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Governing Board Elections 2025

Announcements are posted on our blog, our social channels, as well as in the Office of the Matrix.org Foundation room, the Office of the Governing Board room, and the Matrix News room.

We encourage you to read our membership page and announcements:

Read on for our election schedule and more information about the election process. We will be posting the list of candidates on this page at the end of the nomination period.

What is the Governing Board

This page is focused on the 2025 election cycle. We encourage you to learn more about the Governing Board itself here.

Schedule

Announcement (April 28)

We kickstarted the election process in a blog post announcing the schedule, eligibility, and conditions of the vote.

This year, we are running elections for the following constituency groups:

Nominations (May 3)

You must be a member of one of the constituency groups in order to nominate yourself or someone else to be a candidate in the election. If you intend to nominate someone else, you need to get their consent ahead of time.

By far our largest constituency group are Individual Members, who number in the 100’s. If you have donated at least $60 USD to the Foundation since April 20, 2024 on Donorbox, then you are eligible to nominate and vote. You must donate before the election period begins, as we cannot change voter rolls after that.

Eligible members can proceed to nominations using the Cryptpad nomination form.

All nominations are subject to review in accordance with our bylaws. We will email you to confirm receipt within 2 business days, and we will publish all of the nominees, and other details, here on this page on May 17th.

If you want to be a candidate in the election, there are a few things you should know:

For reference, you can find last year's nominations on our 2024 election center page.

Campaigning (May 17)

The campaign period is an opportunity for candidates to share more about themselves and their priorities. We encourage candidates to engage with the rest of the ecosystem, and in particular those who are part of the same constituency group.

Thanks to a proactive member of the community, we have a dedicated Matrix space with rooms for candidates and constituents to communicate with one another:

Voting (May 31)

The voting period will run from May 31st to June 13th. All eligible voters will receive an email from OpaVote – the election system we have chosen for this year’s elections.

All members of each constituency group are entitled to vote on the candidates within that constituency group. If you believe you are eligible to participate but have not heard from us, first check the inbox and spam folders of the email address you have on file with us through Donorbox. Please email us if you have any questions.

We will hold an election for all of the four constituencies even if a given constituency has fewer candidates than there are seats allocated for them on the Governing Board. This is, effectively, as a vote of confidence.

Results (June 16)

Results will be announced on June 16th. All elected representatives will be added to a private mailing list and Matrix room so that they can introduce themselves and communicate in between meetings. The Foundation's Managing Director and the Governing Board's Chair and/or Vice Chair will be reaching out to every elected representative to get new members onboarded as quickly as possible.

The Governing Board will meet as a full board at least twice a year, for at least 90 minutes each time. We'll aim to have a meeting shortly after the election, and you can expect one meeting before the end of the year and another before the next election.

Members of the Governing Board are likely to receive a packet of materials before each meeting which they will be expected to have reviewed. Most meetings will be held online, though we may convene meetings in-person, such as at The Matrix Conference. We will make every effort to make in-person meetings accessible to remote participants, and no official business will ever happen without appropriate notice, quorum, and minutes.

While the Governing Board is an advisory board, members are encouraged to play a role in helping to carry out the activities that support the staff in delivering on the Foundation’s collective remit, such as coalescing priorities to share with the Spec Core Team and connecting with contributors and funders to implement proposals.

The Governing Board has a number of Committees and Working Groups which meet and work in between Governing Board meetings. These are where the bulk of the activity will take place since the board, which may have up to 24 members, is quite large.