Groups are defined by their status as Draft, Active, Finished or Archived. This status determines whether the permissions that you have assigned either via the group type or directly via the group itself are active for the group members or not.

If you have given permissions to members of a group, then these are not yet active as long as the group has the status Draft.

The permissions take effect as soon as you set the status of a group to Active or Finished.
The permissions become inactive as soon as the group has the status Archived.