NationBuilder signs up yet another UK political party

NationBuilder is fast becoming one of the most important technology suppliers to the UK political campaigning market.

Already used by the SNP and Liberal Democrats, Labour too are now becoming users of it as this report from the last Labour National Executive Committee makes clear:

This is the web based campaign/volunteer management tool that we committed resource to as part of Refounding Labour to fundamentally change our web-based interface with members, supporters and activists. It is the tool that brought us the YourKen website and was trialled, with good results, in Scotland in their most recent elections.

This is an off the shelf product – we know that both the SNP and the Liberal Democrats have used it in the past – the effectiveness of which therefore relies on good backroom development and customisation.

Our team in HQ have been in negotiations with the developers to create bespoke commands that will allow us to completely integrate the system with our membership system and Contact Creator. This will give the national party, and additionally individual CLPs who sign up to it, a website that is easy to use with much better functionality in terms of sharing and creating membership/supporter lists and better intelligence and tailoring of issues to individual preference. It is hoped that the new site and CLP functionality will be ready in time for it to be launched at conference.

CLPs will be invited to apply for the new functionality (so giving them their own site and list integration as well obviously as access to the party’s revamped national site and Membersnet). Whilst the whole work is being heavily subsidised by the national Party it looked like the cost to individual CLPs that signed up would be £200 per CLP per year – the existing website package for CLPs is £400 so this represents a reduction of half the cost for the 150 or so that are already signed up to that.