Consent

Whether it’s to comply with regulatory guidelines or simply build positive relationships, it’s important to ask constituents which types of communications they want to receive and how — and then make sure to honor their preferences. For example, a constituent may prefer to receive all communications through email, or event invitations by mail and only newsletters through email. You can manage a constituent’s consent history — including which categories of communications and channels they opted in or out of — on their record under Consent.

If you configured consent business rules in the database view, solicit codes are updated automatically on constituent records when consent records are added. To learn more, see Configure Consent Business Rules.

Note: Does your organization process personal data for people in the European Union? If so, you may be subject to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). For a starting point with your organization’s legal counsel, visit the Are You Subject to GDPR? infographic.

Under Consent, you can view a constituent’s history of consent responses.

  • For more details about a consent record — including the consent statement, privacy notice, source, and date it was added — expand its row.

  • To view responses that were previously saved for a channel/category, select older records.

  • To focus on specific consent records, use the channel and category filters.

Warning: You must map channels and categories in the database view before you can add consent records. To learn more, see Configure Consent Business Rules.

  1. Under Consent on a constituent record, select Add consent.

  2. Choose which channels the constituent provided responses for and select Select.

  3. Select Consent responses.

  4. For each channel, select how the constituent responded to a request for consent:

    • Yes — The constituent consents to receive communications through this channel.

    • No — The constituent does not consent to receive communications through this channel.

    • No response — The constituent did not provide a response to the request for consent.

  5. If you use communication categories, choose which categories the constituent’s response applies to. For each channel:

    1. Select Select by category.

    2. Choose which category the constituent responded to, and select Select.

    3. Choose whether the constituent consents to receive the category’s communications.

      Note: You can manage Consent Categories in Tables. For more information, see Tables.

  6. Select Details.

  7. In the Source field, choose how you received the consent response from the constituent, such as through the website or mail.

    Note: You can manage Consent Source in Tables. For more information, see Tables.

  8. Select when the response was received.

  9. Under Consent statement, enter the statement the constituent responded to, such as “Would you like to receive emails from us?”.

  10. Under Privacy notice, enter a link to the privacy notice on your website.

  11. Select Save. The program automatically creates a consent record for each channel and category you added a response for.

To keep a complete history of all updates, we recommend that you do not delete consent records. However, if you added consent incorrectly or to the wrong constituent, an admin can delete the consent record. To delete a consent record, select Delete from the menu of its channel or category, and then select Delete.

Tip: To delete an older response from the consent history, select older records for the channel or category.

Tip: With applications such as Blackbaud NetCommunity or Online Express, you can collect consent from forms on your website and download the responses as constituent consent records in the database view. To learn more about how to manage consent in the database view, see Manage Constituent Consent History.