In IMPOWR, you can think of Affiliations as associations, relationships, or connections. Anyone who is associated with, or has a relationship or connection with an organization, whether formal or informal, can have that 'Affiliation' set-up and displayed in their account. For example, possibly that person sits on the organization's board, possibly their child attends a program at that organization, possibly they volunteer at that organization, possibly they sit on a committee for that organization, possibly they attend church at that organization, etc.
Organizations have the "Contacts" tab. Clients who have an Affiliation with an organization will show up on that organization's Contacts tab.
Example:
Added "Mary Cariola Center" as an Affiliated Organization for Troy Chaney:
Troy now shows up on the Contacts tab for Mary Cariola Center:
In IMPOWR, we use affiliations for:
- Providing access to a partner portal for someone outside of the organization, so they can sign contracts electronically (refer to Knowledge Base article: How do I provide access to a partner portal for someone not in my organization)
- Identifying the organization someone is associated with. For example, typically, for each IMPOWR instance, there is one primary organization that all staff members are associated with. But when we consider some kind of partnership/alliance instance, that is not the case, since a partnership like that consists of multiple organizations as partners. Because all individuals who are involved in that partnership are set up as non-Client accounts, without their affiliated organization, you would not know which organization they were associated with.