Become a Community Lead

Leads are community figures authorized by an Operator (a partner organization) to administer a specific channel on CommUnity OS. Becoming a Lead is not a self-serve onboarding — Leads are authorized by Operators, not by themselves.

What a Lead does

A Lead administers a single channel on the platform — for example, a tenant-rights channel for a legal aid organization, a benefits-access channel for a community college, or a neighborhood civic-engagement channel for a community organization. Leads post guide content, moderate comments, and interact with Residents within their channel.

Leads are not employees of the platform operator. Leads act on behalf of the Operator that authorized them.

How to become a Lead

If you are interested in serving as a Lead, the path is:

  1. Identify the Operator. Each CommUnity OS deployment has an Operator — typically a legal aid organization, community college, or community nonprofit. The Operator decides who can serve as a Lead within their deployment. If you do not know which Operator corresponds to your community, contact us at [email protected] and we can direct you.
  2. Contact the Operator. The Operator has its own process for designating Leads — often tied to existing organizing, community-health-worker, or volunteer-coordinator roles.
  3. Operator issues you a Lead invitation. If the Operator authorizes you, you will receive an invitation link from the Operator's administrative portal. That link is how you enter Lead status on the platform — not through this page.
  4. Accept the Lead Terms of Use. Upon first use, you accept the Lead Terms of Use, including the obligations around no legal or medical advice, no PII collection, and no doxxing or surveillance.

What this page is not

This page is not a self-onboarding form. You cannot become a Lead by filling out a form here. That is by design — the Operator-authorized cascade is the architecture that keeps the platform from being used for impersonation, information scraping, or other misuse. Every Lead has a verifiable chain of authorization from an Operator that has itself signed an Operator Agreement with the platform operator.

If you are an Operator

Operators who want to bring a new Lead online should use their administrative portal's Lead-invitation flow. The invitation generates a one-time secure link for the prospective Lead; the Lead follows the link, accepts the Lead Terms of Use, and is provisioned to the channel the Operator has designated.

If you are an organization interested in becoming an Operator, contact [email protected]. The current Operator Agreement is v2.1; LSC-grantee and educational-institution variants are available.

Questions

General questions about the Lead role: [email protected]

Questions about a specific Operator deployment: contact that Operator directly.