Below is a list of the fields supported for standard imports. Many of these are uncommon and you won't need to worry about them.

Click here for more info on donor history imports; and here for voter data import info, which requires our campaign add-on (voter personal information and voting history are imported separately under the voter data import). And here's a look at the paths for starting a standard import.

Please do not use fields as proxies for other data - doing so will confuse important dependencies and make it more difficult to manage your nation. Tags are a good place to store extra data points, and you can add multiple tags separated by commas. We are regularly expanding our support for data needed to run your nation - if you have questions, drop us a line at help@nationbuilder.com. You can also suggest new features related to imports.

.CSV imports are limited to 20mb per file - if your list is larger than that, you will need to divide it into multiple files.

Standard import fields:

• email
• email_opt_in
• prefix
• first_name
• middle_name
• last_name
• suffix
• name
• employer
• occupation
• sex
• party
• born_at
• phone_number
• work_phone_number
• mobile_number
• mobile_opt_in
• website
• created_at
• support_level
• membership_level_name
• membership_started_at
• membership_expires_at
• is_volunteer
• is_fundraiser
• is_ignore_donation_limits
• note
• household_size
• federal_donotcall
• demo
• tag_list
• assistant_id
• assistant_name_or_email
• recruiter_id
• recruiter_name_or_email
• point_person_id
• point_person_name_or_email
• nationbuilder_id
• facebook_uid (NationBuilder will deduplicate based on social network IDs)
• twitter_login
• twitter_id
• meetup_id
• civicrm_id
• external_id
• address_country_code
• address_country
• address_state
• address_city
• address_county
• address_zip
• address_address1
• address_address2
• address_address3
• address_federal_district
• address_state_upper_district
• address_state_lower_district
• address_city_district
• address_judicial_district
• address_school_district
• address_fips
• work_country_code
• work_country
• work_state
• work_city
• work_county
• work_zip
• work_address1
• work_address2
• work_address3
• work_federal_district
• work_state_upper_district
• work_state_lower_district
• work_city_district
• work_judicial_district
• work_school_district
• work_fips
• mailing_country_code
• mailing_country
• mailing_state
• mailing_city
• mailing_county
• mailing_zip
• mailing_address1
• mailing_address2
• mailing_address3
• mailing_federal_district
• mailing_state_upper_district
• mailing_state_lower_district
• mailing_city_district
• mailing_judicial_district
• mailing_school_district
• mailing_fips

Your entire supporter database is housed in your control panel. There are many ways NationBuilder lets you view, catalogue, and manage all of this information beginning with a master list of everyone in your database. There are multiple drop downs that allow you to pull that list by different search criteria; there is even a drop down exclusively for filters that you have created using the advanced search function. Advanced search, allows you to comb through your database in great detail, giving you access to dozens of different search criteria. 

Nationbuilder also lets you create tags and saved lists of people. Tags give you the ability to mark people as they take action on various pages of your site. Tag everyone who has attended a specific event, or has specified an interest in a certain topic. The shopping cart function allows you to select certain people out of you database and put them in your shopping cart so that you can later create a saved list of those people. 

You own all your data, and we even set up each nation with its own isolated database so your data is completely separate from everyone else, and your data is never shared with anyone unless you decide to do it yourself.  You can export a spreadsheet of your supporter data, donation data and survey data at any time. We believe your ownership is important and we've made the exporting process very simple.

There are two primary ways to keep your duplicates down.

1. If you are importing people from an existing database there will already be an ID assigned to them by that system.  NationBuilder has fields for civicrm_id, ngp_id, state_file_id, dw_id, twitter_id, twitter_login, facebook_uid, and a few others.  If we don't have yours included, then you can use external_id for whatever system you have.  If you map one of those fields, NationBuilder will look it up to see if they are already in the system and then update their record.  

NationBuilder also has its own "id" field which is automatically created whenever you import someone, but you only want to map that to your file if you are importing a list of people you previously exported from your NationBuilder account. 

