(I'm going on Mario's show at 4:40 today to talk about this. - promoted by johne)
The tools used to manage a campaign are rarely discussed. But it's something that piqued my interest since I started playing with mapping points for canvassing for Aaron's run for the HD3 vacancy. Since then I've been working with a couple house district campaigns to help figure out what's the best way to go to meet all the various needs for the least cost. I've dug into a number of the different available packages out there, and nothing really seems perfect. The requirements for state house or senate race are quite different compared to a congressional campaign or for a presidential run. Mainly that comes down to money. The max donation for a state leg. races is $400. These aren't campaigns that can afford expensive software no matter how good it is.
The most basic stuff seems to have a database for volunteer management, the capability to send bulk emails, and some sort of website integration. One package in that category is called DLCCweb offered by Wired for Change. It's meant to do the very basic stuff for a very low price. For people who don't know html from a hole in the ground, I suppose it's an okay option, but I found what it allowed you to do in terms of customization of a candidate website was very lacking. In trying to set up some of it's functionality I also found the documentation confusing and contradictory. They do offer integration with donations through ActBlue, but only for the restricted web site. And, there's no capability to automate campaign finance filing.
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| In case you're wondering, Act Blue is able to work with state and local candidates in Colorado now because of me. The SquareState Small Donor Committee paved the way to get Act Blue able to work with our crazy campaign finance laws. Basically, they had to modify how donations were processed to do it legally. We were the first ones to get that to happen (thanks to a whole bunch of other people who helped make that happen). And now, it's a piece of cake for the rest of you. There are other options out there for credit card processing of campaign donations, but for most the costs are higher.
NGP is another all in one option, but their costs are higher. I'm going to without hold judgment on them since I haven't been able to play with their software yet. Supposedly they offer automated campaign finance filing, donor and volunteer database, and bulk emails. An extra package gets you event handling, credit card processing, and online volunteer signup that stuffs the info your database.
Another option is called Trailblazer which automates filing, does email, but is a whole lot more expensive.
Despite all this you still need access to the voter file or VAN. The state party makes this very easy for democrats. The cost is $250 for a campaign cycle. You absolutely need this tool anyway for voter targeting, canvassing, etc. It includes a volunteer database which I'm told can be used to track donors as well. New for this year is the ability to take volunteer signups from your website. I got this working the other day on a test site I'm building, and it's pretty slick. Other than my development time the cost is zero since any campaign already has to have VAN.
What's the best solution? Let's look at the costs.
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| vol signup | bulk email | db | donate | $ disc. | montly cost |
| DLCCweb | no | yes | yes | no | no | $40 |
| NGP campaign office | no | yes | yes | no | yes | $100-200 |
| NGP CO + Contribution | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | $170-300 |
| Trailblazer | ? | yes | yes | no | yes | $125 |
| VAN | yes | no | yes | no |
no | $10 |
| Act Blue | | | | yes | no | $10 |
| own email | ? | yes | ? | ? | | ~$25 |
Most of the description are self explanatory: online volunteer signup, bulk email capability, volunteer and donor database management, online donations, CO campaign finance disclosure reporting, and the estimated monthly costs. In the last few rows I left out some answers where they aren't applicable, or question marks where this could be an option but I either don't know, or it depends on who you go with. Finally, except for DLCCweb that offers a very limited website, you're still going to need a website, the costs with developing that and then the costs to buy the URL and the few bucks a month to host it.
Finally, it looks like NGP is getting sued by a competitor for lying about not working with republicans.
So, I'm leaning toward the roll your own strategy since VAN does a lot, and you need it anyway. Sure you have to manage filing by oneself, but that's what a finance chair is for anyway. In that camp, either you're paying for software to do it, or a volunteer does it. The latter is free. Everything isn't rolled up into a nice tight package with this solution. You'll need to import and export email lists, and spreadsheets of donations, but that little bit of labor seems like it's worth it compared to the extra costs of software.
Does anyone out there use something else they really like?
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