Asking for Help with Work

Posting one

Anyone with permission to manage requests can post an open call from your Group's Decisions area. You give it a title, describe the work, and choose how the person will be picked: by a vote of the Group, or by an administrator deciding. You can also set a date after which no new names are accepted.

Putting your name forward

Any member of the Group can put their name forward while the call is open. You can take your name back at any point before the picking starts.

Two things you cannot do: put your name forward twice, and put your name forward for a call you posted yourself. The second one is deliberate — the person who wrote the description should not also be competing for it.

How the Group picks

If the call is set to be decided by a vote, starting the selection creates a Decision and closes the call to new names while the vote runs. What the ballot looks like depends on how many people put their name forward:

• One person — a straight for-or-against vote on giving them the work.
• Two or more — a pick-one ballot listing everyone who put their name forward.

If nobody has put their name forward, there is nothing to vote on and the Group is told so rather than being shown an empty ballot.

What happens when the vote closes

If the vote carries, the work is given to the person the Group chose, they are told, and the Group is told who it went to. This happens when the vote closes — there is no extra step for an administrator to remember.

If the vote does not carry, or runs out of time, the call goes back to taking names so the Group can try again. A one-person call that votes against is an ordinary outcome, not an error: it means the Group would rather wait for someone else.

Choosing without a vote

A call set to be decided by an administrator skips the ballot entirely — someone with permission picks from the people who put their name forward, and the same notifications go out. This suits small Groups and work too routine to be worth a vote.

Being picked is not being paid

Choosing who takes the work on and paying them are separate steps, on purpose. An open call records who the Group chose. Money only moves through your Group's Treasury, under the same approvals as any other payment — being picked for an open call does not authorise anything to be sent.

Related guides

• Ways Your Group Can Vote: the ballot shapes a selection vote can use.
• Who Can Spend, and Who Has to Approve: what has to happen before anyone is actually paid.
• Who Can Do What in Your Group: which permissions let someone post a call and pick a winner.