Best Public Affairs and Advocacy Software
Public affairs and advocacy software allows organizations to acquire, engage, and mobilize key audiences around issue advocacy in legislative, regulatory, and electoral spaces. Nonprofits, associations, and corporations use these products to educate and mobilize supporters via outbound email marketing, text messaging, and social media communication tools. Grassroots activist groups may also use them to build momentum around petitions, social causes, and key legislative issues. These tools often support fundraising and campaigning efforts for advocacy groups, but they differ from political campaign software that is designed specifically to manage campaigns for public office election.
Public affairs and advocacy software facilitates direct correspondence from advocates to targeted government officials at all levels of government (federal, state, and local) and regulatory agencies through several modes of communication, including social media, patch-through calls, and sending emails. Typically, these products also offer key insights into supporters’ usage, advanced segmentation, reporting, and, in some cases, flexible integration with common CRM software. Products in this category may also include modules designed for specific organizational goals such as election education, advanced acquisition tools, and stakeholder management.
To qualify for inclusion in the Public Affairs and Advocacy category, a product must:
Best Public Affairs and Advocacy Software At A Glance
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- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Quorum is the public affairs software that professionals working on federal, state, local, PAC, grassroots, and international issues use to increase policy wins, understand the policy landscape, and b
- Non-Profit Organization Management
- Government Relations
- 49% Small-Business
- 35% Mid-Market
3,663 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The NationBuilder community engagement platform powers thousands of the world's most high-stakes campaigns and movements. Move your advocates to action with a single system including readymade website
- Non-Profit Organization Management
- Political Organization
- 83% Small-Business
- 10% Mid-Market
15,769 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Upland Mobile Commons is the leading texting solution for marketers on a mission. Mobile Commons empowers nonprofit and advocacy organizations to launch advanced SMS, MMS, and RCS campaigns to drive d
- Non-Profit Organization Management
- Information Technology and Services
- 59% Mid-Market
- 34% Small-Business
917 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Bloomberg Government is a premium, subscription-based service that provides comprehensive information and analytics for policy professionals who interact with – or are affected by – the government. De
- 50% Small-Business
- 42% Mid-Market
20,030 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Democracy Direct helps you manage extensive stakeholder data records that can be searched, sorted and segmented quickly by virtually any criteria to suite your needs-including legislative districts (s
- 60% Small-Business
- 20% Enterprise
3,133 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Engaging Networks helps nonprofits maximize their impact through a suite of world-class online fundraising and advocacy digital engagement tools. Nonprofits of every size and cause—from human rights t
- Non-Profit Organization Management
- Fund-Raising
- 65% Mid-Market
- 24% Small-Business
1,308 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Muster's advocacy platform is the easiest way to manage stakeholders and engage them in grassroots advocacy campaigns. A powerful, but easy-to-use advocacy CRM makes advocate management and segmentati
- Non-Profit Organization Management
- 95% Small-Business
- 5% Mid-Market
320 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
EA Digital Tools (formerly known as BSD Tools) seamlessly integrates fundraising, mobilization, and compliance tools - all in one system.
