The recent conclusion of Apax Partners’ $2 billion deal to acquire EveryAction drew a line under the largest exit the political technology space has ever seen.
In the wake of that sale, which included the political and non-profit software giant together with “mission-driven” companies Social Solutions and CyberGrants, Democratic practitioners have a lot to digest. One of the biggest questions currently hanging over the space is what it means for how progressives do business moving forward now that the tech with the largest Democratic footprint is in the hands of a U.K.-U.S. dual headquartered private equity firm with interests far beyond politics.
On the one hand, you can look at the deal as a bellwether for the health of the space. As Apax is a new buyer in the industry, it clearly demonstrates that political tech companies can expand beyond the confines of a campaign marketplace.
Here’s how Betsy Hoover, co-founder of the progressive startup incubator Higher Ground Labs, characterized the sale earlier this fall: “While an exit of this size will remain incredibly rare in the political tech space, it is an important data point that demonstrates the growth and maturation of our tiny market.”
On the other hand, it’s a moment of concern for some Democratic practitioners who see the sale as an impetus to push EveryAction and Apax’s executive leadership to make real changes. Their initial target: Democratic fundraising practices.
After having behind-the-scenes conversations about concerns with the company’s position in the marketplace, a group of Democratic digital strategists signed on to this open letter in late August.
In the missive, addressed to EveryAction CEO Stu Trevelyan, and Andrew Sillitoe and Mitch Truwit, who are co-CEOs of Apax Partners, the group called on the new company to take five steps to “play a leadership role in pushing the digital fundraising industry in more ethical and sustainable directions.”
The five steps: prevent the sending of unsolicited spam emails, prevent their products from being used to send misleading donation asks like “bogus matches,” prohibit bulk emails from senders who repeatedly violate those policies, and publicly commit to enforcing these steps and ensure their product isn’t used by Republican campaigns or conservative causes.
Part of the group’s rationale was based on the outsized role that the new company will play in the ecosystem. The open-letter notes that the new company “will have a network of 650,000 non-profits, half the Fortune 500, and over 38 million donors and volunteers.”
The authors wrote: “The concentration of such a tremendous customer base and user base gives your company unprecedented power to shape the future of Democratic and nonprofit fundraising, email advocacy, supporter engagement, and more.”
Will Bunnett, a signatory of the letter and a principal at Clarify Agency, put it another way. “With EveryAction’s recent consolidation [of other platforms including ActionKit] it feels like there is finally a player in the cause and political space that it would be a major problem for them if the political email world gets too polluted and collapses,” he said. “To me it was sort of a natural fit to go to them and say, ‘we feel like you have a responsibility to enforce best practices here.’ If you’re not going to do it for us, do it for yourself.”
Beth Becker, a longtime Democratic digital consultant who also signed the letter, said part of the reason that organizers are making the push now is because they’ve seen other companies in the space get acquired and the quality of their offerings drop — or they abandon their liberal litmus test and start working with clients on the right.
She pointed to what happened at NationBuilder, Change.org and Salsa Labs: “Acquisition is definitely a point of change for all these tools. Why not try to push for a change for the good for once instead of making it worse?”
For those signers of the letter C&E spoke with, one of the underlying concerns is that EveryAction’s commitment to progressive causes may end up blurred or even abandoned entirely somewhere down the line, something the company has reassured Democratic practitioners won’t happen. One point of contention in the wake of the sale: some members of Apax’s leadership have given generously to Republican candidates in the past. When a Twitter user drew attention to it, EveryAction’s Trevelyan responded directly:
“EveryAction/NGPVAN will never contract with a Republican candidate/Party. Apax will never ask us to. Apax is a company that is named after founder Alan Patricof, the major Democratic donor, who alone gave $38k all to Ds in 2020 (employer = Greycroft, another fund).”
Trevelyan declined an interview request from C&E and also declined to answer written questions sent via email, but he told the Non-Profit Times the combined company’s sights were set on expansion abroad, where CyberGrants has a big presence: “It is one of the attractive elements” of the tie-up, Trevelyan told the publication.
Internationally, EveryAction faces much stiffer competition than in the U.S. market, where it has bought up competitors, including from Blackbaud, which bills itself “as the world’s leading cloud software company powering social good.”
When it comes to industry-wide concerns on email practices, the open letter argued EveryAction is in a unique position to address them, noting “your customers also include prolific political spammers and some of the most egregious senders of deceptive political emails in the industry.”
The closest the company has come to addressing this concern directly was an Aug. 25 blog post by EveryAction’s Mike Liddell. While touting the company’s commitment to “working with Democratic and progressive campaigns,” Liddell also noted they have existing safeguards against spammy email practices.
“We have extensive internal monitoring and controls on our platform to identify clients that may violate those policies,” he wrote. “Clients who are unable or unwilling to abide by our terms of service are subject to removal from our platform. And, of course, we never sell, rent, or otherwise provide any email addresses to anyone.
“Similarly, any client who engages in illegal actions using our tools, including but not limited to fraud, such as deceiving donors into making unintended donations, is subject to immediate termination.”
Josh Nelson, a Democratic digital consultant who’s led the open-letter effort, said that Liddell was included on the practitioners’ letter when it was sent to EveryAction. Still, no one has responded to him since August.
In an interview, he called the blog post that Liddel wrote “essentially a deflection of responsibility.”
“When it comes to the deceptive practices, they’ve said that they follow the lead of their clients,” he said.
In fact, in a tweet Aug. 27, Trevelyan said: “we don’t write those emails. So, the ‘who else’ starts with the consultants and campaigns that do. We can’t read every email, but they do. Also, legislators, govt regulators (FEC, FTC), and standards-setting bodies like the AAPC.”
On the same thread, a user asked if the company could just crack down on fake fundraising matches. Trevelyan replied that it was hard to know which matches were legitimate and which ones were fake.
“How would the standards setting body know which matches were legit and not, without investigation like DOJ did (real question, not arguing),” he asked.
In some ways the acquisition is already changing the industry. In the past it was hard for concerns about the largest player in the space to get any oxygen in public because actual clients were unwilling speak on the record about their concerns. To wit, Nelson said that while gathering signatures he got vocal support from some practitioners who at the same time were unwilling to sign on. But many were, including some NGP VAN clients.
Of the 86 total signers of the letter, 45 reported they were clients of EveryAction/NGP VAN, according to Nelson. One of those clients is Charles Chamberlain, chair of the group Democracy for America, which he said uses NGP VAN and ActionKit, a formerly independent company that EveryAction acquired in 2019.
He puts the public nature of the campaign on EveryAction’s leadership.
“We have talked to them behind the scenes. We’ve sent them this message before, not just in the public sphere where you’ve seen it,” he said. “They don’t have to engage us directly to do that if they’re just willing to get it done.”
Chamberlain said that adopting a more robust set of standards for what can and can’t be sent through the company’s platforms doesn’t amount to tying the hands of practitioners on the left.
“This whole argument about results, we’ve heard this argument for ten years,” he said. “The proof that argument is bullshit is what’s happened to emails over time. People used to open emails — 30-40 percent open rates. Now people have to struggle for 10 percent.
“That’s because of this behavior,” he added. “It used to be you could reach your supporters in a clear way and on a regular basis and tell a story. But you can’t do that when you have one campaign sending eleven emails in a single day.
“It’s not just over fishing. It’s poisoning the well.”
Correction: This story has been updated to make clear that Apax Partners has dual headquarters in both New York and London.
