NGP VAN has entered the donation processing space, officially launching its service on Wednesday that competes directly with the Democratic fundraising mainstay ActBlue.
A release notes that “with nearly every major Democratic campaign in America powered by our software,” it was a natural next step for the company, which also provides voter contact and compliance solutions.
Not only will the company’s platform now process a donation, but it will help clients with prospecting and “financial management to maximize Net Donor Value throughout the full campaign cycle.”
“We’re taking a unique view where we’re looking at the full cycle of a donor,” Chelsea Peterson Thompson, NGP VAN’s general manager, told C&E. “So [it’s] not only how can we increase conversion rates, but how can we also just take the power of NGP and all of the tools that we have available in the CRM, to make sure that our clients are easily able to follow up with them, to get deeper insights about them while also lowering the transaction rate for those organizations and those campaigns as well.”
NGP VAN is undercutting ActBlue on price by 0.70 percent — charging a flat fee of 3.25 percent per transaction compared with 3.95 percent from ActBlue. Moreover, NGP VAN said in a release that its donation forms “perform as well or better than the competition.”
“I think that people can definitely use both,” said Peterson Thompson of ActBlue. “But … certainly the lower transaction rates will help make this something that can capture the most out of any single donor.”
Regarding targeting the business of an industry mainstay on the left since 2004, she added: “We’re in favor of any ways that the ecosystem wants to develop and make it easier for people to donate, to volunteer and to register and get out to vote.”
This week’s unveiling is nearly a decade in the making. Peterson Thompson said part of the impetus for the company to get into the payment processing space started back in 2016 when a cohort of first-time candidates entered the political arena in opposition to the incoming Trump administration.
“I have always wanted to look for ways that we can help lower the barrier of entry to folks looking to put their name on their ballot and to do that hard work out on the front lines,” she said. “So [this is] one of the things that I have been looking at for the last few years — but especially coming out of the post-2016 world.”
One of the selling features behind ActBlue is that it allows a donor to enter their payment data once and then click to contribute to any Democratic campaign using the site. It currently has a virtual monopoly on processing Democratic fundraising payments.
Now, NGP VAN wants its processor to offer the same convenience while helping a campaign maximize contributions and retain donors. “We are fully invested in making that experience easy and saving that wallet for people to be able to access and then more easily contribute to campaigns and organizations,” Peterson Thompson said, comparing the donating experience to shopping on Amazon.com.
“So you’re really getting the most out of a single donor and of the money that’s coming in,” she noted. “The majority of it is going into the campaign or to the organization, and not into fees and other things.”
A payment processing service is already being offered to other clients of NGP VAN’s umbrella company Bonterra, which is one of the world’s leading software providers to non-profits. Peterson Thompson said that corporate experience helped inform this product rollout, which started with a slow unveil to existing clients about a month and a half ago.
The product development, she explained, “was both on the non-profit side of the house and on the political side of the house because we want those experiences to be true if you are donating to a political campaign, but then also if you are donating to a C3 or a C4 in the progressive space and be able to have a similar experience.”
Peterson Thompson’s advice to clients who are skeptical of switching payment processors at this point in the cycle: “Test it.”
“Especially for our existing clients, there’s no additional charges [and] we can help you get set up right away,” she said. “We’re excited to see people raise more money this summer.”
