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Roles, members & volunteers

A short guide to how people fit into your library — and why a member and a volunteer are different things.

Four things, tracked separately

ToyHive keeps four ideas apart on purpose, because in a real toy library they don't always line up:

• Person / household — who someone is, and the family they belong to.
• Membership — their borrowing rights: the membership type they're on, when it expires, how many toys they can have out.
• Role — what they're allowed to do: from Member (borrow only) up through Volunteer, Staff, Committee and Owner.
• Screening — the Code of Conduct everyone agrees to, plus a WWCC where it's required.

Someone can have any combination. A grandparent might be a volunteer with no membership; a busy parent might be a member who never volunteers.

Member vs volunteer

This is the distinction that trips people up, so it's worth being precise:

• A Member borrows toys. They get the member portal — their loans, holds and account — and nothing else.
• A Volunteer can also help run the library: roster themselves onto sessions, help at a stocktake, and receive "can anyone cover a shift?" messages.

Being a volunteer is separate from what you pay. Someone on the full rate can still be a volunteer; someone on a discounted volunteer rate has agreed to do a number of sessions (an obligation), but the ability to help comes from their role, not their rate.

Because most people at a toy library pitch in, volunteer is the normal case — "Member" is the explicit choice for someone who has said they won't help (for example a short-term or single-loan membership).

When you need someone to cover a shift in three days, you message volunteers — not members, who have opted out.

Becoming a volunteer

• Everyone accepts the Code of Conduct when they sign up.
• When you verify a new person face to face, you choose member or volunteer. Verifying as a volunteer is a quick orientation — what helping looks like and how to roster on.
• A member can be inducted as a volunteer at any time later — or offer to help from their own account page, which leaves them awaiting approval until a coordinator screens them.

Two separate "verifications", easy to mix up: a household is "checked in" once a member is confirmed in person (so they can borrow); a volunteer is "approved to volunteer" once they've been screened (so they can be rostered). Someone can be one without the other. See Rostering & sessions for how this plays out on the roster.

What volunteers can do

A Volunteer's standing powers are deliberately a floor — enough to log in, see the roster and browse inventory, but not to run loans or returns alone. The operational powers for a shift (loans, returns, stocktake) are handed over by the session leader for that shift only. It keeps things safe without burying volunteers in permissions.

The reference below is generated from the system itself, so it always matches what each role can actually do.