If you have children, I assume you do not think of them as your customers. If you have a job, you probably do not see yourself as a customer of your employer. And if you belong to a sports club, a political party or a trade union, you are unlikely to think of yourself as a customer there either. Nor would you normally describe the people connected to you—or to a cause you care about—as customers. You get the idea: there are many reasons to manage contacts and relationships. Only some of them involve customers and customer relationships.
Almost all of us have come across Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, in our personal or professional lives. The acronym is everywhere in the workplace. But even at work, not every relationship is a customer relationship. If you raise funds, you work with donors. If you work with fellow members of an association on a voluntary basis, you are involved with volunteers. At information events, you meet participants. In politics, you engage with people affected by decisions, people involved in making them, and many others.
This article therefore offers a glossary of important terms that go beyond the familiar word “customer”. In CiviCRM, the “C” in CRM does not stand for “Customer”. It stands for “Constituent”! This is also explained in the official CiviCRM glossary.
Table of Contents
- Contact
- Organization
- Individual
- Household
- Constituent
- Stakeholder
- Other roles and relationships
- What does this mean for data modeling?
- Choosing the Right Terms
- Further reading
Key Terms Explained
Contact
In CiviCRM, a contact is a record used to store information about a person, organization or household you deal with. Activities, relationships, memberships, donations, cases and other information can be linked to a contact record. CiviCRM has three basic contact types: Individual, Organization and Household. A contact can therefore represent a person, an organization or a household.
You can also define contact subtypes. For example, an event venue could be a subtype of Organization. For venues, you might want to record additional information, such as how many people they can accommodate. A membership or another specific relationship, however, is not a basic contact type of its own.
Organization
An organization is an institutional contact, such as an association, a foundation, a company, a public authority, an institution or an informal initiative. Many organizations have legal personality—for example, registered associations—but informal initiatives do not always have it. Organizations can also be members, supporters or stakeholders.
The person you deal with at an organization is stored as a separate Individual contact and linked to the organization—for example, as an employee or contact person.
Individual
An individual is a single person. In CiviCRM, the technical name of this contact type is Individual. People can be members, employees, donors, citizens, case clients or several of these at the same time. Individual describes the kind of contact being recorded. It does not describe that person's relationship with an organization or with another person.
Household
A household is a unit in which people manage everyday living and finances, and may also live together. It can consist of several people or just one. In everyday language, a household can be seen as a way of organizing shared living arrangements. That does not make it an organization in the narrower, institutional sense.
CiviCRM makes this distinction clear: Household is a separate contact type alongside Organization and Individual. Household contacts can be useful, for example, when you want to send a letter jointly to several people. The official German statistical definition of a household explicitly includes single-person households.
However, when managing donations—and especially when issuing donation receipts accepted by the German tax authorities—you should not use Household as the recipient contact type. A household does not provide the clear identification needed for tax purposes.
Constituent
In CiviCRM, constituent is an underlying concept, not a separate technical contact type. A constituent belongs to a group of people or organizations that is important to the organization in question. In political English, the word can refer to someone living in an electoral district represented by an elected official. In the nonprofit sector, it often refers to people and groups that support an organization, help sustain its work or might support it in the future.
The CiviCRM glossary explicitly uses the narrower meaning of a “current or potential supporter”. Political usage and practical applications can be broader. Each organization should therefore be clear about which groups it means when it uses this term.
Under the definition used here, a member of an association is a typical constituent. Donors, volunteers and other supporters are constituents too. The term describes a particular connection or commitment to an organization, not the type of contact record.
Stakeholder
In CiviCRM, stakeholder is not a fixed contact type either. It is another concept that helps us understand relationships. A stakeholder can influence an organization's decisions or goals, or be affected by them. You can represent relevant stakeholders in CiviCRM using relationships, groups, tags and custom fields. The concept is closely associated with R. Edward Freeman's stakeholder theory. Stakeholders may include supporters, interest groups, people affected by an organization's work, employees, partners, public authorities, residents and critics.
For work with CiviCRM, stakeholder is the broader term, while constituent is more specific. An organization's constituents are stakeholders, but its stakeholders also include people and institutions that are affected by its work, make demands on it, work with it or oppose it. For example, a scholarship recipient is normally a stakeholder of the funding organization, but receiving a scholarship does not automatically make that person a constituent in the sense of a supporter.
Other Roles and Relationships
In everyday work, these broad concepts are complemented by specific social roles. The following table offers guidance from the perspective of a nonprofit organization. The categories are not permanent characteristics of the people concerned.
| Role | Classification | How to record it in CiviCRM |
|---|---|---|
| Member | Typically a constituent and therefore also a stakeholder | Membership in CiviMember |
| Donor | Typically a constituent and therefore also a stakeholder | Contribution in CiviContribute |
| Volunteer | Typically a constituent and therefore also a stakeholder | Relationships, activities and, where appropriate, custom fields |
| Scholarship recipient | Stakeholder because they receive funding; not automatically a constituent | Relationships, activities and, where appropriate, cases |
| Case client | Stakeholder in the context of the case; not automatically a constituent | Case in CiviCase |
| Citizen | Political or legal status; may be a stakeholder depending on the context | Not a separate contact type; citizenship or voting eligibility can be recorded if relevant |
| Critic or political opponent | Stakeholder through their influence or because they are affected; not necessarily a constituent | Contacts, relationships and activities; optionally with a case role in CiviCase |
Member
A member belongs to an organization under that organization's membership rules. Depending on its statutes, members may be individuals or organizations. Membership usually has a start date, a status, sometimes an end date, and particular rights or obligations. Under the definitions used here, a member is both a constituent and a stakeholder. A member may also make donations or volunteer.
