There are three roles (member, editor and admin), and the gap between editor and admin is narrower than most people expect.
Member
What everyone starts as. A member can see and use the church: browse and RSVP to events, join groups, read sermons and pages, see the directory, give, comment, and send you feedback.
They cannot change anything that belongs to the church.
Editor
An editor runs the church's content and its people. In practice that is almost everything: pages, events, sermons, blog, groups, media, member records, approving people who ask to join, sending announcements, outreach.
If you are wondering whether an editor can do some particular thing, the answer is usually yes.
Admin
An admin is an editor plus four things, and they are the four you would expect to be careful with:
| Only an admin can | Why it is held back |
|---|---|
| Change someone's role | Nobody can promote themselves or anyone else |
| See giving records | Who gave what is not general staff information |
| Manage giving records | Imports, corrections, the money side |
| Change church settings | Domain, logo, billing, the account itself (editors can still edit themes under Appearance) |
That is the entire difference. An editor holds 36 of an admin's 40 permissions.
Which to give someone
Editor for almost everyone on staff or volunteering with the website. It is the honest default: it lets people do their jobs without making them wait for you, and it cannot be used to escalate itself.
Admin for the one or two people who genuinely handle money and settings. More admins is not more convenient; it is more people who can see what individuals gave.
Being an editor does not stop anyone from giving. Giving is not a staff permission at all: anyone can give, including people with no account.
Leading a group is not a role
This trips people up. Someone who leads a small group does not need to be an editor.
Group leadership is attached to the group itself, so a leader can run their own group (approve members, change the meeting time, post to the thread, edit that group's page) without gaining any authority over anything else. A member who leads the Thursday study is still a member everywhere else.
There used to be a church-wide "leader" role. It was removed, because it granted either too much or too little and never the right amount. What replaced it is narrower and better: leadership of a specific group.
Changing a role
People → click the person → Platform Role → Save. Only an admin sees this.
Worth doing deliberately: promoting somebody to admin gives them your entire giving history, and there is no notification to anyone else that it happened.