Organization applications

For admins: a person who runs a club, a program, an accelerator, or a community applies to bring it onto the network. Nobody creates an organization directly any more. A network admin reviews the application, and approving it creates the organization with the applicant as its owner.

What an application is

The applicant fills in the organization’s name, slug, kind, website, and a short description, then their own role at the organization and why it belongs on the network. An outsider without a Georgia Tech address creates an account first and applies from the same flow, while their membership is still pending. An existing member applies from /orgs.

A slug is reserved while an application is pending, so two people cannot both be waiting on the same one. A person can have one pending application at a time. A declined applicant can apply again.

The email you get

Every active admin receives one email per application with the organization’s details, the applicant’s name, email, and role, their message, and the two commands below with the application id filled in.

Reviewing from the terminal

vn admin orgs applications --status pending
vn admin orgs approve <id>
vn admin orgs decline <id> --reason "Not affiliated with Georgia Tech."

vn admin orgs applications lists applications newest first, one line each with the id first. --status takes pending, approved, or declined. Add --json to any of the three for the full records.

What approval does

Approval runs as one step. It creates the organization with the details from the application, public and join-by-request, makes the applicant its owner, and, if the applicant’s membership was still pending, activates it. The applicant gets an email with a link to the organization’s setup checklist at /o/<slug>/setup. A suspended applicant is not revived by approval. Approve their membership first, then the application.

If the slug was taken by an organization created some other way between the application and the approval, the approval fails with org_slug_taken and the application stays pending. Decline it with a reason so the applicant can resubmit with a different slug.

Declining

vn admin orgs decline <id> marks the application declined and emails the applicant. --reason is optional and is included in that email. The applicant’s membership is untouched, so a pending outsider stays in the waiting room for the usual member review.

From an MCP client

With the admin scope, list_org_applications, approve_org_application, and decline_org_application do the same three things.

From the web

There is no admin screen for applications in the web app yet. Use the CLI or an MCP client. POST /v1/orgs still exists for admins seeding an organization by hand, and refuses everyone else.