Thinking of this as a progression path:
Community Member > Contributor > Champion (of some kind) > Affiliate (creator/influencer/etc) > Certified Partner
The group you're describing sounds like the Champion parallel. They've passed a vibe check, but you're not going to throw formal endorsement behind them, or something like a formalized partner agreement. It's a bit looser, something closer to a personal network.
So flipping that into a structure with some requirements:
Member - Anyone in the community
Contributor - Meets certain participation thresholds, e.g. creating resources, answering questions
Champion - Consistently shows up, contributes, does good work, passes the vibe check
Affiliate - Formal application and approval process, managed by whichever team handles affiliates (GTM/demand gen/brand)
Certified Partner - Ditto, formal application and approval process, managed by your partner/revenue/bizdev/etc team
You can give those Champions a level of credentialization and identity, Relume-friendly label, badging, etc, showcasing them somewhere. Then when referring to them as a group, being very clear in your introductions, and in how you set expectations, that you're calling them out based on their activity/presence within the community.
