The Relationships module is ThirdSectorBee’s CRM. It stores three core kinds of record and supports connections from contacts to contacts, organisations and resources.

The three core entities

Contacts are individual people — supporters, donors, volunteers, trustees, staff. Anything that fundamentally is a human.

Organisations are institutional bodies — charities, companies, grant-making foundations, local authorities, churches, schools. Anything that is not a person but is an actor in the world.

Resources track items such as collection tins, contactless payment terminals and equipment, with quantities and returnable/non-returnable handling. Restricted funds, tribute funds and programmes have dedicated records for their own workflows.

The supported contact connection patterns are:

  • Contact → Organisation — a contact who works for, volunteers at, or is a trustee of an organisation
  • Contact → Contact — a typed relationship: “colleague of”, “manages”, “trustee of”, “family of”
  • Contact → Resource — a contact associated with a tracked item, such as equipment or a collection tin

Connection types can apply to contact/contact, contact/organisation and contact/resource pairings. Available labels are configured per beehive, and a contact-to-contact type can have a reciprocal, so “Manages” on one side reads “Reports to” on the other.

Subtypes

Every contact, organisation and resource carries at least one subtype, a classification your beehive defines, such as Major donor, Trust or Collection tin. Subtypes decide which custom fields appear on a record, and an administrator can restrict a subtype so only named teams and people see the records filed under it. See Relationships settings and Restrict who can see a record.

Why three entity types, not one?

You could in theory store everything as a single “node” with a type field. ThirdSectorBee splits them because each type has different fields, different access rules, and different conventions in fundraising practice. Keeping them separate makes lists, segments, and reports clearer.

Use a Resource for equipment and other tracked items. Use restricted funds for spending restrictions, tribute funds for memorial associations, and the programme workflow for programme delivery.