A community garden chooses a six-week watering rota. The Deferendum team uses the hypothetical case and two episodes in civic history to compare six participation tools.
Residents meet in a neighbourhood room to discuss a shared concern. AI-generated illustration.
The first watering shift puts the decision to the test
Imagine a community garden where a few members always end up watering the shared beds. The group discusses how to divide the shifts, votes to try a rota and agrees on a start date. On the eve of the first shift, someone asks who to tell that they can no longer make it. One member thinks there is already a coordinator. Another remembers only that the person had been suggested. Members need to know who accepted the role so they can find cover in time.
From the Deferendum team's perspective, that moment helps clarify what to compare. A group may need to explore opinions, select an option, adopt a rule or track a task. Those outcomes call for different tools. When the intended outcome is an internal decision followed by an undertaking the group can verify, the choice of platform depends on the connections it preserves between stages.
This article starts from our product and uses public documentation for the five alternatives. The matrix compares documented processes and their fit for a purpose. Implementation timelines, costs and performance call for an assessment in the circumstances of each organisation.
From a city budget to an adoption threshold
Porto Alegre's municipal administration dates the introduction of participatory budgeting to 1989. Participation gave residents a role in setting the city's investment priorities. The question had a defined scope, and the institution that controlled the budget was part of the process. The example shows why a tool for setting budget priorities should be assessed in relation to the resources available and the institution's responsibility to respond.
In 2004, British Columbia's Citizens' Assembly studied electoral systems, held public hearings and recommended the single transferable vote. Voters then had a distinct role. In the 2005 referendum, the proposal received 57.7% support across the province, below the 60% threshold. The rules also required a simple majority in at least 60% of electoral districts. The recommendation remained an outcome of the deliberation. The proposed system did not take effect through that referendum.
These episodes illustrate the role of the mandate. A process may produce budget priorities, a recommendation or an adopted decision. When designing participation, say in advance what outcome people can produce and who has the authority to act on it. That matters in a community garden deciding how to share watering shifts, too.
What Deferendum records as a decision progresses
Deferendum gives adult communities a process from concern to vote and follow-up. Members describe a concern and can rate its urgency. When the group's thresholds are met, the discussion moves towards framing a question. Arguments and comments remain available to consult once voting opens. Voting follows the group's rules and eligibility conditions. The process can end without an adopted decision.
For an adopted ordinary decision, the administrator proposes a member to take responsibility. That member can accept or decline. A deadline is optional. The person who accepts posts progress updates, and another active member confirms completion. The record remains accessible in line with group access. People arrange the shifts, check what has happened in the garden and carry out the work.
This connection is why we suggest trying the product in a group that regularly loses track of commitments between meetings. To explore an issue that is still vague, a group can keep talking in its usual channel until there is a question worth framing. When a process requires a certified ballot or a statutory meeting, the applicable procedure governs it. The platform can help a group organise its internal deliberation.
Five criteria before you open a platform
The first criterion is the audience. Eligible association members, participants in an open consultation, and people recruited through a sample play different roles. Check who can contribute, who can vote and what each person can see once the process closes.
The second is the starting point. Sometimes there is a formulated question and a handful of options. In other situations, participants first need to raise concerns, explain needs and identify ideas worth developing. A tool that starts with a clear proposal may be sufficient in the first case.
The third is deliberation. A team might need arguments for and against, reasoned objections, or a picture of where people with different views agree. Each helps people understand opinions in a different way. Choose the format that helps participants frame their next question.
The fourth is the outcome. Say explicitly whether the process produces a map of opinions, a recommendation, a selection of projects or a decision under agreed rules. The fifth is follow-through. Check whether you need a public report, implementation milestones, an assigned task or accepted responsibility followed by confirmation. The matrix shows what each product documents. Configuration can change the experience in a particular deployment.
| Tool | Suitable audience | Starting point | Deliberation | Outcome | Follow-through |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deferendum | Adult membership groups | Concern and urgency rating | Question, arguments and comments | Vote under group rules | Accepted responsibility, progress, confirmation by another active member |
| Loomio | Groups and organisations | Discussion thread or standalone poll | Discussion and consent or consensus templates | Published outcome after closing | Review date, assigned tasks and due dates |
| Decidim | Institutions, organisations and communities | Configured spaces, phases and components | Proposals, meetings and debates | Selections, results or budgets depending on the process | Statuses, progress and milestones through Accountability |
| CONSUL Democracy | Institutions running public participation | Initiatives, debates or budget projects | Discussion and support for proposals | Vote or selection in the configured process | Published milestones for selected proposals |
| Polis | Consultations exploring opinions | Prompt and participant statements | Agree, disagree or pass | Opinion groups and areas of agreement | Report for a later deliberation stage |
| Go Vocal | Teams coordinating consultations | Project with phases and distinct methods | Surveys, ideas and voting depending on phase | Consultation results and reports | Phase insights and assignment of contributions |
Loomio and Polis address different questions
Loomio is worth evaluating when a group already works in discussion threads and needs several ways to ask for a response. Its manual describes proposals for consent and consensus, ranking and availability polls, and publishing an outcome after a poll closes. A review date can be set. The documentation also shows how to assign tasks in discussions, give them due dates and mark them complete. If this way of working preserves the context your group needs, it is a relevant option. What to check in Deferendum is how much it matters for acceptance of responsibility and confirmation to be stages of the same decision process.
