Positions define the type of Membership of a person in an Organization. A Position name is like a business title such as “Director” or “Advisor”. When a person has been assigned to a position by appointment or by acceptance of a membership application, they can appear on rosters and can have special permissions associated with the functional roles associated with the position (all people in the same role in an organization will have the same permissions).
An organization may want to announce its positions that are open for new members on the Get Involved site. When a position is posted as open for membership, it will automatically appear on your organization’s homepage.
The following values can be set for each position:
Title (required) – This is the formal name of the position. It will be shown in various places including when recruiting people to join your organization.
Open Date (required) – This is the date and time the position will begin to be listed as “open” for accepting member requests.
Close Date – This is the date and time the position will stop accepting requests for membership. Setting the time at or before the present will immediately close the position.
TIP: If you accept members throughout the year, leave this blank. Not specifying an end date will keep the posting open all year long.
TIP: Don’t set the end time to precisely midnight. Although it is common to say “by midnight” meaning the end of a day, setting the time to 12:00am is technically the start of that day, not the end of it. Best practice is to specify 11:59pm at the end of the last day on which requests will be accepted to avoid confusion.
Short Description (required) – This can be brief summary of the responsibilities of the position or a marketing blurb about why someone should consider seeking to fill the position. It is shown in listings of open positions. The description should be no more than 250 characters.
Long Description – The text in this section can be formatted and should contain everything a person needs to know to decide whether to apply including the requirements, responsibilities and expectations for the position.
Selection Process (Application, Appointment, Approval, Election) (required) –
- Application – A workflow should be defined for the application process. (Requires assistance from IT)
- Appointment – Lets an authorized organization officer initiate placing someone in a position. A user cannot initiate a request online. An authorized officer can initiate appointment of new members, even if the selection process is set to Application or Approval. Selection this option will prevent the position from being posted for others to request.
- Approval – Lets a user initiate a simple request that can easily be approved/denied by an authorized officer in the organization.
- If you have created a form using the Forms tool, you can select the form from the “Approval Form” drop down option to use as a membership application. See Configuring Membership Applications for more information.
- The “Add Members” button on the Current Members page can be used to add someone to the position without requiring the person to initiate an online request. This can also be used if the Close Date is set to a time in the past.
- Auto-Fill – Automatically fills a position with whoever fills a different position that may be in a different organization. For example, the Hispanic Presidents Council may be comprised of representatives who serve as presidents of its member organizations. Using Auto-Fill for each representative position will cause the council’s membership to be automatically updated whenever a member organization installs a new president.
Involvement Level (Advisor, Employee, Member, Officer, Participant) (required) –
- Advisor – All student organizations are required to have one or more advisors that satisfy special employment eligibility requirements. In addition to the Primary Advisor position, a student organization can have one Secondary Advisor (with the same permissions as the primary) and multiple other advisors (with fewer permissions).
- Officer – An officer is an individual student in a leadership position as defined in the student organization’s constitution. Any position identified as an officer will be required to meet the eligibility standards required by Student Rule 41.2.
- Member – Typically, this is a general member (non-officer) position that does not have administrative permissions for the organization. In student organizations, this type of position requires a person to be enrolled as a student before they can be eligible to be accepted into the position.