Creating an Organisation

An organisation is the top-level workspace that controls people, permissions, and data governance. If you have multiple programs (or partners), create separate organisations so privacy and access rules stay clean.

In MariMap, most work happens inside Projects, but an organisation defines:

• The default privacy baseline for new projects and sites
• Who can create projects/sites/surveys and who can only view
• Team membership, invites, and governance expectations

Create the organisation shell

1. Open Organisations.
2. Select Create organisation.
3. Fill in the required fields (these block the wizard if missing):
   • Name
   • Type (what kind of entity this is: NGO, company, research group, government, etc.)
   • Country
4. Add optional profile fields:
   • Description (recommended for internal clarity)
   • Contact email (recommended for support + handover)
   • Website
   • Icon (used in selectors and sharing contexts)
   • Default privacy (see below)
5. Save and confirm the organisation appears in the list.

Default privacy (important)

The organisation can set a default privacy baseline used when creating new projects and sites.

• Public: content can be discoverable or shared more broadly (depending on feature). Use this only when you are intentionally publishing.
• Private: default for most conservation programs. Private organisations typically prevent child objects from being made public.

Recommendation: if you are unsure, start Private. You can still share with partners through controlled access instead of public visibility.

Configure team access

1. Open the organisation.
2. Go to Team.
3. Invite members by email.
4. Assign roles with least-privilege access:
   • Give Admin only to people responsible for governance and billing
   • Give Project creators to program managers, not every user
   • Give View-only access to external partners who only need read access

Governance checklist

• Use clear owner and admin assignments
• Keep project creation rights controlled
• Review inactive users monthly
• Keep organisation profile metadata current
• Agree on naming conventions (organisation, project, site, survey plan)
• Confirm your privacy baseline before importing or creating data

Related pages

• Creating a project
• Creating a site