Governance for Mutual Aid Groups: How to Make Decisions Without Drama

Every mutual aid group starts with vibes. Everyone's aligned, decisions happen naturally, and formal governance feels unnecessary — even antithetical to the spirit of solidarity.

Then the money arrives. Or the group grows past 15 people. Or someone makes a decision that others disagree with. And suddenly the absence of governance isn't freedom — it's chaos.

This guide is about building decision-making structures that preserve mutual aid values while actually working at scale. Not corporate bylaws. Not Robert's Rules. A practical framework for groups that want to make fair, fast decisions without burning through their social capital.

In groups without formal governance, decisions default to whoever shows up. The people present at Tuesday's meeting decide how Saturday's funds get distributed. Members who work evening shifts, care for children, or don't speak the dominant language are systematically excluded — not by intention, but by structure.

The Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) explicitly warns about this pattern in their legal toolkit for community organizations: without explicit governance structures, groups fall into “unwritten rules, friendship cliques, and popularity contests.” The people who talk the most, show up the most, or have the most social capital end up making decisions for everyone.

This is the opposite of mutual aid. It replicates the power dynamics that mutual aid is supposed to challenge.

Most groups think they have two options: consensus or majority vote. Both have serious problems for mutual aid.

Consensus

In theory, consensus means everyone agrees before action is taken. In practice, it means:

• One person can block everything. A single “no” stops the group. This gives disproportionate power to the most stubborn voice in the room.
• Decisions take forever. Getting 20 people to fully agree on anything requires marathon meetings that exhaust everyone.
• Conflict avoidance replaces agreement. People stop objecting not because they agree, but because they're tired. “Consensus” becomes “whoever has the most stamina wins.”
• It doesn't scale. Consensus can work with 5-8 people. At 30 members, it collapses.

Simple majority voting

Majority vote is efficient, but it creates its own problems:

• 51% can override 49%. In a mutual aid group, narrow margins mean nearly half the community feels unheard.
• Voters don't always show up. If only 12 of 30 members vote, 7 people can make a decision for the whole group.
• It rewards organized factions. A small, coordinated bloc can dominate every vote.

The 2025 CHI paper “It Actually Doesn't Feel Very Mutual” studied how technology shapes governance in mutual aid groups. Their findings are striking:

• Existing tools centralize power in the hands of whoever controls the platform (the Slack admin, the Google Drive owner, the Venmo account holder).
• Groups that rely on synchronous decision-making (live meetings, real-time chat) systematically exclude members with less flexible schedules.
• The lack of transparent, persistent records of decisions means institutional memory lives in individuals, not systems — and leaves when they do.
• Technology designed for corporate teams or casual social use actively erodes mutual aid values when repurposed for community governance.

The paper's core argument: mutual aid groups need tools designed for their specific governance needs, not adaptations of corporate project management software.

Most mutual aid groups manage governance through a patchwork of tools that weren't designed for it:

Signal polls

Quick and familiar, but fundamentally limited. Signal polls are ephemeral — they scroll away in the chat history, making it impossible to build an institutional record of decisions. There's no quorum requirement, no discussion thread attached to the vote, no way to see who didn't participate. A month later, no one can find the poll that authorized a $2,000 disbursement.

Loomio

Loomio is probably the best existing tool for cooperative decision-making. It supports proposals, discussions, multiple voting methods, and persistent records. The problem: it costs $25/month for a group plan. For mutual aid groups operating on thin margins, a $300/year governance tool is a hard sell — especially when that money could go to a community member's rent.

Google Forms and Docs

Free but scattered. Votes happen in Google Forms, discussions happen in Signal, financial records live in Google Sheets, and meeting notes are in Google Docs. Nothing connects to anything else. The person who set up the Google account has admin access to everything. If they leave, institutional access goes with them.

Based on research across hundreds of mutual aid groups, here's a framework that balances fairness, efficiency, and mutual aid values:

1. Write it down

Your governance structure should exist in a document that every member can access. It doesn't need to be long — even one page covering decision types, voting methods, and conflict resolution is better than nothing. The SELC toolkit provides free templates to start from.

At minimum, document: who can propose spending, how votes are conducted, what threshold is required to pass, how long votes stay open, and what happens when there's a dispute.

2. Make voting transparent and asynchronous

Not everyone can make Tuesday's 7pm meeting. Asynchronous voting — where proposals are posted and members vote over a defined window (48-72 hours works for most groups) — ensures that participation isn't limited to whoever has the most flexible schedule.

Votes should be recorded permanently. Every member should be able to see the full history: what was proposed, who voted how, what passed, what didn't.

3. Diminishing returns on power

In most governance systems, the more you participate, the more power you accumulate. This creates a core-periphery dynamic where a small group of highly active members effectively runs everything.

The alternative: design systems where power has diminishing returns. No single member's vote should outweigh the collective voice. Participation should be encouraged, but hyper-participation shouldn't translate to hyper-control.

4. Square root voting, explained simply

One promising approach is quadratic (square root) voting. Here's how it works in plain language:

Instead of one-person-one-vote, members get a budget of “voice credits.” You can spend more credits on issues you care deeply about — but the cost rises steeply. Your first vote on an issue costs 1 credit. Wanting to “double vote” costs 4 credits (2 squared). A “triple vote” costs 9 credits (3 squared).

The result: people can express strong preferences when something really matters to them, but no one can dominate every decision. It naturally balances intensity of preference against breadth of support.

This isn't theoretical — several cooperatives and DAOs have implemented versions of quadratic voting. For mutual aid groups, even a simplified version (e.g., each member gets 10 points per month to distribute across proposals) captures the core benefit.

5. Tiered decision-making

Not every decision needs the same process. A useful framework:

• Small decisions (under $100): Any two members can approve. Log it, move on.
• Medium decisions ($100-$1,000): Proposal posted for 48 hours, simple majority of active members.
• Large decisions (over $1,000 or policy changes): Full proposal with discussion period, supermajority (2/3) required, 72-hour voting window.

The thresholds will vary by group size and budget, but the principle is universal: match the process weight to the decision weight.

Good governance isn't bureaucracy imposed on community. It's care work — the work of making sure everyone's voice matters, decisions are fair, and the group survives beyond its founders.

The groups that last are the ones that invest in governance early. Not because rules are fun, but because the alternative — unwritten norms, informal hierarchies, burnout-driven turnover — is worse for everyone, especially the most vulnerable community members who depend on the group's continuity.

Browse the Goodkeep directory to find mutual aid groups near you and learn how they structure their decision-making.