I wanted to personally share some exciting updates about what’s been happening at NGP VAN recently. For those of you who might not know me, I’ve been with the company since 2008, starting on our Client Services team, moving into and eventually leading our Product team for Organizing, and serving as the General Manager for Organizing since 2015. I’ll be sending more regular updates as we head into the 2022 midterms and have some exciting news and updates to share!

Recruiting diverse and qualified candidates to run for office is an invaluable part of the progressive political landscape, and something that our friends at Run for Something have mastered. That’s why NGP VAN and Run For Something have partnered up to provide affordable technology for RFS candidates and campaigns of all sizes. We’re proud to partner with RFS as they continue to enable new and exciting progressive candidates to run efficient, grassroots & voter-contact driven campaigns with support and training.

Standing out in crowded inboxes and catching your donors’ attention is both an art and a science – and it’s probably the most immediate goal on your mind if you run an email program. Between crafting a compelling message, building a clear call to action, and segmenting your list to send content personalized to your supporters’ specific interests, the last thing you need to worry about is difficulty building out the technical aspects of your email. Knowing HTML and CSS shouldn’t be required in order to create beautiful, responsive emails that engage supporters and raise money. That’s why we’re so proud of NGP VAN’s new Drag & Drop Email Editor.

Washington, D.C., November 30, 2020 - EveryAction, a leading provider of software serving over 15,000 nonprofits and the parent company of NGP VAN, announced today that it has acquired Mobilize, the events management and volunteer recruitment platform that connects mission-driven organizations and their supporters. The acquisition follows EveryAction’s strategy of bringing together the best people, and giving them the resources to create the best SaaS products that provide the most value to nonprofits.

The 2020 cycle was unprecedented in many ways, starting with the large primary field, new emphasis on mail-in-voting, campaigns and organizations switching to fully virtual programs, and ending with delayed election results. This was not a typical election year.

2020 is going to stand out as a campaign cycle that required a lot of ingenuity. With higher reliance on mediums like email and phones, it has been a challenge to get the most engagement with their volunteers in new and different ways.  

It’s no secret, fundraising has not been easy this cycle. The fundraising community has had to get creative, finding new tactics for our current situation. And the results have been incredible.  

NGP VAN is excited to announce our position as the Official Database Provider of the 2020 Democratic National Convention. We are proud to be amongst local and national partners in supporting the Milwaukee 2020 Host Committee on this historic year. In supporting the Convention efforts, NGP VAN continues our close partnership with the DNC, striving to help Democrats across the country get elected.  

As offices closed across the country in response to the pandemic, canvassing, events, and in person organizing programs were halted. Organizations turned to new (and old!) methods to engage people.   Get started using VPB Connect! Fill out this form and one of our NGP VAN team members will be in touch.

Mobile messaging audiences are rapidly increasing. In 2019, while email list sizes declined by 2%, text messaging audiences grew by 26%. Supporters are increasingly showing a preference for this channel; mobile device users accounted for half of website visits last year, and the number of mobile donation transactions saw a 17% increase. While traditional channels still play an important role in supporter communications and engagement, mobile consistently outperforms email in open and click-through rates, positioning itself as the highest performing communication channel by these metrics. Integrating mobile messaging into a multi-channel strategy is a must for programs looking for the latest and best ways to drive engagement.

Get around faster with Keyboard Shortcuts, an easy way to navigate our most used pages.

In the fast-paced environment of a political campaign, it is important that directors and strategists have always have access to up-to-date information and data. Because some campaigns use multiple databases to process and house that information, exporting and uploading records between systems consumes staff time and can leave decision makers waiting or using out-of-date information.

I've spent over 15 years in the software industry, much of it in management, and there are certain conversations that I have either witnessed or participated in repeatedly over the course of my career. Not surprisingly, many of them are related to the concept of the proper way to build software.

If there was ever any question, Tuesday’s stunning results in Virginia validated the important roles that both technology and grassroots organizing play in winning elections. Democrats routed their Republican opponents up and down the ballot, propelled by historic levels of voter engagement.

Campaigns are fast moving and deal with a ton of data - whether its coming from their field, digital, or fundraising teams. Organizers and staff need a quick way to analyze their data and see if their campaign is on track. 

We care about what you think and are constantly working to improve our products. We’ve put together a suite of tools and frameworks to help us better incorporate user feedback into our everyday product decisions so that we can create a better product experience for you. 

We’re excited to announce the first in a series of updates that refresh the look and feel of our products. We’ve been hard at work improving our internal product development processes and building out a new version of ProgressUI, our internal user experience framework. We're rolling out a refresh that focuses on fonts, colors, and other minor changes that we believe will make our products easier to use. Here's what changed:

A few years ago, we recognized that we could do better when it came to the user experience of our products. We formed a design team, hiring user researchers, product designers, and front-end engineers. We got to work improving processes and building a suite of tools to help us work efficiently and effectively. We established product design principles, design guidelines, and built an all-new design system we call ProgressUI. Working with product leadership, we changed the product development process to incorporate design and user feedback early and often. These changes have helped us push the design and experience of our product forward and we’ve learned a lot.

Earlier this month, we concluded our fifth Hackathon, and we're excited to announce the results!

Last year, we completed a massive project, Action Platform, which our CTO, John Lee, describes here. Needless to say, we consider this project to be a huge success. One reason for that is alluded to in John's third Lesson from his post: "Plan Your Trip Well". He discusses the importance of milestones, which are really a component of a more important process: Estimation. Estimating large software development projects is hard, but necessary. 

Political campaigns are increasingly finding new ways to engage supporters on Facebook, and one key way is through the use of targeted advertising through Facebook Ads Manager. Especially for down-ballot candidates, Facebook Ads are a precise, cost-effective way to raise more money, sign up more supporters, and communicate a message to a specific audience.

