ActBlueΒΆ

ActBlue is a non-profit, building fundraising technology for the left. Their mission is to democratize power and help small-dollar donors make their voices heard in a real way.

We have created an integration with ActBlue so that your donation data from ActBlue is automatically added to your ActionKit database. The donations are pushed through as actual transactions against an import stub payment account so that you can use your regular donation reports for both native ActionKit and ActBlue donation data.

In order to use the ActBlue integration, you need to first make a few changes on the ActionKit side:

  • Configure one or more stub accounts to match your ActBlue accounts. Check the "actblue_webhook" so we know it's associated with ActBlue, and to show these instructions customized for the new account. If you only have a single ActBlue account, your instance already includes a "Default ActBlue" account. If you have multiple ActBlue accounts, you can create stub accounts in ActionKit to correspond to each of your ActBlue accounts.
  • Create custom user fields named "employer", "occupation", and "express_lane" if these don't exist in your instance.
  • Set up a staff account with "Active Account" checked. This account will only be used by the ActBlue webhook you create in the next step. We recommend that you do NOT check the "Admin Interface" or "Superuser Status" boxes.
  • Log into your ActBlue account and begin creation of a webhook using the form on their site. Detailed instructions can be found here.
  • Select "ActBlue Default" as the webhook type. Username and password will use the info from the staff account you created. For the endpoint URL follow this format: https://[your actionkit hostname]/webhooks/actblue/payments/?account=Default%20ActBlue (if necessary replace Default%20ActBlue with your account name, using %20 to indicate spaces). This webhook will be used for one-time and recurring donations.
  • To set up webhooks for refunds and cancellations follow the steps above, but select "ActBlue Default Refunds" and "ActBlue Default Cancellations", respectively. For both types you will use the same username, password and endpoint URL you used in the last step.
  • Finally, when you are ready to start processing ActBlue donations, you can turn on ActBlue event processing.
  • If you would like to backfill historical donations, ask ActBlue to do this and to pass the backfill parameter when doing so (and to turn it off after the backfill is complete). This will avoid resubscribing users who have unsubscribed or bounced. Using the example endpoint above as a starting point, the backfill URL would be https://[your actionkit hostname]/webhooks/actblue/payments/?account=[account info used for endpoint URL]&backfill=1.
  • To track ActBlue donations back to mailings, ActionKit relies on the refcode or refcode2 paramater being available in your mailings' links. If you use both of these parameters, donations will still flow from ActBlue to ActionKit correctly, but they will not be tracked back to a mailing. If you set a refcode value on your links, the value will used as the source for the donation actions created in ActionKit.
  • Let us know if you have any questions!