Recognising What People Contribute

What counts as a contribution

There are four kinds, and you pick one when you raise it. Whether money is involved is not a separate choice for every kind — for three of the four, it is settled by which kind you pick:

• Volunteer time — time given to the Group. Hours, rather than a finished piece of work. Unpaid, always: paying someone for their time is a different kind of decision (an ordinary payment), not a paid version of volunteering.
• In-kind donation — goods or services given instead of money, like donated equipment. Unpaid, always, for the same reason: paying for goods or services is a purchase, not a donation.
• Reimbursement — paying someone back for money they have already spent. Always includes a payment; a reimbursement with nothing to pay back is not what this kind is for.
• Requested work — work the Group asked for in advance. Usually paid once it is done, but not always: the person who did it can choose to donate it instead, and the Group records that the same way.

You name who contributed, describe what they did, and attach evidence if there is any — receipts, photographs, a link.

Recognition on its own is a real outcome

A contribution does not have to involve money. For volunteer hours or donated goods, the Group agreeing that it happened is the result: the decision and its record are what the Group has to show for it, and they stay in your Group's history permanently.

When there is money to pay back

Recognising a contribution never moves money by itself. If the contribution has an amount attached, passing it opens a separate payment request — a second decision, linked to the first, that goes through your Group's ordinary approval and payment rules.

That separation is deliberate. The approvals protecting your Group's money are the same ones for every payment, and a contribution is not a way around them.

Whether the payment needs its own vote depends on how the original one was framed. If the vote already approved the amount, the payment request is created ready for release. If it did not — for example because the final cost was not known when the Group voted — the payment request has to be voted on in its own right. Either way, releasing the money is still a separate step somebody has to take.

Voting on your own contribution

Putting your own name on a contribution does not stop you voting on it. Paying for something out of your own pocket and asking to be paid back is the ordinary case, and you are allowed to vote to approve your own repayment.

Your Group keeps a permanent record either way. A vote on a contribution that names you is written into the Group's history as exactly that, so anyone reviewing the books later can see who voted on what — including when the person who benefited was among them.

What happens when the vote closes

The contribution is recorded, and the payment request is opened if there is one, at the moment the vote closes. Nobody has to remember to finish it off afterwards.

Related guides

• Who Can Spend, and Who Has to Approve: the rules the payment request has to clear.
• Asking for Help with Work: open calls, for work the Group has not done yet.
• What Happens After a Decision Passes: the general picture this is one case of.