Democratic governance for worker cooperatives
Loomio helps worker-owned organisations make consent-based decisions together — asynchronously, with every member's voice heard and every outcome documented.
Self-management promises better, faster decision making — we proved this by achieving company-wide consent to the biggest strategic decision the company has ever made, within a week, on Loomio.
Your cooperative is built on democratic ownership. Your decision-making should be too.
Worker cooperatives don't run decisions the way corporations do. You don't have a CEO who decides and announces — you have member-owners who consent, ratify, and hold each other accountable. That takes a different kind of tool.
What gets in the way of good cooperative governance?
| The challenge | What it costs you |
|---|---|
| Decisions piling up between AGMs | Working groups stall, members feel out of the loop, urgent matters wait months for a quorum |
| Lowest common denominator consensus | Loud voices dominate real-time discussion; quieter members disengage rather than object |
| No record of why | New members can't find the rationale behind existing policies; old conflicts resurface because decisions weren't documented |
| Email threads for proposals | "Did everyone see my email?" is not a consent process — replies get missed, positions shift, and nothing is binding |
| High turnover in volunteer roles | Every new coordinator has to rebuild context that should already be written down |
Loomio gives your collective a proper home for proposals, ratification, and the decisions that run your coop
| What you need | On Loomio |
|---|---|
| Consent-based proposals | Post a proposal, set a closing date, and let members signal consent, abstain, or raise an objection. The outcome is recorded the moment it closes — no ambiguity, no "I thought we agreed." |
| Time for genuine deliberation | Async discussion means members engage when they're ready, not under meeting-room pressure. Introverts and part-time members get the same voice as the vocal few. |
| Working group autonomy | Each team or circle manages its own space — proposals, policies, meeting notes — without cluttering the whole-org feed. |
| A searchable governance record | Every past proposal, every ratification vote, every outcome is permanently searchable. New members onboard faster; auditors and funders can see your process. |
| Sociocracy and advice process support | Loomio's proposal types map directly onto consent rounds, advice process, and sense-and-respond governance — whatever framework your coop uses. |
Built for the way cooperatives actually work
Worker cooperatives have used Loomio since the beginning. We're a cooperative ourselves — so we know that democratic governance isn't a nice-to-have, it's the point. Whether you have 8 member-owners or 80, Loomio gives you a structured way to make decisions together without turning every conversation into a meeting.
Energy4All (UK), 10Pines (AR), Co-operative Assistance Network (UK), Les-Tilleuls.coop (FR), Comradery Worker Cooperative (US), and dozens more worker-owned organisations make their most important decisions on Loomio.
