---
title: Affiliates vs Registered Participants
description: Target Registered Participants (anyone who's registered/accepted invites) over Affiliates for most Private Opportunities—you'll reach way more people interested in you!
---

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October 16, 2026

# Affiliates vs Registered Participants

When deciding who to target for an Opportunity, it may be most helpful to target Registered Participants as opposed to Affiliates. 

- A **Registered Participant** is any participant that has ever registered for an Opportunity with your organization or accepted an invite.
- An **Affiliation** is a relationship between a participant and an organization on Golden that both the participant and the organization agree to.

Affiliations are ***especially useful*** for schools and companies who would like to see their student / employee engagement with the community. For example, if you have an employee who participates with 15 different organizations, the Affiliation relationship allows you to view Insights of your participant's contributions. This is vital for annual reporting and tracking hours. This feature may not be useful for nonprofits or other organizations who are only concerned with participants who aid their own programs. 

![](https://support.goldenvolunteer.com/hubfs/Knowledge%20Base%20Import/Screen_Shot_2019-11-07_at_9.53.44_AM-1.png)

Instead, it may be more useful for a nonprofit or other organization who does not need engagement statistics to target their Registered Participants. A Registered Participant includes any person that has ever registered for an Opportunity with your organization or accepted an invite. This is important because it shows that these participants, whether they completed an Opportunity or not, are interested in getting involved with your organization. We recommend targeting these folks for most Private Opportunities, as there are always way more Registered Participants than Affiliates. When you set an Opportunity's Visibility to Private (or its Accessibility to Restricted), you choose which Affiliations, Participant Groups, or Credentials qualify. We recommend selecting your "\*\*Registered" Participant Group in addition to your Affiliations. 

![](https://support.goldenvolunteer.com/hubfs/Knowledge%20Base%20Import/Screen_Shot_2019-11-07_at_9.49.40_AM-2.png)

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