2. Most of the time though you will just be taking a list of email addresses, names, and or phone numbers from some kind of contact list.  Here NationBuilder will dedupe based on email address and then phone number. If you only have a name, then NationBuilder will not import it and put it in the errors file for you to potentially reimport when you have further info on them.

If you have just a name for a person, AND you have some kind of state_file_id or external_id, then NationBuilder will import it because it assumes it's coming from another database.

All of that said, you will end up with duplicates in your database, and you can manually dedupe, details here.

NationBuilder pulls people's information from a lot of different places, and while we try very hard limit the number of duplicates that will appear in your database it will occur from time to time. Sometimes the information people provide in a sign-up form doesn't exactly match up with their Facebook account, or they login to your website with twitter for the first time and then someone on your staff manually enters their data from an event sign-in, it happens. Luckily NationBuilder makes it easy to merge duplicates. 

If you spot a duplicate, the first thing you want to do is decide which control panel profile is the one you want to be merged into the other. One way to decide is to see which one has less information on it. Another way to decide is which profile has existed in your database for longer. NationBuilder will not delete any information from either profile but it is still helpful to have one be the "master" profile.

 Once you've decided on a "master" profile for this person, go into that profile and look at the persons NationBuilder ID number at the very end of the url. Example:

 http://abeforprez.nationbuilder.com/admin/signups/12746

Copy that number, and then go to the person's "lesser" profile (aka the duplicate). Go to the Edit tab and at the bottom of the page you will see the "Is this a duplicate?" field. Paste the NationBuilder ID of the "master" profile into this field and click Save Person. It may take a few moments, but NationBuilder will merge the two and keep all of the data.

NationBuilder lets you upload CSV files to your database (here are some tips on ensuring clean CSV imports). From the control panel, go to People > Import.

Most email service providers let you export your contacts to a CSV file. Once you've done that, simply go to the import tab, choose the file from your computer that you wish to upload, and click upload CSV file. Then you'll be able edit the fields that all of your contact's data will be entered to. You can designate the people in this import as prospects, add tags to all of them, and/or add them to a saved list. Click on Start Import to begin the process. 

Regularly when importing large lists of supporters into your people dashboard, you will see a column for errors, with a number and a linked CSV file. NationBuilder strives to keep your imports clean and free of bad data, so ususally these errors have to do with something like typos in email addresses in your rows. You can download the CSV file and in the last column it will show what error prevented those rows from being imported. You can then clean up the data and reimport those records if you like.

NationBuilder lets you tag any person in your database. A tag is a mark that you can assign to multiple people in order to keep track of them as a group. 

For example, if you have a survey page, you might be interested in keeping track of all of the people who answered a multiple choice question with a specific answer. The survey page allows you to tag everyone that chose that answer, so that you can view that list of people. You can also tag everyone on a certain list using a batch update, and manually enter a tag for a person in their control panel profile. 

Tags are useful when it comes to sorting through people in your database. If you want to use the map view function to see everyone that wants to attend a house party in a certain area, you can use tags to easily pull that list of everyone who checked yes to attenend a house party on the website. 

You can create a saved list using the shopping cart function in NationBuilder.

When you are navigating your supporter database or viewing a selection of people anywhere else in the control panel, you will notice that next to each person's name there is a small plus sign. When you click on the plus sign it turns green and that person is added to your shopping cart in the upper right hand corner of your screen. NationBuilder allows you to keep one unsaved list open in your shopping cart at any given time, that way as you work you can continue to add people to your new list when you see them or think of them.

When you are ready to save your list you can click on the shopping cart and you will be taken to a page where you can view your new list and save it. You can always add people to a saved list by selecting it in the drop down that will appear next to your shopping cart. When you do this you can click on any person's plus sign to add them to this list. 

Filters are saved searches that you can use to organize and sort your list of people in your database.  

In the People tab of the control panel you can view an overall list of everyone in your database. There are four different drop downs that allow you to sort this list in various ways. The third drop down from the left is reserved for filters.

