Create and Manage Consent

Consents are an important part of communicating with external contacts – that is, people who interact with your church through your website or forms, for example, to subscribe to newsletters or sign up for events.

In ChurchDesk, you can manage these consents centrally to ensure you only contact people who have explicitly agreed.

Note: Creating and managing consents is usually an admin task. Only users with the proper permissions can create new consents or enter them manually.

What are consents and why are they important?

Consents help you communicate in a GDPR-compliant way with people outside your church. They document that a person has agreed to receive information by email or stay in contact.

ChurchDesk provides a standard consent template. However, your church is responsible for creating its own consent texts that meet legal requirements.

Creating consents

Go to Contacts > Consents in the menu.
Click Create new consent.
Enter a title (e.g., “Newsletter Consent”).
You can either write your own consent text or, if you already have a fully prepared consent, link to it.
Save your consent.

All created consents appear in an overview, showing how many people have confirmed them.

Viewing and manually adding consents for contacts

When you open a contact, you will find the consent overview under the “Settings” tab at the bottom right.

Here you can see:

which consents have been confirmed,
the date of consent,
and the name of the person who entered the consent manually, if applicable.

Only users with the proper permissions can manually add consents, for example, after a verbal agreement.

Automatic collection of consents

Consents are automatically recorded when people:

subscribe via the newsletter widget on your website, or
fill out a form containing consent fields.

For the newsletter widget, double opt-in applies:

The person must first give consent in the form and confirm it in a follow-up email.

Only then can they receive your newsletter.

If a person has not given consent, they will not be added to the mailing list and will not receive communications until consent is provided.

Managing and tracking consents

In Contacts > Consents, you can:

edit existing consents,
see how many people have given consent,
and track when and by whom consents were granted.

This keeps you in control of all active consents in your church.

Practical tip

If you regularly send newsletters or use sign-up forms for events, it’s a good idea to regularly review consents and make sure all texts are up to date and legally correct.

Keywords: Consents, GDPR, data protection, newsletter, forms, contacts, agreement, communication, double opt-in, admin, permissions, contact settings, newsletter widget, form fields, ChurchDesk, create consent, manage consent, track consent, contact management, external communication

Updated on: 17/10/2025

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