Kicking off the nomination period for the 2026 Governing Board elections

On Monday we announced the launch of the 2026 election for the Foundation's Governing Board. We have now reached the second milestone and are kicking-off the nomination period!

As a reminder, the full election schedule is as follows:
✅ Announcement on Monday 27th April
➡️ Nominations from Saturday 2nd May to Friday 15th May
◻️ Campaigning from Saturday 16th May to Friday 29th May
◻️ Voting from Saturday 30th May to Friday 12th June
◻️ Results announced on Monday 15th June

Key links:

• The election page
• The nomination form

The nomination period is when each member of a constituency group can nominate themselves, a representative or someone else to be a candidate for the election. Each nomination will be approved, announced on 16th May and displayed on the election page.

The constituency groups up for election this year are:

🔗Who can nominate?

You must be a member of one of the constituency groups listed above in order to nominate yourself or someone else to be a candidate in the election within the same constituency.

🔗How to nominate?

You can nominate someone to be a Governing Board member candidate by filling in this form. Remember that all nominees must have consented to nomination before being nominated.

We will review all nominations and confirm whether they have been accepted within 2 working days by emailing the nominee and the person who nominated them if relevant.

If you encounter any issues with the form, you may fill in this nomination form and email it to [email protected].

🔗Who can be nominated?

All nominees must have consented to nomination before being nominated and must be a community member in good standing. That means they must have a clean track record with respect to our Code of Conduct. We want our Governing Board to be a clearing house for a variety of priorities and perspectives, and to be able to hold space for each other even when there are disagreements.

We will also check that all nominees are indeed a member of the constituency group. Note that individuals can only be a nominee in one constituency group.

In the case of Individual members, the eligibility criteria is whether a member’s recurring donation is active and they donate at least $60/£48/€55 per year. Unfortunately Liberapay doesn’t allow us to access personal information from the donors, so we will need to cross-check nominees’ details with their Liberapay account. So if you are nominating a Liberapay donor, please fill in this form so we can confirm they are indeed an eligible Individual member.

Besides these technical considerations, we shared in our announcement blog an overview of the profiles which would fit well as Governing Board members. The overall summary is that we are looking for people of a diversity of backgrounds as we need a variety of view points and skills in our discussions and to support the Foundation. However Governing Board members are expected to spend some time actively participating in the GB’s work. This includes participating in GB discussions, being part of Committees and active in Working Groups. So nominees need to take this requirement into account before submitting their application.

🔗What’s next?

At the end of the nomination period we will publish the list of nominees on the election page and launch the campaigning period so voters can get to know their candidates.

We are looking forward to receiving your application!