What can each role do?

Every member of your board has a role. A role decides what that person can do inside BoardTools — run meetings, manage the roster, approve minutes, cast a vote, and so on. You pick a member's role when you add or invite them, and you can change it later from their profile.

There are six roles. Most boards map them onto familiar titles, but the role is about app permissions, not the title on your letterhead — see Roles vs. positions for why those are tracked separately.

The six roles

Chair

Your Chair (or President) runs meetings and the governance flow. A chair can schedule meetings, build and publish agendas, record attendance, open and record motions, cast a vote, approve minutes, manage tasks, post documents, and change board settings. Because the person who creates a board starts as its chair, a chair can also manage the member directory — including inviting members to sign in — and set up seats, terms, and committees. Running the board's surveys and self-assessments — building them, sending them out, and reading the results — is a chair capability too, because a self-assessment's results are confidential to whoever commissioned it. A chair does not draft minutes or manage governing documents or discussion spaces — those are the administrator's job.

Admin

Admin — the person acting as your board's Secretary or Administrator — has full operational control of the board's records. An admin can do everything a chair can, and draft minutes, manage discussion spaces and governing documents (bylaws, charters, policies), and view the audit trail. This is the most capable role; give it to the one or two people who keep the board's records.

Treasurer

Your Treasurer posts financial reports and participates as a voting member. A treasurer can upload and manage documents, acknowledge governing documents, manage tasks, RSVP to meetings, post in discussions, and cast a vote — but has no meeting, roster, or settings administration.

Director

Director is the baseline for a voting board member with no officer duties — the default for most people. A director can RSVP to meetings, cast a vote, acknowledge governing documents, post in discussions, upload documents to the library (though not governing documents, and without the library's organize/version/delete controls), respond to surveys sent to them, and manage tasks. Nothing administrative.

Staff liaison

A Staff liaison is an executive director or staff member supporting the board — elevated, but non-voting. A staff liaison handles logistics: scheduling meetings, drafting agendas and minutes, recording attendance, uploading documents, posting in discussions, and managing tasks. They cannot publish agendas, approve minutes, touch motions, or administer the roster or settings, and their own ballot is never counted.

Observer

An Observer is an auditor, counsel, or prospective member — read-only by construction. An observer can view the board and its audit trail — including reading every discussion space they belong to — but cannot change anything: the role holds no permission that writes governance data, so an observer cannot post in discussions (on the web or by email), upload documents, RSVP, or vote.

Officer titles come from positions

Notice that "Vice-Chair", "Secretary", or "At-Large Director" aren't in the list above — those are governance positions (seats), not roles. A position gives a member a title, a dated term, and its voting status; the six roles above decide what they can do in the app. A member usually has both — for example, someone in the Treasurer position holding the Treasurer role. See Roles vs. positions for how seats, terms, and voting eligibility work.

Changing a member's role

Open a member's profile and edit their role, or use Transfer role to promote someone while stepping down yourself in the same action. BoardTools always keeps at least one administrator and never more than one chair, so a change that would leave the board without either simply won't complete.