Loomio

= An online tool for collaborative decision-making.

URL = https://www.loomio.org/

Description

1.

"Groups of all sizes make better decisions when all voices are heard, so we’re building a system that makes it easy and efficient for anyone to participate in decisions that affect them."

2. Josef Davies-Coates:

"Loomio — a free and open source tool for collaborative decision-making — is what happened when Enspiral met Occupy. Enspiral were committed to being a flat organisation, empowering employees to be autonomous and involved in leadership and decision making. But without the right platform, the overheads of engaging lots of people made it hard to deliver on this grand vision. In practice, only a few people were making most of the important decisions. Similarly, Occupy activists were finding it hard to make consensus decisions with large groups of people. Loud voices dominated and people with less time to commit to the process were being marginalised. They were missing out on the power of including a truly diverse range of perspectives. Together they developed Loomio." (http://stirtoaction.com/open-co-ops-inspiration-legal-structures-and-tools/)

3.

"Something interesting happened in 2011. Millions of people all over the world took part in a wave of pro-democracy movements, demanding a change in the way our biggest institutions operate.

Loomio is what happened when a bunch of activists from the Occupy movement and businesspeople from a social enterprise network called Enspiral realised that they were using different approaches to work towards the same aim: a more sustainable and equitable world.

The Loomio project is about individual voices contributing to collective action: enabling all people to have a say in decisions that affect them in all aspects of life – in their community, their workplace, and the world.

Loomio is being built by a team of passionate volunteers in Wellington, New Zealand, and a wider network of friends and supporters all over the world. We’re operating on a non-profit basis, but recognise that Loomio needs to be self-sufficient long term to have as much positive social impact as possible. We’re currently figuring out the fairest way of charging groups who have a budget to pay for helpful tools, so we can help groups who are doing great stuff in the community with no budget." (https://www.loomio.org/pages/about)

Examples

• Enspiral is using Loomio to make business decisions and collaboratively write their employment contracts.

• Diaspora , the massively anticipated open-source social network project, is using Loomio to transition to a community-driven governance model.

• The Concerned Citizens Trust is using Loomio to collectively approve exhibition proposals at their Open-Source Community Gallery.

More Information

• How it works, https://www.loomio.org/pages/how_it_works