Reviewing Organization Claims
The Global.Church platform distinguishes between two pathways:
- Organization claims go through human review before granting a user membership in an organization.
- Engagement attestations, needs, and commitments are submitted by authenticated organization members and propagate directly to the knowledge graph — there is no admin approval step.
This guide covers both pathways.
Organization claims
An organization claim is when a user says "I belong to this organization." For example, a user with email [email protected] might claim membership in Wycliffe Bible Translators during onboarding.
Lifecycle
-
Submitted -- A user goes through onboarding and selects or creates an organization.
-
Auto-approval check -- The system checks whether the user's email domain matches the organization's registered domain. If it matches and no one has claimed the organization before, the claim is auto-approved and the user becomes the organization admin.
-
Pending Review -- If the domain does not match, or if the organization already has an admin, the claim is queued for review.
- If the org has an existing admin, the claim goes to that admin for approval.
- If no admin exists and domains do not match, the claim goes to platform admins.
-
Reviewed -- An admin (org admin or platform admin) approves or rejects the claim.
-
Approved -- The user is added to the organization with the appropriate role (typically
org_member, upgradable toorg_contributorororg_admin). -
Rejected -- The claim is archived with a reason. The user is notified.
Where to review
Organization claims are reviewed in the platform admin dashboard at platform.global.church/admin/claims.
The admin or support platform role is required, with the claims:review permission.
What to check
When a user claims membership in an organization, verify:
- Email domain match -- Does the user's email domain match the organization's known domain? An [email protected] claiming Wycliffe is more credible than a gmail.com address.
- Organization legitimacy -- Does the organization profile look complete and real? Check the org name, website, and type.
- Duplicate claims -- Has someone else already claimed this organization? If so, the existing org admin should handle the new request.
Organization roles after approval
When an organization claim is approved, the user receives an organization membership role:
| Role | What they can do |
|---|---|
| org_admin | Full control -- approve members, submit engagement attestations, declare needs and commitments, manage org metadata |
| org_contributor | Submit data, engagement attestations, needs, and commitments on behalf of the org |
| org_member | View organization data (read-only, default for new approvals) |
The first person to claim an organization (with matching email domain) automatically becomes org_admin. Subsequent members start as org_member and can be upgraded by the org admin.
Engagement attestations, needs, and commitments
These are submitted via the API by authenticated organization members. There is no admin review step — the API verifies the caller has an active membership for the referenced orgUri, then writes the record directly. A database trigger propagates the new or updated record to the knowledge graph in seconds.
What gets verified at submission
| Check | Where |
|---|---|
Caller has an active org_membership for orgUri (or an approved org_claim fallback) | API |
Engagement accelerator codes are valid gc:EngagementAcceleratorScheme notation codes | API |
For commitments: concernsNeedId references a real need (if supplied) | API |
For attestations: fulfillsCommitmentId references a real commitment (if supplied) | API |
| Field shapes match SHACL constraints (people group references resolve, org URIs are well-formed) | GraphDB load |
Where the data lands
| Submission | Named graph |
|---|---|
Engagement attestation (POST /v0/engagement-claims/submit) | <https://data.global.church/engagement-claims/> |
Need (POST /v0/needs) | <https://data.global.church/needs/> |
Commitment (POST /v0/commitments) | <https://data.global.church/commitments/> |
See Needs & Commitments for the full submission flow.
Platform roles required for organization-claim review
| Action | Required role | Required permission |
|---|---|---|
| Review organization claims | admin or support | claims:review |
| Manage user roles | admin | roles:assign |
| View all users | admin or support | users:read |
Next steps
- Knowledge Graph Overview -- understand what data is in the graph
- Data Quality and SHACL -- how data is validated
- Adding a Country -- add a new country to the dashboard map