Proposals and polls

Loomio proposals and polls help you involve people in decisions. They are used to progress a discussion to an outcome.

  • Involve the right people to make better decisions
  • Get engagement, test ideas, listen and sense, identify priorities, and clarify issues, even if the solution might not yet be apparent
  • Set a deadline, prompt people who haven’t participated, and state an outcome
  • Apply decision making processes that work for your organization

Run a proposal or poll

Within a thread

You can start a proposal or poll within a thread to run a decision process or progress a discussion.

Open the thread, scroll to the Add Comment bar and click on the Run Process tab, select a proposal or poll template.

Standalone proposal or poll

You can also run a standalone proposal or poll from your group page, from the Polls tab on your group page. Click on New Poll and select your proposal or poll template.

Templates

Loomio includes a series of predefined templates for common decision processes such as; Advice process, Consent process and Consensus.

The proposal templates are the scaffolding to run a process. You can edit the templates to suit your particular needs, create new templates, or remove and rearrange templates to customize the experience for your organization.

A decision process is usually contained within a Loomio thread and may use one or more proposal templates as you progress towards an outcome.

See our guides for Advice process, Consent process and Consensus process for help and examples of using proposal templates at key steps in each process.

Proposal templates

Sense check To ask people for feedback, questions and concerns before moving to a decision.

Advice Seek advice on a decision you need to make.

Consent Make a decision that is ‘safe to try’, without objections.

Consensus Reach collective agreement with everyone involved.

Poll templates

Simple poll A simple poll to ask people which option or options they approve.

Score poll Find the degree of support for each option.

Dot vote Find degree of support by asking people to allocate a budget of points to options.

Ranked choice Rank a list of options in order of preference — useful for elections.

Meeting poll templates

Time poll Find the best time to meet, or to schedule an event. Like Doodle without all the ads…

Opt-in Find volunteers or participants to help or join a working group.

Settings

New poll template Create a new poll or proposal template with your own terminology and options.

Hidden poll templates

Poll templates hidden from the poll menus to make it easier for people to find the poll template they need. Unhide the template to make it available to your group.

Question round Invite clarifying questions to help people understand a proposal.

Gradients of agreement Express support for a proposal on an 8-point scale.

Proposal (classic) Raise a proposal to make a decision.

Poll structure

As you start using proposals and polls, you will notice the setup, running and closing follow a similar pattern:

Set up proposal or poll:

  • Give it a title
  • Assign a category tag
  • Describe the poll question, and how you want people to vote
  • Configure voting options
  • Set a closing deadline
  • Invite people

In "Advanced settings" you can also set:

  • Hide results, until vote is cast or poll closes
  • Anonymous voting
  • Vote reason to required, optional or disabled
  • Reminder that poll is closing soon to nobody, author, undecided voters or all voters

Running proposal or poll:

  • Participants vote and add a reason (optional)
  • Results are updated live
  • Participants can change their vote if new info emerges
  • A reminder is sent to people who haven’t voted

Proposal or poll closed:

  • The proposal or poll closes, and everyone can see the results
  • The author sets an outcome, notifying everyone of what will happen next.