To create a new filter go to the advanced search tab. Here you can choose from a variety of fields including basic, location, donation, and contact information. You can choose to pull your list based on any of these or any combination of these. Below the search fields click the Search button to see your list change based on the fields you are entering data into. When you are ready you can click Save as Filter. Once you've saved the filter, you will always be able to go back to this particular advanced search from the filters drop down in the People tab. 

In the control panel, go to "People" > "Import" > "Voter file data."  Specify your state, district, etc. and we will get to work putting it into your database.

No. Through our partnership with Political FORCE, voter history data is free for political campaigns with a basic $19 a month subscription to NationBuilder. Additional add-ons are available to help you manage your campaign and enhance the voter file.

The voter file addon is mainly intended for U.S. political campaigns up to the state-wide level, but we will evaluate requests from c3 and c4 organizations running issue based voter ID and GOTV programs on a case by case basis.

NationBuilder provides political campaign subscribers in most U.S. states free access to national voter records through a partnership with PoliticalFORCE (for more than 2 million records, contact us for VIP setup pricing). However, many campaigns also want to import their local voter files or international voter information. Often, Excel and similar programs will want to automatically re-format your data, so here are some tips for normalizing your CSV files for clean imports.

Because of the dizzying array of voter data formats around the world, our voter file importer (available with the campaign add-on feature and accessed under People>Imports) supports a large number of fields. (Here is the complete list of supported fields for standard imports, all of which are included in the voter file import.)

.CSV imports are limited to 20mb per file - if your list is larger than that, you will need to divide it into multiple files.

Here's a cheat sheet to some of the frequently used and important data headers that aren't as obvious:

• state_file_id = this is going to be your generic voter ID from the elections authority
• registered_at = the date a person first registered to vote
• email = this field is very important because it's one of the primary ways NationBuilder deduplicates records
• email_opt_in = a yes/no, 1/0 or true/false field - all of those formats are supported
• name = for records where a full name is in one column
• born_at = This should be the voter's birthdate
• mobile_opt_in = primarily for text blasting (U.S.-only through NationBuilder). It is a yes/no, 1/0, true/false field
• created_at = date the original record was created
• support_level = a number from 1 to 5, with 1 being support, 5 being oppose, and 3 being swing
• is_volunteer = another yes/no, 1/0, true/false field
• note = you can import text notes attached to people in your database
• demo = demographic codes (U.S. codes here)
• tag_list = import a list of tags for your voters, separated by commas
• assistant_id = this would be the NationBuilder ID of another person in you database
• recruiter_id = the NationBuilder ID of a person who recruited a new voter or supporter
• point_person_id = assign a point person for new people using this field and the NationBuilder ID
• nationbuilder_id = a unique number assigned for each person in your nation. It is not connected to NationBuilder.com or any other nation
• facebook_uid = the unique Facebook ID for each of that platform's users
• twitter_login = the username for a Twitter member
• twitter_id = a unique number assigned to each Twitter member in some Twitter data sources
• meetup_id = the user ID for Meetup.com members. NationBuilder's social media integration is tightest with Twitter, Facebook and Meetup
• civicrm_id = a database ID used by many Drupal projects
• external_id = a generic ID for use when you may be commonly uploading, modifying and merging files that need a unique identifier not already supported by NationBuilder; it might be something like a national ID or passport number
• registered_address1 = generally a voter's primary address. You can include things like street number, street name and things like "NW" and "Blvd" and NationBuilder will parse them. NationBuilder supporters multiple addresses and address types, but you do not want to use this field if your data is already divided into seperate columns for street number, street name, etc.
• registered_fips = a geographic code that may be attached to some voter data
• registered_precinct_name = the primary name for a precinct, it could be a number or a word
• registered_precinct_code = some voting districts have a secondard princinct ID, such as "Lincoln 001, Lincoln 002 and Lincoln 003." This column supports such districts
• registered_country_code = a country abbreviation, like US or CA
• registered_sort_sequence = if you're uploading and working on files for later mail merge use, you'll want to include this and other mailing data headers for later export and use

When you add a new name to the database through something like "assistant_name_or_email," or through an import of donor records, NationBuilder will automatically create a new person based on that information.

