In November, OCF Program Officer, Mike Strode, offered an introduction to some techniques and best practices for making decisions democratically.

During this session, we will hone in on Loomio as a tool for hosting asynchronous (during a live meeting) democratic decision-making processes. Synchronous (outside of a live meeting) decison-making can be a key limitation preventing groups from sustaining robust participatory decision-making practices. Loomio shifts some of the work involved in discussing decisions and building common understanding towards an online platform which allows more participants to think and discuss at their own preferred speed about a decision.

Join Michael Elwood-Smith of Loomio for an introductory training on how to use their democratic governance platform to build transparent, participatory processes into the ways shared agreements are discussed, amended, or finalized within your group which can help you develop healthy democratic practices within your group.

For a basic tour of the Loomio platform, you can watch the video below or peruse their "Good Governance Guide to Loomio" and "The Facilitator's Guide to Loomio".

Open Collective Foundation is committed to supporting its hosted collectives through Solidarity School with a range of democratic practices that can help them to expand their impact and deepen some of the values offered within our transparent budgeting infrastructure. We also hope in the future to design a participatory budgeting process that will place a portion of our foundation budget directly in the hands of our collectives.

After registration, you will receive an invitation to join a private Loomio group which will be used throughout the training to experiment with discussion and decision-making functionality in a live container.

During this training, participants will:

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