Sociocracy & Consent-Based Governance
Loomio gives your circles a digital home for info gathering, sense-checks, and consent proposals — so decisions don't wait for everyone to be in the same room.
14-day free trial · No credit card required · Watch Loomio's talk at the Sociocracy Conference
Your circles know the process. The problem is almost always the tooling around it.
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.
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.
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.
Loomio doesn't make you adapt sociocracy to a generic tool. Each stage maps to something you already do.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
Each circle gets its own space, with a clean line up to whatever's above it.
General circle, working circles, committees — each gets its own subgroup, its own membership, and its own record, nested under the parent group.
Pre-built proposal templates match the language your circle already uses — no reinventing the process for a new tool.
Every proposal, objection, and outcome is timestamped and searchable — so years later, new members can see not just what was decided, but why.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sociocracy only asks the whole circle to weigh in on the decisions that matter. Everything else stays with whoever's doing the work.
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.
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
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.
Most sociocratic groups start small and build trust in the process before rolling it out further.
Pick a general circle or a single working group. Run its next few proposals through Loomio's consent template and get comfortable with the rhythm.
Once the process feels natural, add your other circles as subgroups too — anyone who links two circles together just needs to be a member of both.
Templates and in-context tips walk new members through consent, sense-check, and voting — so they can participate without a formal sociocracy course first.
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.
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