It's important to note that while these fields will all become part of your database, they are not all editable after an import. Putting the cleanest, most complete data possible into your nation will help your advances searches, social media integration, turft cutting and more.

If you have any questions or need help, drop us an email. We can also do imports for you for a fee of $100 per file.

In the People dashboard, you can import a custom voter history CSV file and NationBuilder will merge it with any other voter data in your nation using the Voter ID. There are two formats for the voter history import. The first is "Y/N/R/D," which stands for Yes (voted), No, Republican (primary ballot), and Democratic.

The second voter history format is "PoliticalFORCE," and follows the same convention as our national voter file source. You can use these codes to replace local voter file abbreviations and codes before importing your file (if you don't know whether someone voted, leave the field blank):

0=Did Not Vote (if known)
1=Voted
2=Voted by Absentee/Mail
3=Voted by Early Ballot
4=Republican Ballot
5=Republican Absentee/Mail Ballot
6=Republican Early Ballot
7=Democratic Ballot
8=Democratic Absentee/Mail Ballot
9=Democratic Early Ballot

NationBuilder supports import of the voter history back to 2000, with up to three elections (four in presidential election years) per year. In the import headers, "p" stands for primary, "g" for general, "s" for special, and "pp" for presidential primary. 

NationBuilder aims to support many types of election data and has created extensive infrastructure to support imports from CSV files. However, if you've got non-U.S. election data or specific municipal election info and other atypical data and questions about how to best use it in NationBuilder, let us know as early as possible and send us samples. We'll do our best to help you be successful in integrating the data important to your campaign.

If you want to import demographic data from a source like a local voter file, in the U.S., use these code in your fields:

A = Asian

B = African American

H = Hispanic

W = White/Caucasian

O = Other

U = Unknown

Through our partnership with PoliticalFORCE, NationBuilder is able to offer voter file data - or "voter intelligence" - at no additional cost to most of our political campaign subscribers. Customers can also purchase proprietary PoliticalFORCE targeting data called "donor intelligence" and "social intelligence." These add-ons are only useful with the PoliticalFORCE voter file, which is only available for political purposes. The add-ons must be subscribed to at the same level as voter intelligence - if you have 400,000 voter records, you will need the donor and/or social intelligence to cover that entire data set.

Donor intelligence includes information on party loyalty, Democratic and Republican donor propensity, household income, occupation and more. Both donor and social intelligence are accessed in People > Advanced Search and are helpful for making selects in the voter file.

Social intelligence includes more than 40 check boxes for narrowing voter selects by interests such as sports, social networks, food and music.

Excel has a habit of automatically changing values in fields based on format. To ensure quality CSV imports, make sure your zip code is a text field if it needs zeroes on the front, same thing for ID numbers with preceeding zeros, check that your dates are formated with four-digit years, etc.

Recruiting and managing volunteers is really straightforward. Set up a volunteer sign-up page and begin encouraging your supporters to go there. A volunteer button linked to your volunteer sign-up page will appear on your supporter navigation bar so people will see that there is a need for volunteers practically everywhere on your site. On the actual sign-up page you can ask for different volunteer roles that people can choose from, such as canvasser, event volunteer, letter writing, or office manager. 

Once your volunteers are signed up, you can keep them active by creating a calendar page listing multiple volunteer events. Use your database to log contacts with your volunteers, so you know who hasn't helped out in a while. On your broadcaster page you can stay in touch with your volunteers by sending them blast emails, tweeting, and updating your status on Facebook. You can link your events to Facebook events, making them one in the same so volunteers can RSVP from there. They can even RSVP for your events via text. 

