Why Can't I Close This Group?

It still holds money: work through the wind-down

A Group with a balance can close. It just cannot close in one sitting, because the money has to go somewhere first, and deciding where usually involves other people. Settings → Wind down is a checklist you can leave and come back to. Each step opens once the one before it is done, and each shows the real amount rather than a vague warning.

1. Settle what the Group owes. Anything owed to another organisation is paid first. Distributing while someone is still owed money is the mistake this order prevents.
2. Resolve money given for a specific purpose. If a funder gave money for a stated purpose and some of it is unspent, that money goes back to them or to the same purpose elsewhere. The checklist names each fund and how much of it is left.
3. Decide where the rest goes. The options are another organisation on EnDAO, an organisation or cause elsewhere, the Group this one sits inside, or sharing it out among the people in the Group. Only the ones your Group can actually use are offered.

Once the account is empty, closing is available. It does not ask for a separate sign-off, because deciding where the money went already carried the Group's weight.

Who decides where the money goes

Two answers, and your Group picks which applies to it.

Everyone votes. The destination goes to the whole roster as a binding decision, and the vote is recorded the way any other decision is. This is the natural answer where the money came from the members: a cooperative, a neighbourhood group, a mutual-aid pool, a giving circle.

The administrators decide. No vote. This is the natural answer where deciding is somebody's job: a trustee winding up a trust, an executor settling an estate, a sponsor closing one project. It is also the only workable answer when a vote is impossible: a Group whose members are long gone, or one that a parent organisation has just taken over precisely because nobody was left to run it.

The administrator route is not one person acting alone unless your Group configured it that way: it goes through the same approval rule as your other protected changes.

EnDAO starts you on whichever is usual for a Group like yours and lets you change it at any time from the wind-down checklist. Whichever route was used is written into the record, because “the board decided, two of three signed off” and “the members voted fourteen to two” are different facts and a closing Group should be able to show which one happened.

Sharing what is left among the people in the Group

Available to any Group. Each person's share is worked out by formula (equal shares, by how much each person holds, or by what each person put in), never typed in by hand, and you see every name and every amount before anything moves.

Before it is recorded, whoever is authorised under your governing documents confirms in their own words that sharing it out is permitted. EnDAO records what they say and does not judge it. If your Group has issued receipts saying money was tax-deductible, the total is shown at that moment, from our own records and not as legal advice, because money given on that basis is usually the money most restricted from going to individuals.

Each person then claims their own share. A share nobody claims sits waiting and never holds the rest of the Group up.

Its shared account can no longer be approved by enough people

If too few of the shared account's signers are still reachable (still active members whose account is still enabled) to meet the approval threshold, closing is blocked. This one is permanent: there's no recovery process, because a shared account has no “force close.” Removing or changing signers itself requires the same threshold that has become unreachable.

This is a real, hard dead end the platform can't rescue a Group from. Pick Approvers who'll stay reachable.

Your Group's approval rule applies

This one doesn't block closing; it holds it up. Closing goes through the same rule as your other protected changes, and that applies both to a Space inside your Group and to the Group itself. Starting a wind-down (or closing a Space) needs the number of sign-offs your rule asks for, and then a 24-hour wait, before it takes effect. Closing is one of a handful of steps that can't be undone, so a Group with a single administrator does not skip this: that administrator still signs their own request and still waits out the 24 hours. The only way closing starts immediately is if the Group has turned its approval rule off altogether.

Finishing a wind-down that has already started does not ask again. The decision was taken when the wind-down started, so once the money is dealt with, the final archive is yours to complete.

While it waits, the request sits under Settings → Approvals, where any administrator can sign it or cancel it. Everything keeps running until the last signature and the 24 hours have both passed.

Pausing the Group is a separate setting you can switch on. It is off unless you turn it on, so a pause takes effect immediately. That is useful when pausing is the urgent answer to something going wrong.

What closing does

• Members can still read history, votes, and the audit log.
• No new Decisions, Discussions, or member changes.
• Treasury operations stop.
• The Group is removed from Discover.
• Access ends straight away. History stays readable for two weeks, and support can bring the Group back inside that window. After that it is gone for good.
• You can't un-archive yourself. To restart, create a new Group.

Related guides

• Groups Inside Groups: closing a Space you administer works the same way.
• Who Can Spend, and Who Has to Approve: Approvers and the approval threshold.