Governance
What this section is for
Governance handles tier applications — applying to become a Colaborador or Asociado — along with the Board vote that decides those applications and the coordinator and admin role assignments that track who can do what. It is not how you become a Volunteer. Volunteer access is a separate, parallel path handled through profile setup, consent, and a safety check by a Consent Coordinator — see Onboarding.md for that flow. Tier applications never block Volunteer access, and Volunteer access never depends on a Board decision.
Both tiers run on synchronized 2-year terms that expire on December 31 of the next appropriate odd year. Terms, votes, and role assignments all leave an audit trail on your profile and on the human detail page.
![TODO: screenshot — the Board Voting dashboard: applications as rows, Board members as columns, each cell showing an individual vote, with Review/Finalize actions on the right]
Key pages at a glance
/Governance/Applications/Create— submit a Colaborador or Asociado application./Governance/Applications— your application status and history./Governance/Applications/Admin— admin list of all applications, filterable by status and tier (Board and Admin)./Governance/Applications/Admin/{id}— admin detail view of a single application (Board and Admin)./Governance/BoardVoting— Board voting dashboard (Board and Admin)./Governance/BoardVoting/{id}— application detail and vote form (Board and Admin); the Finalize form is rendered only for Admin./Users/Admin/Roles— paginated list of all role assignments, filterable by role (Board and Admin)./Users/Admin/{id}/Roles/Addand/Users/Admin/{id}/Roles/{roleId}/End— assign and end role assignments on a specific human (Board, HumanAdmin, and Admin).
As a Volunteer
Apply for Colaborador or Asociado
As an active Volunteer you can apply for Colaborador (active contributor with project and event responsibilities) or Asociado (voting member with governance rights). If you are already a Colaborador, you can apply to upgrade to Asociado. Both require a Board vote and grant a 2-year term on approval.
Go to /Governance/Applications/Create, pick the tier, and fill in a motivation (required) and any additional info for the Board (optional). Your current tier and access stay the same while the Board reviews. You cannot submit a second application for the same tier while one is pending.
If you applied inline during initial signup, that form was a one-shot. After onboarding, /Governance/Applications/Create is the only way to apply.
See your application status
Your dashboard and /Governance/Applications show the status of any application you have submitted:
- Submitted — waiting on the Board.
- Approved — tier granted. You will see the term expiry date, Board meeting date, and decision note.
- Rejected — the Board declined. The decision note explains why.
- Withdrawn — you cancelled it.
The state history on the detail page records each change with a timestamp.
Withdraw an application
While your application is still Submitted, you can withdraw it from the application detail page. Withdrawing is recorded in the state history and lets you submit a new application for the same tier later.
Renew your tier
About 90 days before your term expires, a renewal reminder email and in-app notification go out, and a reminder appears on your dashboard. A renewal creates a new application for the same tier and goes through the normal Board vote. Board and Admin see the same upcoming expirations on the Board voting dashboard, so renewals can be prompted or processed proactively. If you do not renew before the term ends, the next nightly system-team sync removes you from the Colaboradors or Asociados system team, so you lose the access tied to that membership. Your profile's stored tier label does not automatically reset — you stay listed at the previous tier on your profile until a new approval changes it. Volunteer access is unaffected.
Related sections
- Profiles — membership tier lives on the profile and is updated automatically on approval. (It is not auto-reset on term expiry — only the system-team membership changes then.)
- Legal and Consent — the Consent Coordinator safety check for Volunteer access, independent of Board voting.
- Onboarding — how a new human becomes a Volunteer. Tier applications do not replace or block this.
- Teams — the Colaboradors and Asociados system teams that approved applicants join.