Membership

• CURIE: gmeow:Membership
• IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/Membership
• Category: class
• Defined by: gmeow:slices/organization
• Box roles: TBox role (What is this?)

The reified relationship by which an agent is a member of an organization, optionally playing a role over a period of time. A gufo:Relator binding {member} × {organization} × {role} × {post} × {period}, foundedOn the agreement that constitutes it — the same relator idiom as names' NameUsage and contacts' InterpersonalRelationship. The reify-on-demand promotion of the flat gmeow:memberOf shortcut (Principle 4).

Structure

Subclass of: gufo:Relator

Practical Pattern

Use gmeow:Membership as a specialized kind of gufo:Relator. Add statement metadata or a standpoint when the assertion needs provenance, confidence, or vantage.

Example Snippets

These snippets are generated from canonical slice examples and trimmed to the Turtle blocks where this term appears.

Post And Membership

• Source: slices/core/organization/examples/post-and-membership.ttl
• Examples catalog: open in catalog#example-slices-core-organization-examples-post-and-membership

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example: the seat is not the sitter. GMEOW de-conflates the two
# things surface vocabularies collapse into "CFO": the gmeow:Post (the seat, a
# RoleMixin that exists whether or not anyone fills it) and the gmeow:Membership
# (a person's tenure occupying it). The membership gmeow:fillsPost the post, so a
# vacancy (a Post with no Membership) and a succession (two Memberships filling
# one Post) are both expressible. organizationType is an open VALUE (a company is
# a company by value, not by subclass), and subOrganizationOf decomposes the org
# structurally — distinct from "is a member of".
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/organization/> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .

ex:danaTenure a gmeow:Membership ;
    gmeow:membershipMember ex:dana ;
    gmeow:membershipOrganization ex:acme ;
    gmeow:fillsPost ex:cfoPost .

Employment Contract

• Source: slices/core/agreements/examples/employment-contract.ttl
• Examples catalog: open in catalog#example-slices-core-agreements-examples-employment-contract

# --- The employment Membership is FOUNDED ON the contract: it exists because of
#     it, so the grounding relator points at the agreement rather than assuming it.
ex:employment a gmeow:Membership ;
    gmeow:membershipMember       ex:dana ;
    gmeow:membershipOrganization ex:acme ;
    gmeow:foundedOn              ex:contract .

Projects To

External Equivalences

Equivalent or closely aligned targets: org

Linkages

Generated from the canonical mapping DSL. SSSOM files are the generated public interchange form for term equivalences.

Term Equivalences

Projection Coverage

Usage Advice

Use when

• Use when an agent's membership in an organization needs its own role, post, period, evidence, confidence, or standpoint — the reified relator behind the flat gmeow:memberOf edge.

Avoid when

• Avoid for the 80 percent case where an agent simply belongs to an organization; assert flat gmeow:memberOf and promote to a gmeow:Membership only when role or period must be first-class.

How to use

• Mint one Membership, bind the players with gmeow:membershipMember and gmeow:membershipOrganization, add gmeow:hasRole and gmeow:fillsPost as needed, carry the period with gmeow:validFrom/validUntil, and ground it in the constituting agreement; contested memberships coexist as gmeow:accordingTo-annotated relators (Principle 9).

Examples

• ex:emp a gmeow:Membership; gmeow:membershipMember ex:alice; gmeow:membershipOrganization ex:acme; gmeow:hasRole ex:cfoRole.

Use For Consumers

• gmeow:consumerAgentMemory
• gmeow:consumerInternalArchive
• gmeow:consumerResearchQueue

Avoid For Consumers

• gmeow:consumerSchemaOrgJsonLd