The Employer Relationship field helps you manage how contacts are associated with a company in Goodworld.

It is especially important for workplace giving campaigns, where a contact may have an existing or historical relationship with an employer without necessarily being considered an active member of that company's current employee roster.

Employer Relationship determines whether a contact is treated as a company Team Member throughout Goodworld, which can affect:

This article explains each Employer Relationship status, how to choose the right status, how to assign statuses during a roster import, and how each status affects other areas of the platform.

Goodworld supports six standard Employer Relationship statuses:

If no Employer Relationship is provided for a rostered employee, Goodworld uses Employed (full-time) as the default.

Existing Team Members created before Employer Relationship was introduced are also treated as Employed (full-time) by default.

When deciding which status to use, start by asking:

Should this person currently be treated as part of the company's workplace giving population?

If yes, use one of the active statuses:

If no, use:

Employer Relationship is available as a standard field when importing a company roster into Goodworld.

If your employee file already includes information such as employment type or employee status, you can map that information to Goodworld's Employer Relationship field during the import.

Your CSV can include a column containing the employee's current relationship with the company.

For example, your file might contain a column called:

The terminology in your file does not need to match Goodworld's terminology exactly.

For example:

During the roster import, map the appropriate column from your CSV to the Goodworld field:

Employer Relationship

You can then map the values used in your source file to Goodworld's standard Employer Relationship statuses.

For example:

This allows you to continue using the terminology that exists in your HR or employee file while standardizing the relationship within Goodworld.

Pay particular attention to retirees when mapping your roster.

In Goodworld, Retired is considered an active Team Member status.

That means someone with a Retired Employer Relationship can still be:

This is intentional because many Goodworld partners continue to engage retirees in workplace giving campaigns.

If your organization does not want a particular retiree included in the company's workplace giving population, map that contact to Inactive instead.

After your statuses are mapped, complete the import as usual.

Contacts assigned:

will be treated as Team Members of the company.

Contacts assigned:

will remain associated with the employer record but will not be treated as active Team Members.

If no Employer Relationship is included or mapped during a roster import, Goodworld defaults the contact to:

Employed (full-time)

This means the contact will be treated as an active Team Member and can be included in rosters, participation rates, audiences, and team-based access rules.

If your file contains contractors, retirees, former employees, or other employee types, we recommend including an employment status column whenever possible so those relationships can be mapped accurately.

Across Goodworld, certain tools and features reference Team Members.

Employer Relationship determines whether a company-associated contact qualifies as a Team Member.

The following statuses are considered Team Members:

The following are not considered Team Members:

This distinction is important because Team Member status affects several areas of the platform.

Contacts with an Unverified or Inactive Employer Relationship are not treated as active members of the company's roster.

For example, imagine a company has:

The active Team Member population is 1,000, rather than 1,030.

The additional relationships remain stored in Goodworld without artificially increasing the company's active roster.

Unverified and Inactive contacts are excluded from workplace campaign participation rates.

For example:

A company has:

Goodworld calculates participation using the 1,000 active Team Members.

The campaign participation rate would therefore be:

300 ÷ 1,000 = 30%

The 35 Inactive or Unverified contacts do not increase the denominator.

This helps ensure that workplace campaign participation reflects the actual campaign-eligible population.

Employer Relationship also helps prevent communications from being sent to people who should not be included in an employee campaign.

When you create an audience or Smart Segment based on a company's Team Members, Goodworld excludes contacts whose Employer Relationship is:

For example, if a company's official roster contains 20,000 employees and 10 additional contacts previously self-reported that company as their employer, those 10 Unverified contacts will not automatically be added to an employee audience.

This means a campaign kickoff email intended for the company's roster can remain targeted to the verified employee population.

Goodworld can use company or Team Member information as part of access rules for certain campaigns and pages.

If access is based on whether someone is a Team Member of a company, contacts with an Employer Relationship of:

will not qualify for access based on that company relationship.

This is especially important for private or employee-only workplace campaigns.

Someone identifying a company as their employer through another Goodworld experience does not automatically gain access to that company's workplace campaign.

Goodworld does not display the company name or company logo on the profile or user card of someone whose Employer Relationship is:

This prevents Goodworld from presenting an old or unconfirmed employer relationship as a current professional affiliation.

For example, if someone worked at a company several years ago but is now marked Inactive, Goodworld can retain that historical employer relationship without displaying the person as a current member of that company.

Unverified means that a contact has identified a company as their employer, but the relationship has not been confirmed through an official company roster.

This commonly occurs when a user is asked to provide their employer during another Goodworld experience.

For example, someone may identify their employer while:

If someone identifies Nike as their employer, Goodworld can associate that person with Nike's company account.

However, the relationship is created as Unverified rather than automatically treating the contact as a Nike Team Member.

Workplace giving campaigns are often based on official rosters supplied directly by participating employers.

For example, a United Way may receive an official roster of 20,000 employees from Nike.

Separately, 10 donors may have previously visited the United Way's public donation page and entered Nike as their employer.

Those 10 people may genuinely work for Nike, but they were not part of the employer-provided workplace campaign roster.

Goodworld therefore retains their Nike relationship as Unverified without:

This protects the integrity of employer-provided rosters while still preserving useful employer information.

Inactive means that Goodworld should retain a contact's relationship with a company, but the contact should no longer be treated as a current Team Member.

You might use Inactive when someone:

Rather than deleting the employer relationship entirely, marking it Inactive allows your organization to maintain useful historical information.

Employer Relationship is designed to track the contact's current relationship to the employer, rather than the detailed reason behind a change in employment.

For example, Goodworld does not require separate standard Employer Relationship statuses for:

If your organization needs to track this additional detail, you can use Groups and Tags alongside Employer Relationship.

For example:

Group: Reason for Employer Inactivity

Possible tags:

The contact's Employer Relationship can remain Inactive, while your organization's tags preserve the additional context you need.

The difference between Retired and Inactive is based on whether the individual should continue to be treated as part of the company's workplace giving population.

Use Retired when the person is no longer actively employed but should still be included as a Team Member for workplace giving purposes.

Use Inactive when the person should no longer be part of the company's active campaign population.

For example:

Your organization actively invites company retirees to give each year.

Use:

Retired

They can remain part of the company's campaign audience and participation population.

The company does not include former employees or retirees in its workplace giving program.

Use:

Inactive

The employer relationship remains on the contact record, but the person is excluded from Team Member functionality.

Suppose your employee roster contains:

During import, you could map the statuses as follows:

After the import:

Jane, Alex, and Maria are treated as Team Members.

Sam's employer relationship remains stored, but Sam:

Suppose Chris visits your public donation page and selects Acme Corporation as their employer.

Goodworld associates Chris with Acme Corporation using an:

Unverified Employer Relationship

Later, Acme provides an official employee roster for its workplace campaign.

Until Chris's relationship is confirmed through the appropriate employee data, Chris is not treated as part of Acme's campaign roster.

Chris therefore does not automatically:

Using Employer Relationship consistently allows you to preserve valuable employer data while ensuring that workplace campaigns, communications, access, and reporting are based on the correct population.

If you have questions about Employer Relationship Status, schedule a support call with our success team.