When an organisation on AgroYield Network sponsors a seat for you, you get a paid AgroYield account at zero cost — they cover it. This article explains what the seat unlocks, how to claim one, what privacy you keep, and how the membership relationship works.
This is the member-facing companion to the Organisations article, which covers how organisations themselves work on the platform.
What is an institutional seat?
An institutional seat is a paid AgroYield account that an organisation pays for on your behalf. While the institution's contract runs, you get the same paid-tier features any individual subscriber gets — verified org affiliation on your posts, full feature set — plus the ability to post on the organisation's behalf in modules where context matters.
You don't pay anything. The institution covers the seat as part of their contract with us. If their contract ends and they don't renew, your seat reverts to free tier; you keep your account, profile, posts, and network — only the paid-tier features go away.
How does a seat get to you?
Two paths, depending on whether you already have an AgroYield account.
If you already have an AgroYield account. The institution admin types your email into their member-management form. Their system finds your existing user record and sends you a "Review invitation" email. You click the link, land on /account/institution-invitations, and click Accept or Decline.
If you don't have an AgroYield account yet. The institution admin types your email into the same form. Their system doesn't find a matching user, so it sends you a tokenised invite email — "Create account & join." You click the link, land on /invite/<token>, and from there the signup flow walks you through creating your account in under a minute. As soon as you finish signing up, you're automatically attached to the institution's seat. No second login step, no manual claim — the moment your AgroYield account exists, the seat is yours.
The tokenised invite link expires after 14 days. If you let it expire, ask the institution admin to send a fresh one.
What does the seat unlock?
When you accept an institutional seat, three things happen:
Your tier flips to institutional. You get the same feature set as a top-tier subscriber — verified badge eligibility, unlimited invoices, full reports, asset management, priority placement. Yours for as long as the institution's contract runs.
Your posts can show org affiliation. When you post in modules that support organisational context (grants, opportunities, research, marketplace, community), there's a small toggle that lets you choose: "post as me" or "post as the institution." Posts published as the institution show its name and verified badge. Posts as yourself stay personal.
Your dashboard surfaces an Institutional Seat card. A small card on your dashboard shows the institution name, your role on the seat (admin or member), and quick links to: post as the institution, manage your subscription, and (for admins) manage the institution itself.
What privacy do you keep?
The institution sees exactly three things about you: your name, your role on their seat (admin or member), and the date you joined. That's it.
The institution does NOT see:
- Your activity feed
- Your direct messages
- Your connections
- Your reading history
- Your bookmarks
- Anything you post outside their org context
Your AgroYield experience stays yours. The institution sponsors your seat; they don't surveil it.
What happens if you decline an invitation?
Nothing changes. You stay on whatever tier you were on (free, Pro, or Growth) and keep paying for that yourself. No penalty. The institution admin can re-invite you later if you change your mind, but they can't force anything.
What happens at contract-end?
When the institution's contract ends — either because they don't renew or because the contract was time-limited — your seat reverts to the free tier. You keep your account, your profile, your posts, your network. Only the paid-tier features go away. We send a heads-up email a few days before the cutover so there are no surprises.
If you want to keep paid access, you can subscribe individually at /account/subscription at any time before or after the cutover.
Can you leave the institution?
Yes. At any time. Go to /account/subscription and remove the institution link. You'll revert to free immediately (or whatever individual subscription you choose to start). Removing yourself doesn't cost the institution a refund — it just frees the seat for them to invite someone else.
What's the difference between admin and member?
Both roles give you the full institutional-tier feature set. The difference is governance.
Admin can manage the institution: add or remove members, change member roles, view billing details, see contract status. Admins are typically the institution's leadership or a designated AgroYield contact.
Member has no governance powers. You use the seat — post as the org, get the paid tier, manage your own account. You can't see other members' details or change anyone's role.
If you're invited as a member and the institution wants you to become an admin (or vice versa), the institution admin changes your role through the role-amend dropdown in their members table. The change takes effect immediately. The institution can never have zero admins — if there's only one admin and someone tries to demote them, the system refuses with a clear "promote another member to admin first" message.
Common situations
Two pending invites for me. Possible if more than one institution invites you. Each shows up separately on /account/institution-invitations. You can accept one and decline the other, or accept both — the platform handles multiple memberships, though typically you'd belong to one organisation at a time.
The invite link doesn't work. First check whether you're signed in as the right account. Tokenised invite links are tied to the email the invite was sent to; if you log in with a different email, the claim API refuses with a clear message telling you which email to use. Sign in to the right account or ask the institution admin to re-invite using your actual email.
I forwarded the email to a colleague. They can read the invite, but they can't claim it. The claim API checks the authenticated user's email against the invite's email — even if they have the link, they need to authenticate as the original recipient to actually accept the seat. Forwarded invites are useful for "FYI here's what AgroYield looks like" but not exploitable.
The invite expired before I could accept. Tokenised invites expire after 14 days. Ask the institution admin to send a fresh one — they can re-issue from the same form. The previous invite stays in the audit log but a new token is generated.
My institution didn't tell me about this. If you're getting an invite you weren't expecting, you can safely ignore it. Reach out to the email address on the invite (the institution's billing email) if you're unsure whether it's legitimate.
Where do you find institutional functions after accepting?
The dashboard's Institutional Seat card is the main entry point. From there:
- Post as <org> takes you to the community feed where the OrgSwitcher in the composer lets you toggle between posting as yourself or as the organisation.
- Manage subscription takes you to
/account/subscriptionwhere you can see your current tier ("Provided by [institution]"), the contract end date, and remove the institution link if you want to leave. - Manage institution (admin only) takes you to the admin tooling for the institution where you add/remove members, edit institution details, and review contract status.
In every module that supports org-attributed content (grants, opportunities, research, marketplace, community), the OrgSwitcher in the post composer lets you choose context per post. The default is to post as yourself; the toggle is one click away.
Questions?
If your institution admin can answer it, ask them — they manage the seat and the contract. If you have a platform question (technical issue, privacy concern, billing question for your individual subscription), reach us at hello@agroyield.africa.