NGP VAN

NGP VAN, Inc. is a privately owned voter database and web hosting service provider used by the American Democratic Party, Democratic campaigns, and other non-profit organizations authorized by the Democratic Party. The platform or service is used by political and social campaigns for fundraising, campaign finance compliance, field organizing, and digital organizing. NGP VAN, Inc. was formerly known as Voter Activation Network, Inc. and changed its name to NGP VAN, Inc. in January 2011. The company was founded in 2001 and is based in Washington, District of Columbia, with an additional location in Somerville, Massachusetts.

NGP VAN, Inc.
Private
IndustryVoter databases. IT Consulting, Software as a service, Web hosting service, Online fundraising, new media technology
FounderMark Sullivan, Nathaniel Pearlman
Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
Somerville, Massachusetts, United States
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Stuart Trevelyan
(President & CEO)
Revenue US$ 28.9m(2016)[1]
Number of employees
 190 (2016)[1]
DivisionsFundraising/Compliance
Organizing
Digital
Non-Profits
Websitengpvan.com

In 2009, the company was the largest partisan provider of campaign compliance software, used by most Democratic members of Congress.[2] The company's services have been utilized by clients such as the Obama 2008 presidential campaign, the Obama 2012 presidential campaign,[3] the Hillary Rodham Clinton 2016 presidential campaign, the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign, the British Liberal Democrats,[4] and the Liberal Party of Canada. Its current president and CEO, Stuart Trevelyan,[5][6] was a veteran of the 1992 Clinton-Gore War Room, providing research, analysis, and whip counts to the Clinton Administration as a member of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs.[7] He is the 2000 recipient of the "Rising Star" award by Campaigns and Elections Magazine for innovations in activism tools and helping clients in the public policy arena.[8][9]

History

NGP VAN was created in November 2010 by the merger of its two predecessor companies, NGP Software, founded in 1997 by Nathaniel Pearlman, who later served as chief technology officer for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign,[10] in his attic in Washington, D.C, and Voter Activation Network, founded in 2001 by Mark Sullivan, in his study in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[11]

In October 2014, NGP VAN launched their EveryAction fundraising management platform for non-profits.[12]

There are occasional accusations that the Democratic Party has restricted access to Votebuilder to hold off a challenge to an incumbent office holder in a primary. For example, Rachel Ventura, running against an incumbent Democrat in IL-11, was told “I've heard from our Executive Director. Your request for Votebuilderfor Illinois' 11th Congressional District through the Democratic Party of Illinois has been denied due to our regulations that we don’t issue subscriptions to candidates challenging an incumbent.”[13]

In 2019, the company made several major acquisitions, including ActionKit, BSD Tools, and DonorTrends.[14]

Products

MiniVAN is a mobile canvassing application that allows for campaigns and organizations to contact voters or supporters, collect data, and sync the information back to their VAN or EveryAction database in real time, thus eliminating the need for paper lists and data entry.[15] In 2018, the company reported record usage of the app - 71% of progressive voter contact attempts were made on MiniVAN instead of paper lists.[16][17]

VoteBuilder is one of the software systems created by NGP VAN. It is used by the Democratic Party and associated campaigns to track interaction with potential voters. Votebuilder is used as part of campaign voter persuasion and "get out the vote" operations. It stores information like phone calls and other methods of contact with voters in the system. The software was created in 2006 to bridge a perceived gap in microtargeting abilities between the Republican and Democratic parties.[18]

On Wednesday December 16, 2015, NGP VAN released a code update to their Votebuilder application which contained a bug that allowed two campaigns to see proprietary analytical scores. On the evening of Thursday, December 17 the DNC revoked the Sanders campaign's access to the national voter file, after the campaign accessed and saved data collected by the Clinton campaign.[19] The Sanders campaign sued the DNC in District Court and concurrently fired Josh Uretsky, the staffer who managed 3 other members of the Sander's campaign who improperly accessed the data. On December 19, the DNC restored the Sanders campaign's access after the campaign agreed to cooperate with their investigation.[20][21][22]

