Creating and Managing Connections in ActivistCentral

Contacts rarely exist in isolation. A person may work at a school, serve on a committee, belong to an organization, or have an important relationship with another person in your database.

Connections let you represent those relationships in ActivistCentral.

For example, you might use Connections to show that:

• Maria works at Lincoln Elementary
• David serves on the Executive Board
• Jennifer is a member of a local chapter
• Alex is represented by Jordan
• Sam is assigned to a particular organizer

Connections appear on the Contact profile and help give you a more complete picture of where someone fits within your organization or network.

Adding a connection

Open the person's Contact profile and find the Connections section.

Select:

Add connection

Choose the type of connection and then select the Contact or Org you want to connect.

Depending on the type of connection, ActivistCentral will let you connect the person to an Org, another Contact, or either.

You can also enter:

• Title / role — such as Teacher, Shop Steward, Chair, Representative, or Volunteer
• Start date — when the relationship began

Select Add connection to save it.

Connection types

ActivistCentral includes several common connection types:

• Works at
• Member of
• Serves on
• Student at
• Represented by
• Representative for
• Assigned to
• Other

The available choices depend on what you're connecting the person to.

For example, Works at connects a Contact to an Org, while Represented by connects one Contact to another Contact.

Viewing connections

Active connections appear in the Connections section of the Contact profile.

A connection can show:

• the connected person or Org
• Title / role
• connection type

For a Works at connection, ActivistCentral may also use the organization and title in the summary at the top of the Contact profile.

Organization connections work in both directions. If a Contact is connected to an Org, you can also open that Org in:

CRM → Org Directory

The Contact will appear in the Org's People section while the connection is active.

Editing a connection

If the relationship is still correct but some of its details have changed, select Edit next to the connection.

You can update:

• Title / role
• Start date

For example, someone might still work at the same school but change from Teacher to Department Chair.

The connected person or Org and the connection type cannot be changed through Edit.

If you connected the wrong person or Org, or selected the wrong connection type, remove the incorrect connection and add the correct one.

Ending a connection

Sometimes a connection was correct in the past but is no longer current.

For example, someone may leave a worksite, finish serving on a committee, or no longer be represented by a particular person.

In that situation, use:

End connection

Choose the End date and save the change.

The connection will stop appearing as an active relationship, but ActivistCentral keeps it under Past connections on the Contact profile.

This lets you preserve useful history instead of losing information about relationships that were once valid.

For organization connections, ended relationships can also appear under Past people on the Org record.

Past connections

When a Contact has ended relationships, a Past connections section appears below the active connections.

Past connections can show:

• the connected Contact or Org
• Title / role
• connection type
• the dates the relationship was active

For example:

Lincoln Elementary
Teacher
Works at
Jan 2019 – Sep 2026

This can be useful when you need to understand not just where someone is connected today, but where they have been connected in the past.

Removing a connection

Remove has a different purpose from End connection.

Use Remove when the connection was added by mistake and should not be part of the person's relationship history.

ActivistCentral asks you to confirm the removal and makes clear that the Contact or Org itself will not be deleted.

A removed connection does not appear under Past connections.

A simple way to remember the difference is:

• Edit — the relationship is correct, but its details need updating
• End connection — the relationship was valid, but it has ended
• Remove — the relationship was entered by mistake

Connections between people

Connections aren't limited to people and organizations.

You can also represent relationships between Contacts.

For example, if Alex is Represented by Jordan, Alex's profile shows Jordan as Represented by, while Jordan's profile shows Alex as Representative for.

ActivistCentral maintains this as one relationship while presenting it appropriately from each person's point of view.

Ending that relationship moves it into Past connections for both Contacts.

Connections and outreach

Connections provide context about the people and organizations in your database, but they are not currently audience filters.

For example, you cannot create a Saved List based on everyone who Works at Lincoln Elementary simply because they have that connection.

Use the filters available in Contacts and Saved Lists when building audiences for outreach.

A useful way to think about Connections

The Org Directory stores the organizations, schools, worksites, committees, districts, and other groups that matter to you.

Contacts stores the people.

Connections describe how those people and organizations relate to one another.

Together, they let ActivistCentral represent more than a list of names. They give you a clearer picture of the network around the people your organization works with.