Keep track of organizations and other institutions using tags. You can enter the organization into you database as a new person, and then use a tag to designate that it's something else. The tag could read "org", "organization", "church", "non-profit", etc. You can also create a specific tag for that organization, say "Peoples_United" or "PU", and then not only tag the organization but also tag everyone member, staffer, or other close affiliate with that same tag. 

Events pages allow you to track RSVPs and attendees, since not everyone who RSVPs for an event is actually going to show up. 

Once you are in your event page, go to Event Details > RSVPs. This is where you can track all of the RSVPs for your event. If the event is connected to a Facebook, or Meetup event, those RSVPs will appear here too. You can manually add new RSVPs by clicking on the new RSVP tab. You can also download and print this list. When you have an event, it's a good idea for you or the host of the event to have this list of RSVPs handy in order to keep track of who attended. 

If you go to Event Details > Attendees you will see the same list of RSVPs you saw in the RSVPs tab, the only difference is these have check boxes next to them. Check only the people who attended the event and then click on Update Attendees. These people will now be tagged as having attended and will be moved to the attendees list. 

• Emailable: If "receive emails" is checked, "do not contact, period" is not checked, "bad email" is not checked, and they actually have an email address.
• Bad: If "bad email" is checked, of course.  This is checked automatically if the email address is actually invalid, or after sending an email blast the other server tells us that the email address doesn't exist.  It is also checked automatically after the 3rd "bounce"
• Bouncing: This means we don't know that the email address is bad yet, but there were problems sending an email to it. The server could be down, the account could be over quota, various issues that could be temporary. If we get 3 of these bounces in a row, it will be considered bad.

We recommend that you string together your volunteer signup page with a survey page in what we call an action chain. 

NationBuilder allows you to designate landing pages once a user has completed an action on a given page type. By sending the person to another action page, after signing up to volunteer for example, you are creating a chain of actions for them to complete.

You can easily do this to collect additional data from people. Create a volunteer sign-up page (change the name of it to whatever program or campaign you are collecting people's data for), and then designate a survey page type as the landing page after they sign-up. The survey page allows you to collect information from people in the form of yes/no questions, multiple choice, and free form text responses. You can tag people who answer with certain multiple choice responses, making it easy to keep track of all of the "phds," for example.

Anyone who has access to the control panel has access to the full supporter database. The intern/leader/staffer permission levels restrict who can publish information, and who can view financial data. There is no segmenting of the database in a nation to only allow access to certain people within those permission levels.

In order to access your NationBuilder control panel simply login to your website using the email and password that you setup when you created your nation. As an admin, you will see a link in your supporter nav (side bar) to the NationBuilder control panel, clicking here will take you to your control panel dashboard.

You can also use the /admin slug to login directly to your control panel. That would be: [name].nationbuilder.com/admin

In order to allow other people on your team access to your control panel you need to change their permission level to staffer. From the control panel go to the People tab or search their name, email, or twitter in the search bar. From their personal profile page click the Edit tab and change their permission level to staffer. Now they will have the same level of access to the control panel as you do.

In the NationBuilder dashboard, you can post notes about people that are private to your organization. They can be viewed only in the dashboard, by those with intern access and up. You can use them to remind yourself of follow-up items, provide background information on a prospect or for just about anything. By default, the most recent note will post at the top of a person's profile in the dashboard.

Frequently, you'll end up with data you want to get rid of in your nation.

Sometimes this is Twitter records for a broadcaster you don't want associated with the account, trial data imports, or data that was imported poorly. To delete a bunch of people from your nation at once, you can use advanced search to do things like identify all the people who follow a specific broadcaster on Twitter (People > Advanced search > Name and contact) or who came from a specific import (Advanced search > Origin). Then use a batch action to delete the records that you do not want by clicking the + sign, adding them to the shopping cart and then deleting.

This screencast describes the batch action process for records in detail. 

Be careful, as batch deletes cannot be reversed. If you're unsure, you can make a snapshot backup of your database under Settings > Snapshots.