NGP is a software platform for digital engagement, fundraising, and compliance reporting used by most federal Democratic campaigns. It is also used by state and local campaigns, albeit less often due to the service's high price tag. In August 2017, the company released NGP 8 used for campaign compliance.[23][24]

Innovation Platform is a series of APIs and integrations that was rolled out in 2014. “It will allow outside software developers and other engineers to write programs directly for its platforms.” [25][26] Several notable integrations include apps and services such as self-serve online advertising, broadcast and peer-to-peer text messaging tools, live calls, and do-it-yourself direct mail.[27][28]

References
  1. "NGP VAN - Washington, DC". The Inc.5000.
  2. Becca Milfeld and Anne Marson (September 15, 2009). "Suite Talk". POLITICO.com.
  3. "Where does Obama's Money Go?". iHartPolitics.com.
  4. Mark Pack; Author, 101 Ways To Win An Election - Connect
  5. Campaign Pro: 2016 and The Mobile Revolution; Politico 09/17/15 05:30 PM EDT
  6. Guess what: data is driving political campaigns Marketplace By Kai Ryssdal; March 02, 2016 | 3:29 PM
  7. "Stuart Trevelyan". Bloomberg.com.
  8. http://www.campaignsandelections.com/awards/rising-stars/archive
  9. An Oral History of The First Presidential Campaign Websites in 1996 - Creators of Clinton and Dole sites reflect on Web’s early days Wall Street Journal By Mike Shields; Feb. 18, 2016
  10. "LinkedIn: Nathaniel Pearlman".
  11. "VAN:Personal Democracy Forum". July 5, 2010.
  12. Trevelyan, Stu. "Make EveryAction Count". EveryAction.com. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  14. "EveryAction Makes Third Deal, Acquires Tools From Blue State Digital". The NonProfit Times. Retrieved 2019-12-01.
  15. MiniVAN App Computes On The Campaign Trail - App Provides Names, Gender, Addresses Of Registered Voters by Graham Hakala for KQDS-TV; March 2, 2016
  16. Coulombe, Amanda. "Organize Everywhere: How Technology Powered Grassroots Engagement in 2018". Retrieved 2018-11-20.
  17. "Democrats Are Busting Their 2016 Mobile Canvassing Records". WIRED. Retrieved 2018-11-20.
  18. Democrats Take Page From Their Rival’s Playbook. New York Times, 2008-10-31, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/01/us/politics/01target.html
  19. Amy Dacey. "Here's what happened with NGP VAN, the Sanders Campaign, and the Clinton Campaign". Medium.
  20. Taylor, Jessica (19 December 2015). "DNC Restores Sanders Campaign's Access to Voter Files After Data Breach: NPR". NPR. Retrieved 19 December 2015.
  21. Wagner, John (19 December 2015). "Accord reached after Sanders sues the DNC over suspended access to critical voter list".
  22. Steal the Bern - A brief campaign software glitch led to what the DNC said was improper access of records by Bernie Sanders' campaign. by Kim LaCapria; Snopes April 30, 2016
  23. "NGP VAN Unveils New Iteration Of Software Ahead of Midterm Cycle". Retrieved 2017-08-28.
  24. VAN, NGP. "NGP 8". act.ngpvan.com. Retrieved 2017-08-28.
  25. Democrats Take Lesson From Apple’s Playbook; By Patrick O'Connor for The Wall Street Journal; Aug 21, 2014
  26. Democrats' Data Platform Opens Access to Smaller Campaigns- NGP VAN Now Connects to Many Tech Partners By Kate Kaye for AdAge; Published on July 13, 2016
  27. Voter Targeted Digital Ads Now at Fingertips of Thousands of Democratic Campaigns by DSPolitical; September 15, 2016
  28. SpeakEasy Political Announces Data Partnership with NGP VAN by Speakeasy Political; February 23, 2016
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