Polis starts elsewhere. Participants submit short statements and react to ones they receive by agreeing, disagreeing or passing. The analysis identifies opinion groups and can show statements supported by people who otherwise respond differently. This is a starting point when organisers want to understand where views converge before formulating a decision. The report reflects the participation collected. Recruitment and interpretation determine how far the findings can be generalised. If gardeners are still trying to understand what keeps members from taking a weekday shift, consultation can precede a vote.
A public process changes the choice
Decidim combines participation spaces with components for proposals, meetings, debates and budgets. Its Accountability component links results to proposals or projects and supports publication of statuses, progress and milestones. This flexibility matters to an organisation coordinating several stages, meetings and reporting responsibilities. Before choosing it, establish who will configure and update each component.
CONSUL Democracy describes processes for citizen initiatives, debates, voting and participatory budgeting. Proposals can collect support up to a configured threshold, and the documentation shows how to publish milestones for selected proposals. It is worth examining when an institution has a process for public proposals and needs to show how far they have progressed.
Go Vocal organises projects into phases with their own methods. Its documentation covers surveys, idea collection, voting, phase insights and reporting. Staff can assign ideas and proposals to colleagues for processing. That responsibility concerns handling contributions to a consultation. A membership group should compare it with responsibility for actually carrying out an adopted decision.
At institutional scale, questions about access, moderation, reporting and the staff available to administer the process may carry more weight than how many options appear on a voting screen.
Six weeks in an imaginary community garden
In this hypothetical example, 24 adult members look after a community garden. Some can come during the week, while others are free only at weekends. When nobody knows who is on the next shift, members have to ask in the group chat. A handful of people pick up the remaining work again. The original concern is the unequal division of responsibility for shared beds. The group determines that it can try a temporary rota under its own rules.
After rating the urgency, assume the concern meets the group’s thresholds. Members frame a question for the vote. Will they try Wednesday and Saturday shifts for checking and watering the beds for six weeks, with volunteers rotating and a review at the end? Supporters explain who can cover shifts on each day. Objections concern last-minute changes and cases where a volunteer checks the beds and finds that watering can wait. The group agrees to record these cases, too, before opening the vote. A member who was away can consult the final question and the reasons discussed.
Assume the vote meets the adoption rules. The administrator proposes someone to coordinate the rota. The first member declines. They can come on two Saturdays but cannot take responsibility for the whole schedule. The decision has been adopted, and responsibility is still open. Another member accepts the role and agrees to post an update after the first three weeks. Volunteers swap shifts using the methods agreed by the group.
In week three, nobody covers Wednesday’s shift. The responsible member records it in the progress update. After six weeks, another member checks the shift record and confirms that the trial is complete. The group can use the observations to make a separate choice about continuing the rota. If the adoption threshold had been missed, the rota would have remained a proposal.
When the garden needs a different kind of participation
If members simply want to find out which days they are free, a Loomio time poll can answer the question. If several gardens are affected and organisers are still gathering views about how to share the work, a Polis exercise can uncover common ground before a proposal is framed. If the city opens a call for garden funding, the criteria become budget allocation, project eligibility and public reporting. In that setting, it is worth comparing Decidim, CONSUL Democracy and Go Vocal’s consultation methods against the specific procedure.
In the original case, the concern is keeping the adopted rota, the person who accepted coordination and the status of the trial connected. That is the concrete reason our team would try Deferendum. The same situation can be tested in Loomio with an outcome, a task and a review date. Ask someone who did not follow the discussion to find what was decided, who handles shift changes and where the halfway update appears. See whether they can answer from the decision record.
A listening tool can precede a decision tool. Specify what record passes from one stage to the next and who is responsible for preserving the context.
You can test the choice of tool as well
For a trial, choose an ordinary, reversible decision concrete enough to know when it is complete. Write down beforehand who takes part, the adoption rule and what a completed next step looks like. Run through at least two situations. In the first, someone accepts responsibility. In the second, the proposed member declines or the vote ends without adoption. A process that people can understand needs to explain what remains open.
After the trial, ask members to show the original concern, the question voted on, the decision status and the latest update. Also ask who confirmed completion. Compare the facilitator's effort with the clarity participants experience. Notice what information is manually moved into other tools and whether it remains easy to find.
For a group that wants to preserve these connections in its internal decisions, Deferendum is worth trying. When the mandate is consulting a broad public, administering a budget or exploring opinions, the matrix leads to a different shortlist. Before the next shift, can a member find who agreed to coordinate the rota and where to read the latest update?
