Friends of the Earth Brisbane operates as a cooperative which means that all members contribute to the day-to-day activities of the organisation. We believe that all members should have an equal say in the decisions we make. At Friends of the Earth we see this structure as being vital to our success and contribute to our vision of a fully democratic society. 

Consensus Decision Making

All Friends of the Earth Brisbane Collective decision making is done via 100% consensus.

“Consensus” is the idea that ideally the group is best served if all members of a group agree to a given course action. The standard decision-making model used in social organizations has tended over time to be that where a Chairperson seeks a simple majority, upon which a decision is carried. To achieve this the Chairperson calls for a motion, then for speakers for and against that motion, after which a vote is taken. Many social change groups from the 1960s onwards decided that that process too often meant that almost half of a group ended up feeling left out. Groups were fairly easy to “stack”. Issues such as domination by older males were raised. Instead, some groups (particularly feminist groups and groups having a strongly non- violent line) adopted practices from dissident religious groups such as the Quakers.

Consensus differs from the standard decision-making model in that where there is conflict over a course of action, the solution is not found by competitively adopting one over the other, but by seeking a course of action that either encapsulates the best of all proposals under consideration, or else is sufficiently good that everyone feels sufficiently good about it. The background idea here is that The Group is more important than any given decision.