You wrote a document. Now you want the group to agree on it. That’s what a proposal is for.

Maybe it’s a new policy. A budget. A position the cooperative wants to take publicly. Anything where you want the group — not just one person — to commit. Without a proposal, the document is just text in the archive. With a proposal, it becomes something the cooperative actually decided on, with a paper trail of who agreed and when.

A proposal goes through four stages:

1. You’re still drafting. Only you and editors see it. The wording can change freely. It’s not a live proposal yet.
2. You’ve opened it. Every member of the cooperative can now read it. Editors can still tweak the text if something is unclear.
3. You’re collecting consent. A window of time opens — usually one or two weeks — during which members say what they think. Three possible answers; see the next section.
4. The decision is in. Either everyone agreed (consented), someone blocked it (rejected), or you pulled it back before the decision (withdrawn). An editor records the outcome with a short note.

You can pull a proposal back at any moment before it reaches a final decision. Nothing is permanent until the round closes.

When a proposal is open, every member picks one of:

• Consent — “Yes, this works for me.” You can add a reason if you want, but you don’t have to.
• Stand aside — “I have my doubts, but I won’t block it.” You’re asked to share why. Standing aside lets the group move forward while making sure your reservation is on the record. Useful for next time.
• Object — “I think this would actually harm the group, so I’m blocking it.” You must say why. Objections need substance — that’s how the cooperative learns what the proposal needs to address before it can pass.

Changed your mind? You can update or withdraw your own response while the round is still open.

• Every member of your cooperative — reads any proposal in the cooperative, responds on their own behalf, and can update or withdraw that response.
• Editors and organisation admins — create proposals, open them for response, close the round, and write the outcome note when the decision is in.
• Other cooperatives — see nothing. Proposals are scoped to the organisation that owns them. You cannot accidentally read another co-op’s decisions.

Separate from proposals: a list of dates that matter for the cooperative. Annual assemblies, board meetings, deadlines, things you have to deliver to the outside world. Editors and org-admins manage this list under Admin → Events.

The five categories:

• Annual assembly (AGO) — the regular yearly assembly the cooperative is required to hold: agenda, minutes, financial report.
• Extraordinary assembly (AGE) — an extra assembly called for decisions that can’t wait until next year.
• CF meeting — the cooperative council’s own meetings (in Portugal: conselho fiscal; elsewhere: oversight board).
• Deadline — a hard external date you can’t miss (tax filing, grant report, statutory obligation).
• External event — something outside the cooperative that documents need to attach to (a partner meeting, government consultation, public event).

Why you’d bother filling this in: six months from now, when somebody asks “what did we decide at the spring assembly?”, you open the assembly here and see every document that belonged to that day in one place — minutes, financial overview, decision list, presentations. Without this, you scroll through filenames hoping the dates are accurate.

You attach a document to a date from the document’s own page (in the document detail panel, “linked event”) — not from the events list itself.