- 60% Small-Business
- 40% Mid-Market
3,578 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
LegiStorm is an all-in-one public affairs platform that provides you with the essential tools to achieve your objectives in Congress and state legislatures. Stay informed and connected with our comp
- Government Administration
- 77% Small-Business
- 23% Enterprise
4,033 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Salsa Labs is a leading provider of CRM, marketing automation, fundraising, and advocacy software for the nonprofit community. We are proud to be helping thousands of nonprofits engage and change th
- Executive Director
- Non-Profit Organization Management
- Individual & Family Services
- 70% Small-Business
- 22% Mid-Market
847 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Salsa Labs is a leading provider of donor management, fundraising, marketing automation, and advocacy software for the nonprofit community. We are proud to be helping thousands of nonprofits engage
- Non-Profit Organization Management
- 83% Small-Business
- 17% Mid-Market
847 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
OurGov offers tons of time-saving tools for advocates in state government - both lobbyists and legislative offices alike. Features include: - Customizable home feed with legislation you've subscribed
- 100% Small-Business
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
VoterVoice is a reliable, easy-to-use digital advocacy platform that provides tools to execute and report in depth on campaigns, surveys, petitions, and events. We are laser-focused on advocacy. Unl
- 75% Small-Business
- 25% Mid-Market
5,660 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
FiscalNote is the premier information services company focused on global policy and market intelligence. By combining AI technology, expert analysis, and legislative, regulatory, and geopolitical data
- 67% Small-Business
- 33% Mid-Market
5,660 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Action Network is an open platform that empowers individuals and groups to organize for progressive causes. We encourage responsible activism, and do not support using the platform to take unlawful or
- 67% Small-Business
- 33% Enterprise
Learn More About Public Affairs and Advocacy Software
What is Public Affairs and Advocacy Software?
Public affairs and advocacy software equips organizations with acquisition, engagement, and mobilization tools to drive results for initiatives focusing on advocacy, public affairs, and government relations. By combining CRM systems and marketing software capabilities with industry-specific features, users can identify key stakeholders, engage with them across multiple channels at the right time, and deploy calls to action. Grassroots advocacy organizations rely on this software to geo-target supporters around specific issues, such as local legislation or elections, and direct them to sign petitions, message their representatives, and explore educational materials.
Public affairs and advocacy software also helps organizations identify new stakeholders and advocates to support their cause, using the aforementioned geo-targeting feature as well as relationship tracking tools, custom forms, social media posts and ads, and SMS outreach. Nonprofits, in particular, use these features to identify key advocates within their existing supporter base when trying to mobilize around an issue related to their organizational mission. Depending on an organization’s needs, these solutions can help with fundraising and event management. Visual charts and analytic reports track campaign success with as much specificity as needed.
Some products geared more towards public affairs professionals can also track government committee hearings, social media commentary, and legislation and regulation developments at the local, state, and federal levels. This keeps users updated on bills as they move through the legislative process. Directories may also be available either natively or via integrations to quickly identify the appropriate government employee or policymaker to contact.
What are the Common Features of Public Affairs and Advocacy Software?
The following are some core features of public affairs and advocacy software that can help users:
Contact and relationship management: As the foundational feature, contact and relationship management enables users to track interactions, manage all relevant data on stakeholders and advocates, and target all outreach efforts using segmentation and geo-targeting. Depending on the product, this feature will track all past financial contributions, event participation, and any existing memberships, depending on an organization’s needs. Advocates can also be mapped to corresponding government representatives and lawmakers, useful when launching call-to-action campaigns in specific geographic areas.
Email and text messaging: Advocate engagement depends on multichannel messaging. Public affairs and advocacy software provides email and text outreach tools, and often social media integration, to distribute action alerts around breaking issues, prompt petition signatures, provide contact information for decision-makers, and send updates on campaign progress and outcomes.
Patch-through calling: Patch-through calling makes it easier for advocates and stakeholders to connect with representatives, lawmakers, and policymakers. Depending on the vendor, this feature is usually enabled by a robo dialer, a volunteer, or a customer service representative. Patch-through calling is an effective mobilization strategy to connect supporters with the appropriate representative to try and affect public policy, often around urgent issues that arise unexpectedly.
Form and website builder: Through a combination of templates and customizable builder tools, public affairs and advocacy software makes it easy to create email, text, and general content templates to streamline outreach efforts. Personalized landing pages for specific campaigns can also be created, making it easy to direct advocates and stakeholders to a page with relevant resources and action steps.
Mapping: Visual charting makes it easy to see supporters' locations and their local districts. This geo-targeting functionality is handy for call-to-action campaigns at the local level. This feature is also important for storytelling purposes when organizations want to visualize campaign success at a regional or statewide level.
