A form is often the moment a supporter tells you how they’d like to hear from you. The Permission pane turns their answer into a consent decision on their contact record, dated and attributed to the form, so your team can rely on it later.

Before you start

  • You need engage:read:forms and engage:write:forms.
  • Your beehive needs at least one consent purpose, such as “Newsletter” or “Fundraising”. Purposes are set up under Relationships → Configuration → Consent by someone with relationships:admin:settings; see Relationships settings.
  • Keep an Email address question on the form. It’s how the answer is matched to the right supporter.

Unticked boxes are recorded too. If a supporter leaves the tick box empty, ThirdSectorBee records no for the purposes and channels it covers. For an existing supporter, that replaces whatever was recorded before. Bear this in mind before adding a consent box to a form existing supporters will fill in.

Turn on the permission request

  1. Open the form and go to Permission.
  2. Choose Ask for permission on this form.
  3. Under What are you asking permission for?, tick one or more of your purposes. Nothing is recorded until at least one is chosen.
  4. Under How may you contact them?, tick the channels: Email, Mail, Phone, SMS or WhatsApp.
  5. Under How does the supporter say yes?, choose:
    • They tick a box on the form. Edit The wording they see so it states plainly what they’re agreeing to. The box starts unticked.
    • Recorded for everyone who submits. This records yes for everyone who submits, with no tick box. The builder warns that it’s “Only appropriate where consent is not the lawful basis — for example an existing member updating their own details. Not for marketing sign-ups.”
  6. Save the form, or publish it.

The tick box also appears as a question in Questions. Editing its wording there changes the same box.

If your beehive has no purposes yet, the pane says “Your beehive has no consent purposes yet”. Choose Set up purposes to add them, or Don’t ask on this form.

Ask for more than one thing

Separate tick boxes let supporters say yes to one thing and no to another, for example the newsletter but not phone calls about fundraising.

  1. Choose Ask for additional consent. A new request, Consent 2, appears with its own purposes, channels and wording.
  2. Set it up as above.
  3. To remove one request, choose Remove this consent on it.

Removing the tick-box question from Questions when it controls several requests asks you to confirm Remove consent requests, and removes all of them. Use Permission to remove only one.

To stop asking altogether, choose Don’t ask for permission on this form.

What gets recorded

Each submission records, for each request:

The supporter Recorded for the chosen purposes and channels
Ticks the box ok (yes)
Leaves the box unticked no
Submits a form set to Recorded for everyone who submits ok (yes)

The decision appears in the contact’s Communications consent panel. Worker Bees that email or text supporters only send where the recorded answer is ok; see Email or text a contact.

Publish checks

A form can’t be published if it asks for permission but your beehive has no purposes, or a request has no purpose or no channel chosen. See Publish checks.