Sociocracy & Consent-Based Governance
Run consent decisions
between circle meetings
Loomio gives your circles one place for information gathering, sense-checks, proposals, objections, consent, and a clear recorded outcome.
Free trial · No credit card required · Watch Loomio's talk at the Sociocracy Conference
Where sociocracy breaks down without a digital home
Whether your group knows the process well or is learning as it goes, it needs somewhere to practise consent without losing the work across meetings, chat, and email.
Consent gets crammed into one meeting
Info gathering, sense-checks, and objections all get squeezed into a single call because there's nowhere for the process to happen asynchronously — so meetings run long and quieter voices lose out.
Circles dissolve into chat
Slack, Signal, and WhatsApp groups are easy to start and easy to drift into — but a real-time chat stream is built for conversation, not for reaching and recording a governance decision. Voices get lost, and the decision history is hard to find again.
Legal structure still wants a vote
Many intentional communities and cooperatives practice consent internally but are legally bound to a strata, AGM, or majority-vote structure — you need a tool that can hold both without forcing a choice.
A consent process you can adapt
Use Loomio's templates as scaffolding, then adapt the language, rounds, and participation rules to the way your circles actually work.
A thread for info gathering
A topic that came up in chat moves into a Loomio thread with full context and a linked document — everyone in the circle is notified, in Loomio and in Slack, and reads on their own time.
A sense-check round
Open a sense-check poll with three honest options — Looks good, I have a question, Concerned — to surface questions and reactions before a formal proposal is drafted.
A revised proposal
Feedback from the round gets folded into the document. The thread context is updated so anyone joining partway through can see exactly what stage the process is at.
A consent round
A consent poll goes up with two options: Consent or Objection. Objections require a reason and, ideally, an adaptation that makes the proposal safe enough to try.
Resolve and revote
When an objection is addressed, the objector changes their own vote to consent — right there in the record, no separate meeting needed to close the loop.
Outcome and review date
Closing the poll states a clear outcome and sets a future review date — so everyone knows what was decided, what happens next, and when the circle will revisit it.
"To have an app that actually is designed to come to a decision rather than just a stream of chat is such a huge, subtle, but huge difference."Charlie McGee · Peace Tree Community · Western Australia
Circles that mirror your real structure
Each circle gets its own space, with a clean line up to whatever's above it.
A subgroup per circle
General circle, working circles, committees — each gets its own subgroup, its own membership, and its own record, nested under the parent group.
Consent, consensus & sense-check templates
Pre-built proposal templates match the language your circle already uses — no reinventing the process for a new tool.
A record that outlasts any one meeting
Every proposal, objection, and outcome is timestamped and searchable — so years later, new members can see not just what was decided, but why.
Links between circles, no extra setup
Add the same person to both a circle and the one above it, and they can represent one in the other — with a full say in both. No special role to configure.
Elections by consent
Nominate and discuss candidates in a thread the way sociocracy intends, then resolve the choice with a ranked-choice poll built for elections — not repurposed from a majority-vote tool.
Bridges your Slack or Teams channel
Keep chatting day-to-day where you already are. When a topic needs governance, move it to a Loomio thread — Slack gets the notification, the invite to vote, and the final result, without the deliberation itself getting lost in the channel.
Complements your in-person meetings
Loomio isn't trying to replace the room. It does the info gathering, sense-checking, and prep beforehand — so in-person time is for the conversations that need it.
Not every decision needs a round
Sociocracy only asks the whole circle to weigh in on the decisions that matter. Everything else stays with whoever's doing the work.
The big stuff
New policies, budgets, who's in what role, changing how you make decisions — anything that shapes what happens next. These get a thread and a proper consent vote, so everyone's had their say and there's a record to point back to.
The everyday stuff
Who's doing what today, which supplier to reply to — calls that fit inside a decision you've already made. No poll needed. A quick thread for visibility is plenty, if that.
Save the votes for what actually needs one — that's what keeps them meaningful instead of routine.
Why groups choose Loomio
Governance software should give people agency, not just log decisions
Sociocracy exists to distribute power evenly through circles and consent. Software built for corporate approval chains — sign-offs, hierarchies, single decision-makers — actively works against that. Loomio was built the other way around: for groups where everyone in the circle has a say.
That's why it's used by worker cooperatives practicing consent instead of majority rule, and why Loomio presented at the Sociocracy Conference — it's designed for organizations governing themselves, not organizations being managed from the top.
“You have a platform to express your opinion asynchronously. It enables everybody from every time zone to contribute. All of our official decisions as a collective nowadays are Loomio decisions.”Anja Petkovic Komel, Argot Collective
Building blockchain without bosses
Twenty-eight developers spun out of the Ethereum Foundation with no hierarchy, no executives, and a rule that every decision must have everyone's consent.
- Consent-based distributed decisions
- Legally binding governance decisions
- Every voice heard across time zones
- Official record of decision rationale
Start with a useful decision, not a perfect rollout
Sociocracy becomes real through practice. Help people learn the space, then use it for one decision that genuinely needs their participation.
Make the first action familiar
Welcome people with an introductory thread or a meeting-time poll. They can learn where to read, respond, and vote before the first governance decision arrives.
Choose one real consent decision
Pick a bounded issue that matters, name who needs to participate, set a reasonable deadline, and invite people to bring questions and meaningful objections.
Learn from the objections
Treat an objection as useful information, not a failed process. Work through the concern, adapt the proposal when needed, and record the outcome for next time.
Once that rhythm is working, bring in another circle or turn a recurring process into a reusable template. The structure can grow with the practice.
Simple pricing for circles of any size
The Starter plan ($399/yr) covers up to 30 active participants — right for most single-community or single-cooperative structures.
The Pro plan ($999/yr) covers unlimited members — for when every circle across your organization is on Loomio.
Nonprofit pricing is available for qualifying communities and cooperatives: Starter from $299/yr, Pro from $499/yr.
Free trial · No credit card required
Want to see how Loomio could work for your circles?
Book a friendly demo call and we'll walk through Loomio with your governance model in mind — consent proposals, linked circles, or whatever your process needs.
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