Public official database: For public affairs and relations teams, public databases make it easy to identify government officials, lawmakers, and policymakers and access up-to-date contact information, background information, and constituent representation. Users can also track meetings and other interactions for each official.
What are the Benefits of Public Affairs and Advocacy Software?
The benefits of public affairs and advocacy software are as follows:
Personalization: Most notably, public affairs and advocacy software makes it incredibly easy and efficient to send targeted outreach to advocates and mobilize them around relevant issues. This ensures that calls to action only go out to those with a stake in the issue, increasing the likelihood that supporters will convert to ongoing advocates.
Automation: By automating many tedious tasks and workflows, this software frees up staff time to get ahead of developing issues, engage in more meaningful conversations and build relationships, and ensure supporters are mobilized to drive success for the right campaigns. Public affairs and advocacy software automates several tasks, from form and campaign site creation to petition templates for supporters to fill out quickly and even identifying links between advocates and policymakers. On the public affairs side, some products also automate the process of tracking legislative updates as bills move through procedural steps, which helps lobbying efforts.
Increased civic engagement: Public affairs and advocacy ultimately supports increased civic engagement by making it easier for advocates to take action. As digital advocacy becomes more crucial, these solutions support a multichannel approach to mobilizing people around causes. Whether via email, text, or social media engagement, advocates can use customizable templates provided by the organization to quickly send messages and voice their opinion on key issues
Who Uses Public Affairs and Advocacy Software?
The following personas use public affairs and advocacy software:
Nonprofits: Some nonprofits engage in advocacy efforts to promote policy change that will positively impact their ability to provide programming and services. This may include food banks, human services organizations, and veterans affairs groups. A dedicated advocacy platform alongside their existing tools can support these efforts, connecting their existing supporters with appropriate elected officials, knowing which supporters to target in specific areas for mobilization, and driving donations around certain causes.
Government affairs professionals: Government affairs professionals need to keep a finger on the pulse of any legislative and regulatory changes that can impact a particular government department or agency. Public affairs and advocacy software geared toward this persona supports advanced stakeholder engagement and relationship tracking, bill tracking, and connection to local databases to target appropriate government officials for outreach.
Associations, agencies, and corporations: For similar reasons, associations, agencies, and corporations may use public affairs and advocacy software to influence policy change that directly benefits them or those they represent. For associations, this may involve labor laws and union protections. For agencies, this can be a variety of lobbying efforts depending on who their clients are. For corporations, this often focuses on regulatory issues that impact their business practices, such as FDA regulations for pharmaceutical companies and food and beverage manufacturers.
PACs: While PACs primarily work to elect specific candidates, they may engage in ongoing advocacy campaigns around issues that their candidate or their candidate’s affiliated party have made core to their political platform. Either alongside or instead of political campaign software, they may use public affairs and advocacy software to mobilize supporters for a candidate’s cause.
Software Related to Public Affairs and Advocacy Software
Related solutions that can be used together with public affairs and advocacy software include:
Political campaign software: Political campaign software does have some feature overlap with public affairs and advocacy software but may lack some of the more robust stakeholder engagement and advocacy tools. For candidates who want to engage their supporters outside of election cycles, public affairs and advocacy software can support education around legislative developments, drive petition signatures, and identify key advocates who may be interested in joining campaign staff in the future.
Nonprofit CRM software: While most public affairs and advocacy software have native CRM functionality, some nonprofit users may prefer integrating with their nonprofit CRM tool to manage donor information beyond advocacy campaign engagement.
Fundraising software: While some public affairs and advocacy software may have native fundraising capabilities, these solutions often must integrate with a dedicated fundraising solution. Supporting native features may include donate buttons and text-to-give prompts.
Challenges with Public Affairs and Advocacy Software
Software solutions can come with their own set of challenges.
Partisan skew: Public affairs and advocacy software may only serve users representing a specific political party, depending on the vendor. This may be due to limited access to legislator databases and APIs or vendor political affinity.
