People
Who Can Do What in Your Group
Roles, the Owner role, and areas of authority
Every permission in your Group traces back to a Role someone holds, or a permission granted to them directly. Nothing is implied and nothing is silent.
Roles are jobs, not labels
A Role is a named office, Treasurer for example, that carries a specific bundle of permissions. Everyone in your Group automatically wears the Member role, and every Group can vary what that role includes. The one thing every membership always carries is the floor: you can comment and you can vote. A Group can hand out more than that, but never less.
The Owner role
One role carries full authority: the Owner role. Every Group always has at least one Owner, and the platform won't let the last Owner be removed. A Group can never end up with nobody able to run it.
Areas: narrowing authority
Some permissions can be scoped to an area of the Group's business rather than granted across the whole thing. Finance, Membership, and Compliance are the three areas available today, so a Treasurer's authority can be limited to Finance instead of reaching everything.
The choice sits beside each permission as you grant it. Leave it alone and the permission applies across the whole Group — which is what most Groups want, and what you get if you never think about it.
Seeing is different from doing
Four permissions control what a member can see, apart from what they can do. Three of them widen something members already have; one opens something they don't.
| What it shows | Members see it by default | Granting it |
|---|---|---|
| The Group's balance and transactions | Yes | Extends it to someone outside the default |
| The full member roster | Yes | Extends it to someone outside the default |
| The audit log | Yes | Extends it to someone outside the default |
| Money owed between organizations | No | Is what opens it at all |
Protector: an emergency brake, not a second Owner
A Group can activate a Protector role for emergency oversight. What a Protector can actually do today is close a vote early. Protector authority is narrower than Owner authority by design: a Protector pulls a specific emergency lever, but can't use the ordinary admin screens an Owner uses day to day.
Every grant is on the record
For every permission a member holds, the Group can see when it was granted and whether it came from a Role or was given to that person directly.
Roles live in your Group's Settings, under Roles. See Joining and Inviting for how people end up in your Group in the first place, and Glossary for quick definitions.
Still have questions? Check the FAQ or contact us.