Which “network” do we mean?

The vendor PRD and GIK’s existing plan both use the word Network, and they do not mean the same thing. Everything else in this folder is drawn from the PRD, so it inherits that ambiguity. Settle this page first — the answer changes the data model, not just the screens.

This is not a design. It is a comparison built to be argued with. No screen in this folder has been accepted, and the PRD it came from leaves its own screen inventory and commerce decisions blank.

The two readings

A — Trading network from the PRD

Businesses form self-governing groups and sell to each other.

Who joins: A business, not a person. Staff act on its behalf.
What moves: Priced inventory. Wholesale lists, margin rules, quotes.
Money: Partner orders with invoices, terms, tax and resale certificates.
Why GIK would host it: A revenue surface adjacent to donations.
What it adds: Eight new entities and a second order pipeline.

B — Event network already specified

A nonprofit convenes partners around an event or a need.

Who joins: An organization already on the platform, by invitation.
What moves: Donated goods. Availability, not price.
Money: None. Existing offer and order flow carries it.
Why GIK would host it: It is the core mission, scoped to a circle.
What it adds: Scoping on entities that already exist.

Where the two collide

These are the questions that cannot be deferred. Each one resolves differently depending on the reading, and each one has already been built one way somewhere in the platform.

Question	Under A — trading network	Under B — event network
Is there a price?	Yes, and it is per-network and confidential. Leakage between networks is the top-severity failure.	No. Goods are donated; there is nothing to leak.
Who may convene?	Any business, self-serve, with no GIK involvement.	A nonprofit, and the convening act is itself meaningful.
What is a member?	A business, with its own internal admin layer on top.	An organization, which the platform already models.
Does it reuse orders?	No — needs a parallel pipeline with acceptance, reservation and disputes.	Yes — the existing pipeline, filtered.
Who bears fees?	Open in the PRD. Buyer, seller or split is undecided.	Not applicable.

What each answer commits us to

If A

Accept a second, priced order pipeline beside the donation one.
Rename GIK’s existing feature so two things do not both read “network”.
Answer custody: do we hold funds, or just introduce the parties?
Treat cross-network price isolation as a security requirement, not a preference.

If B

The PRD becomes competitor research, not a backlog.
Harvest the parts that stand on their own — invitation paths, the sharing-policy control, the audit trail.
No new top-level entities.

If both

They are two products. Name them apart now, before either ships.
Decide whether one business can sit in both kinds at once.
Expect the ontology to carry the split permanently.

Record the call

Illustrative only — this records nothing. It exists so the conversation ends with a choice rather than a shrug.

Illustrative placeholder data, in-memory state. Nothing here is saved.