In CiviCRM, membership is not a separate contact type. It is information linked to a contact through the CiviMember component. Simply belonging to a CiviCRM group does not automatically make someone a formal member of an association.
Scholarship Recipient
A scholarship recipient receives a particular form of financial or other support. For other types of funding, terms such as grant recipient or beneficiary may be more appropriate. This is a role within a funding relationship, not a basic type of person. A funding foundation may document decisions to award funding, payments, reports, contacts and follow-up work. When an organization receives funding, grant recipient is often the better term.
In CiviCRM, the funding relationship can be recorded through relationships, custom fields, activities or cases, depending on the process involved.
Case Client
The case client is the main contact to whom a case in CiviCase relates. In social services, this is often someone for whom support is being arranged. But the term primarily describes a function within case management. It does not necessarily tell us anything about the person's social position or need for assistance.
This becomes clear in other applications. In a political case, for example, the main contact might be the person or organization that first raised an issue. That contact does not have to be someone in need of help. CiviCase can also be used to manage internal processes and complex grant application procedures.
Example: Daycare and School Support Association
For an association supporting a daycare center or school, the important point is to look at relationships from the association's perspective. Being part of the school or daycare community does not automatically mean being a member of the support association. Nevertheless, the following groups may be relevant to its work:
| Person or institution | Relationship to the support association | How to record it in CiviCRM |
|---|---|---|
| Parents | Stakeholders; potential constituents if they support or join the association | Individual contacts, possibly linked to the daycare center or school, and groups |
| Children attending daycare and school students | Stakeholders as beneficiaries or people affected; not automatically constituents | Individual contacts only where there is a specific need to record them |
| Teachers and childcare staff | Stakeholders as participants or partners; also constituents if they actively support the association | Individual contacts linked to the school or daycare center |
| Parents' council as a representative body | Institutional stakeholder; also a constituent if it supports the association | Where useful, a separate Organization contact for the council |
| Members of the parents' council | Stakeholders in a representative role; not automatically members of the association | Individual contacts linked to the council |
| Municipal administration staff | Stakeholders if their responsibilities relate to the association's concerns | Individual contacts linked to the municipal administration as employees |
| Education ministry staff | Stakeholders if they are responsible for relevant matters or can influence relevant decisions | Individual contacts linked to the ministry as employees |
| The school or daycare center itself | Institutional stakeholder; not automatically a constituent | Organization contact linked to the support association |
For the support association, a teacher who is also a member of the association has a different role from a teacher who works with it only as part of their job. With public officials, it is also important to distinguish between the individual and the authority they work for. Relationships in CiviCRM allow these contacts to be linked.
Example: Foundation
Foundations work not only with the people and organizations they support, but also with different types of donors:
| Role | Relationship to the foundation | How to record it in CiviCRM |
|---|---|---|
| Donors | Typically constituents and therefore stakeholders, because they support the foundation's work | Individual or Organization contacts with a contribution in CiviContribute |
| Donors to the endowment | Typically constituents and stakeholders who help build up the foundation's permanent endowment | Individual or Organization contacts; the endowment donation recorded as a distinct type of contribution |
| Scholarship recipients | Stakeholders as recipients of support; not automatically constituents | Individual contacts, funding relationship and, where appropriate, a case |
| Funded institutions or initiatives | Institutional stakeholders as grant recipients; not automatically constituents | Organization contacts, funding relationships and, where appropriate, cases |
Ordinary donations and donations to a foundation's endowment are two different types of contribution, not two different contact types. An endowment donation is intended to increase the foundation's permanent assets; different rules apply to the use of ordinary donations. This distinction should be preserved when contributions are recorded, for example through different financial types in CiviCRM.
What Does This Mean for Data Modeling?
The idea that constituents form a subset of stakeholders is only one way of organizing these relationships. A person can be an association member, donor, citizen and scholarship recipient at the same time. An organization can be a member of an umbrella association, a funding body and a stakeholder in a political process. These roles may begin, end or change without the person or organization itself ceasing to exist.
This leads to four practical principles for data modeling:
- Contact types answer the question of what is being recorded.
- Relationships and memberships answer the question of how contacts are connected.
- Cases and activities record what the work is about and what happens.
- Groups, tags and custom attributes help identify sets of relevant contacts without treating them as permanent identities.
Creating a contact subtype called “Member” may seem convenient at first, but it gives the wrong impression. In most cases, membership—which can change over time—is better recorded in CiviMember. Conversely, a contact subtype can be useful when a particular category of contacts consistently needs its own data fields. The CiviCRM documentation on contact types explains this distinction.
Choosing the Right Terms
For the work described here, relationship management is a more accurate general term than customer relationship management. It includes the many ways an organization interacts with members, donors, volunteers, people receiving support, public authorities and others. Constituent and stakeholder are useful broader concepts, provided an organization is clear about what each means in its particular context. In CiviCRM, contact remains the technical term for a record representing an Individual, Organization or Household.
In everyday work, it is usually clearer to name a specific role: member, donor, scholarship recipient, citizen or case client. These roles can overlap and change over time. Calling everything people is not a useful shortcut either: it leaves organizations and households out of the picture. Using clear, established terms helps us understand the relationships we manage and represent them consistently in CiviCRM.
Further Reading
- CiviCRM glossary: CRM, Contact, Constituent
- CiviCRM: Contacts and contact subtypes
- CiviCRM: Mapping your data
- CiviCRM: CiviMember
- CiviCRM: Relationships between contacts
- CiviCRM: Contributions and financial types
- CiviCRM: What is CiviCase?
- Stakeholder Theory: About
- German Federal Statistical Office: Households and families (in German)
- German Civil Code, Section 83b: Foundation assets and endowment contributions (in German)
- Association of German Foundations: Endowment contributions (in German)
