ActBlue

vendor-managed integration

This is a vendor-managed integration. Contact the vendor for additional information on their product and what their integration with ActionKit provides.

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.

The integration automatically adds your donation data from ActBlue 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.

Installation

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

1 Configure stub accounts - Set up one or more stub accounts to match your ActBlue accounts.

• Check the “actblue_webhook” option so we know it’s associated with ActBlue.

• If you only have a single ActBlue account, your instance already includes a “Default ActBlue” account.

• If you have multiple ActBlue accounts, create separate stub accounts in ActionKit for each one.

2 Create custom user fields - Create custom user fields named “employer”, “occupation”, and “express_lane” if these don’t exist in your instance.

3 Set up a staff account - Create a staff account with “Active Account” checked.

This account will only be used by the ActBlue webhook. Do NOT check the “Admin Interface” or “Superuser Status” boxes.

4 Create the webhook in ActBlue - Log into your ActBlue account and create a webhook using their form. See ActBlue’s detailed instructions.

5 Configure the webhook - Select “ActBlue Default” as the webhook type.

• Use the username and password from the staff account you created in step 3.

• For the endpoint URL, use this format:

  https://[your actionkit hostname]/webhooks/actblue/payments/?account=Default%20ActBlue

• Replace Default%20ActBlue with your account name if needed (use %20 for spaces).

• This webhook handles one-time and recurring donations.

6 Set up refund and cancellation webhooks - Repeat step 5 but select “ActBlue Default Refunds” and “ActBlue Default Cancellations” respectively. Use the same username, password, and endpoint URL for both types.

7 Enable processing - When ready to start processing ActBlue donations, turn on ActBlue event processing.

Backfilling Historical Donations

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

Integration Notes

• To track ActBlue donations back to mailings, ActionKit relies on the refcode or refcode2 parameter 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 be used as the source for the donation actions created in ActionKit.

• ActionKit will alert you if we detect that there have been multiple failed attempts to connect to the ActBlue webhook. Admin staff users assigned as technical contacts will see on-screen warnings, and email alerts will be sent to the technical contacts defined under “Contact Settings” on the “Configure ActionKit” screen. If no technical contacts are set, we’ll email the last two superusers to log in.

• The ActBlue sync uses an ActionKit staff user to deliver webhooks. If someone edits one of these users, a warning will force them to acknowledge that the user is used by ActBlue before saving.