At NGP VAN, our vision is to enable sophisticated multi-channel campaigns and unify interactions across fundraising, organizing, and communications objectives.

When it comes to a campaign's supporter engagement and fundraising, not all supporters are created equal. Campaigns often have numerous different types of people who support their candidate: passive social media followers, small-dollar donors, part-time volunteers, super-volunteers, and mega-donors, just to name a few.

NOTE: This feature is currently unavailable due to changes made by Facebook in early 2018. Stay tuned for updates! Facebook is one of the most important digital organizing tools of our time. Every day, nonprofits and other organizations use Facebook's events platform to build crowds and recruit attendees to actions, protests, fundraisers, parties, and other types of events. 

Organizations have enormous untapped potential in the form of their supporters’ social networks and influence. To tap into this, you need know who shares your content, but more importantly, you want to know who is succeeding at referring new people – and donations - to your organization

We're seeing a revolution in progressive technology. Everywhere we look, coders are taking to their keyboards in order to build apps and tools to help the resistance. It's one of the most hopeful signs we've seen since the 2016 elections - and we are excited to pitch in and help! NGP VAN's tools are a great way to turbo-charge the progressive hacking community.

The women of NGP VAN are magic - they're developers, engineers, designers, accountants, human resource professionals, sales & account managers, marketers, client services representatives, and data specialists, and our company and our tools would not be here if it weren't for their expertise, dedication, and passion for building a better world.

Many software developers are understandably eager to jump into their first job with both feet. They're raring to write great code to change the world, but then in the first few months they find themselves frustrated. "Why all the red tape? Why so much bureaucracy? Why don't they just let me write code and get out of my way? Why am I only doing small UI tweaks?" If this sounds like you, you may be encountering two of the most common roadblocks in a young engineer's career.

Regardless of what gets you excited about progressive politics - whether it's health care reform, or making college affordable, or a clean energy future - the chances are pretty good that you've encountered a signup form, contribution form, or petition. These forms, which political campaigns use to gather supporters and survey their volunteers, are just about ubiquitous today.

The leaves are turning and pumpkins are going on sale, and that can mean only one thing: Political campaigns are gearing up to go door-to-door, asking for your vote.

The progressive movement is a thriving ecosystem of political candidates, labor unions, interest groups, and grassroots activists. Together, these far-flung and energetic people have made history at the presidential level - twice! - in the space of 8 short years. They've brought down discriminatory barriers for LGBT individuals, guaranteed health insurance for every American, instituted major financial protections for consumers - and on and on. But how did they do it?  What makes this incredible movement tick?

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Inc. Magazine named NGP VAN as one of its inaugural “50 Best Workplaces”, the first such measurement of American companies with up to 500 employees that deploy state-of-the-art techniques to keep their staff happy and productive.

Paying for college can be a huge burden, with tuition costs rising faster every year. Having a dedicated savings plan in place with automatic contributions makes it much easier to manage costs, pursue a degree, or save for a child’s future.  

Update: 12/19, 9:46PM EST Late last night we were directed by our client the DNC to restore the Sanders campaign's full access to VoteBuilder. NGP VAN staff worked through the night to ensure Sanders campaign staff were up and running by early this morning. For clarification, NGP VAN played no part in the October data issue that has been mentioned. We look forward to working closely with the DNC and our partners on the important next steps that will ensure Democratic success around the country in November. Update: 12/18, 3:53 PM EST Updating with additional information and clarification: First, a one page-style report containing summary data on a list was saved out of VoteBuilder by one Sanders user. This is what some people have referred to as the “export” from VoteBuilder. As noted below, users were unable to export lists of people.

Up 68% in 2014 over 2010 For Immediate Release:  November 3rd, 2014 On the day before the election, NGP VAN provided previously unreleased information that Democrats and progressives had made a total of 386,889,562 voter contacts so far in the 2014 cycle.  This is an increase of 68% over the voter contacts made in the 2010 cycle.  The increase will grow even larger after the voter contacts for Monday and Tuesday are factored in.

Next Chapter for Progressive Tech Ecosystem Washington, DC – Tonight, at an event attended by hundreds of top Democratic and progressive campaign insiders and joined by thousands more through an online live stream, leading tech company NGP VAN launched the next major chapter in the evolution of the progressive political technology ecosystem and set a path that will continue to give Democrats and progressives a tech edge. 

WASHINGTON, DC – Today NGP VAN announced the public launch of Social Fundraising, a new tool that helps Democratic campaigns and progressive organizations empower supporters to raise money on their behalf. Unlike other peer-to-peer online fundraising platforms, Social Fundraising integrates both online and offline fundraising; a key feature for fundraisers who are frequently frustrated by the lack of offline integration in many online-only tools. 

WASHINGTON, DC – The National Education Association (NEA) announced today that it is working with Catalist and NGP VAN to develop its “Activist Continuum.” This project uses Catalist “Big Data” analytics to synthesize and understand NEA member activity across a range of civic activities, and make that understanding of each member actionable in the NGP VAN software via features developed for the NEA. This will allow the NEA to interact with members at the correct level of engagement, on the issues they care about, leading to more action and greater efficiency.

WASHINGTON, DC – Democrats up and down the ticket are seeing increased online contributions during this election cycle, powered in part by network effects that are providing them with improved conversion rates, due to the prevalence of NGP VAN, the leading tools provider to Democratic and progressive campaigns. Thousands of Democratic candidates and committees are clients of NGP VAN, ranging from Ready For Hillary, to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, to over 80% of the Democrats in the U.S. House, to thousands of other Democratic state legislative and smaller campaigns.