeking shifts in my own perspective on an issue and also seeing the perspective of a whole group shift and develop.

You're welcome!

In terms of value, Loomio stops just short of being able to deal with complex or wicked problems - problems that require multiple pathways of strategy to be developed by a variety of stakeholders, all in tandem and in integration, consent-based. The toolset isn't here yet. I yearn that it would be.

That would make Loomio the tool of choice to attack wicked problems such as structural poverty and global warming, and to bring governance decision making to the people for a better form of democracy.

A small group of us have a Loomio discussion going right now to help define what such a tool would look like, based on prior research and what is now possible with the Internet and with tools such as Loomio, today.

Several in the group are cyberneticians, but we understand the need for a much wider set of perspectives to guide the thinking. So if anyone would like to join us, we'd be honoured and grateful. Let me know if anyone is interested in joining in.

The intent is not to prescribe Loomio's roadmap. It is to discover what the solution needs to look like, and then see how to deliver it. The Loomio developers will decide if this is relevant to their work. I just see much potential for synergy.

Best regards,

@jeandaniel clue as to group name? (lack of private message capability again noted here)

@jeandaniel @lewgrothe I too would be be interested in a discussion about how to help Loomio become a tool that can attack larger issues.

Ben and Lew, I'm excited by the added perspectives you will bring to this discussion. The group name is "Appreciating Systems" and the sub-group is "Let's rewrite Team Syntegrity for the digital era". I don't see how to invite you without having your email address, but you can just request to join.

Steve Coffman found his way there already. Welcome aboard!

Archive of Team Syntegrity discussions at public Linkedin group,

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/lets-rewrite-team-syntegrity-digital-3680613.S.5931481193949192194

Mostly that is the type of thing I see loomio is taking about, just just not so plain language.

@elaineclermont, yes, Team Syntegrity is also about decision making. It is a process that goes through several stages, from divergent to convergent, converging onto several proposals in parallel and in integration.

It acknowledges that complex problems can't be solved with single silver bullet solutions. They need to be attacked/resolved along several parallel pathways that work together.

Loomio does not support that yet. I'd love it if it could, so it could be used for complex and integrated strategic decision making. The trick is to think about how to translate the Team Syntegrity process to the online environment. That was the point of the “Let’s rewrite Team Syntegrity for the digital era” group. What it concludes on could have been submitted for consideration to the Loomio roadmap if there is any interest.

It would be interesting to see a corporate client fund this sort of development so they could adopt Loomio for Board-level strategy making and decisions.

Each group that does carry out some form of fundraising, not limited to crowdfunding could have a fund / support / donate type link in the group header.

The number of people clicking through from the Loomio group could be measured along with their donation amount. This would give some quick and clear metrics as to how much Loomio is worth to the group or organisation.

Your proposal is similar to an idea I am fleshing out at the moment, will post more when it is presentable.

I am interested in the idea of paying for Loomio being a Loomio discussion in each group itself. Maybe a discussion could be raised in the group with the topic "Should we contribute financially to Loomio?" and the group could then make a decision about it. This is probably a pretty ridiculous proposition in terms of UX, but I'm attracted to the concept of using our collaborative deliberation tool itself to push the question of payment to groups.

@justin2
Sorry, perhaps my comment wasn't clear enough. I wasn't suggesting that Loomio provide the "Fundraising Mechanism" simply a way to link to the groups funding method / provider and track the traffic.

This could be :

1> In the Group header for Macro Fundraising
2> In the Discussion or Proposal header for Micro Fundraising

Right now we are all just brainstorming ways for Loomio to generate sustainable income and I feel that groups would benefit from seeing how "valuable" Loomio is to them specifically.

@alanna

I am interested in the idea of paying for Loomio being a Loomio discussion in each group itself.

This is an element of ideas I am working up at the moment.