Data migration: Public affairs and advocacy software’s efficacy partially depends on data quality. For users moving from other systems, the ability to migrate that data accurately is vital to ensuring the adoption of the new software. This can be particularly challenging when the data lives in multiple systems, such as a donor management system, a marketing platform, or another CRM.
How to Buy Public Affairs and Advocacy Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Public Affairs and Advocacy Software
Whether an organization is just starting to explore public affairs and advocacy software or is looking for a more appropriate solution for their needs, G2.com can help inform buyers of the market and assist them in selecting the best software product for their business.
Buyers should consider what is working and not working with their current system and use that as a starting point. Some questions could be:
- Does the organization want to consolidate its tech stack into one central system?
- Do they need a cloud-based solution?
- What challenges do they face around supporter acquisition, marketing, and campaign victories?
Understanding the weaknesses in their current system can help eliminate any potential new products that won’t alleviate those concerns. A product that integrates with their existing fundraising and donor management systems will be crucial for nonprofits.
Beyond that, integration with specific marketing platforms may be necessary for organizations that want more functionality beyond what a public affairs and advocacy product provides natively. Buyers should also understand the level of support each vendor offers when migrating data from existing systems into a new product.
Compare Public Affairs and Advocacy Software Products
Create a long list
The first step to finding the perfect software solution is to create a preliminary list of products that fit the buyer’s general needs. The next step is to narrow down the list by selecting specific features that are must-haves or requirements for the buyer. The list of potential products will differ depending on whether an organization focuses more on advocacy campaigns or government affairs and relations. G2.com provides information about the best public affairs and advocacy software, allowing buyers to filter options and user reviews to help narrow the product list to a more relevant selection.
Create a short list
Creating a short list of software products is an important step in the buying process. While it may be daunting to filter through various products, users can get help by utilizing G2’s compare feature. This feature will take products of choice and display them side by side so the buyer can easily determine which software ticks the important boxes on the list.
Conduct demos
Once the buyer has narrowed down the product list, the next step is to conduct a demo. Demos allow buyers to see a product and its features in more detail. To ensure a buyer gets the most out of a demo, it’s important to go in prepared and thoroughly test each product. Some of the questions to keep in mind may include:
- How intuitive is the system for staff compared to the existing system?
- Which social media platforms do the product’s marketing features support?
- Does the product provide templates, and how much customization does their form builder allow?
- How much segmentation does the product offer for building outreach lists?
- Which legislative databases does the product pull information from?
- Can the product support the organization’s local, state, federal, or national work?
- Does the product have a mobile app component?
Additionally, buyers should inquire about cost, integrations, vendor support, and any concerns they have about the product. For example, does the vendor provide any lead acquisition services? Adequate preparation will make it easier for a buyer to compare products after completing the demos.
Selection of Public Affairs and Advocacy Software
Choose a selection team
Ideally, a selection team should involve several or more staff members who represent the key business functions of the organization. This may include the marketing manager or director, social media manager, volunteer manager, and advocacy or outreach manager. For a public affairs organization, this may involve the government relations manager and other upper management involved in lobbying efforts. Whoever is chosen, the selection team should include people who would be regular users of the software.
Negotiation
Once the selection team has narrowed down their software picks, it’s time to discuss customization options, pricing, and the type of support needed from the vendor. It’s always important to address pricing options, even when they are listed on a vendor’s website. Many software vendors will provide discounts and custom pricing options based on what the buyer is looking to purchase.
Final decision
Once a buyer has made the final decision on a product and is ready to move forward with a purchase, it is recommended to conduct a final demo, enquire about a trial run, and determine the next steps if the product doesn’t ultimately fit their needs. These steps can give a buyer more security and confidence when deciding. Buyers should also understand the level of post-purchase support the selected vendor provides and whether implementation or training support can resolve any issues.
