Activism case studies
See how organizations around the world use Loomio to make better decisions together.
How a global nonprofit brought transparency to distributed decisions
150 people across three continents, restoring degraded land—and the decisions couldn't wait for the next meeting.
- Clear record of key decisions
- Structured input from distributed teams
- Multi-stage approvals across time zones
- Decisions separated from communication noise
A model to distribute mutual aid
An experimental reparations-based fund redistributed over $20,000 to members using cooperative decision-making on Loomio.
- Cooperative fund redistribution
- Democratic proposal voting
- Transparent decision archive
- Member-driven governance
Conservation governance at a global scale
240 participants from 70 countries, speaking dozens of languages, need to reach consensus — and they've never once had to fall back to a vote.
- General Assembly across 70 countries
- Inclusion across all time zones
- Async consensus around live meetings
- Automatic multilingual translation
A refugee buddy project grows across three boroughs
A former refugee who once fled Chile is now pairing newly arriving families with local buddies — and a growing network of volunteers needs to stay coordinated in an increasingly hostile political climate.
- Coordinated buddy-family communication
- Council visibility into community needs
- Daily operational decisions without meetings
- Scaled to three boroughs
How a zero waste movement coordinates 500 volunteers nationwide
500 active volunteers scattered across France, constant turnover, and over 2,000 events to coordinate — the movement can't afford to lose its institutional memory.
- Coordinated campaigns across local groups
- New volunteers catch up fast
- Structured info for 2,000+ events
- Consistent messaging despite turnover
Sixty people draft a cooperative charter for the earth
Sixty people scattered across the United States spent ten months turning passionate disagreements into a 40-page cooperative charter for protecting the earth.
- Collaborative charter drafted over months
- Subgroups for specialist teams
- Clear communication replacing chaos
- Distributed members aligned continuously
Measuring every country's human rights performance
How do you measure something as vast as a country's human rights performance — and get diverse experts worldwide to agree on the method?
- Global human rights expert consultation
- Group decisions beyond email limits
- Global team updated centrally
- Strategic polling on key decisions
A community lender powers grassroots renewable energy
A small lending society in Cornwall funds grassroots renewable energy projects — but reviewing each loan used to eat up entire meetings.
- Online loan assessment saves hours
- Transparent multi-stage involvement
- Assessment records for easy audit
- Timely community energy funding
An investment club pools money for local co-ops
Twenty people pool their money every month to invest in local co-ops — but going around the circle to allocate funds used to take an hour.
- Democratic fund allocation via dot voting
- Equal participation despite distance
- Faster decisions than in-person rounds
- Accessible for new investors
200 charities coordinate without a building or budget
When Bath lost its charity support agency, a handful of volunteers built one from scratch — no building, no budget, no government backing.
- Volunteers never miss key decisions
- Majority voice surfaced via polls
- Structured threads replace email chains
- Conversation summaries save reading time
Citizens organize across a country in crisis
In the middle of a political crisis, a distributed network of Venezuelan citizens needed new tools to organize — fast, safely, and from wherever they were.
- Distributed citizen network coordination
- Tools for activism and participation
- Decisions via polls and checks
- Effective distributed communication
A climate action group prototypes ideas between meetings
A climate action group in a small New Zealand town couldn't wait a month between meetings to act on new ideas — so they started prototyping between sessions.
- Rapid prototyping between meetings
- Consensus without in-person meetings
- Every voice heard, meeting-free
- Faster idea-to-action cycle
Activist group keeps decisions moving between fortnightly meetings
A citizen activism group stopped losing decisions to email threads and started resolving them between meetings with clear deadlines and modifiable proposals.
- Between-meeting decisions email can't handle
- Clear deadlines for input
- Agenda items moved off meetings
- Proposals refined before final votes
Digital nomad co-op makes decisions across time zones
Five constantly travelling social media consultants found a way to make real decisions together without ever being in the same room.
- Async decisions across a nomadic team
- Thoughtful choices with objective distance
- Routine decisions without meetings
- Richer meetings via pre-discussion
When Hungarian students organized, the government backed down
When Hungary's government proposed education cuts, student activists didn't just protest — they translated Loomio into Hungarian and organized a nationwide democratic movement that forced the government to back down.
- Nationwide university deliberation
- Student-teacher-academic coordination
- Transparent decisions withstanding media scrutiny
- Reversed government education cuts
Democracy coalition launches 461 citizen groups across a nation
A coalition of direct democracy groups launched hundreds of local decision-making groups covering every region of Greece, turning online discussion into pressure for real political change.
- Nationwide citizen political participation
- Accessible to non-technical citizens
- Transparent voting with participation tracking
- Collective pressure on local officials
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