Introduction
When your most dedicated donors want to do more, they can become vocal advocates for your mission. With CharityEngine's advocacy software for nonprofits, they pick the channels and you give them the tools.
Table of Contents
Help Center – Legacy User Interface
Click here to access the Help Center legacy user interface article.
Prerequisites
If your organization is interested in learning more about the Advocacy feature, please contact your account representative for additional information and pricing.
Creating a New Advocacy Issue
To create a new advocacy issue, navigate to the Advocacy App > Issues & Actions > Issues
Click Create New Record (
) to initiate a new issue
General Tab
On the General tab of the New Issue, you can configure some basic data points about your feature.
Note, upon creation of a new issue, limited tables will appear. The additional tabs presented will be made available upon saving of the issue record.
- Name: This represents the internal naming convention of the issue for the organization
- Title (online): Represents the language which will be presented to the constituent
- Action: Yes as active or No as inactive
- Category: Attribution of issue category. Categories can be modified with the Configuration App > Advocacy > Categories
- Topic: Attribution of topic type; set drop down; Topic is sent with message to the target
- Action Display Type: External display of the number of actions and/or participants
- See Action Display Type Defined below
- Dates: Active Dates of the issue, by checking end and end date can be set
- Description: Internal description
- Scroll down to Offline Settings to expose the ability to create a URL redirect and offline message
Click Save to secure the issue and to see additional configuration elements.
Action Display Type Defined
- Actions: If one contact takes action on the email tab and the letter tab, then two actions would be counted.
- Members: If one contact takes action on the email tab and the letter tab, then one member would be counted. If they logged in again and took another action, the member count would not increase.
- Members & Actions: If one contact takes action on the email tab and the letter tab, then two actions would be counted and one member would be counted.
- None: No counts will be displayed externally
If Enable Sharing is checked, then the Sharing tab will appear.
Design Tab
The Design tab will allows the user to customize the colors and images used without minimal technical skills
- Use the color picker on the left to select the display colors
- To upload a logo, header image, or background image, click on the links to browse your computer for those images.
- Users will be able to see the selections made in the live preview on the right.
Pages
- In the intro message, add content that will appear above the advocacy action center. This section is a good place to tell advocates about the issue and why they should take action.
- In the footer message, add content that will appear below the advocacy action center.
- Both the Intro and Footer messages are rich text, so photos and HTML are possible here.
On the Pages tab > Action Taken tab, add a message to acknowledge and appreciate actions taken by advocates.
Methods
On the Methods tab the different ways to contact and promote the issue can be configured. The methods configured and marked active will drive the methods available in the Action Center. The action center in the below example, has a message configured for every method.
- Email: Sends an email message to the selected targets
- Letter: Creates a PDF that includes letters to selected targets
- Phone: Phone script
- X: X directed at the selected target. Each target is submitted separately
- Facebook: Post to the target's page or a direct message depending upon the target's Facebook settings
- Petition: A petition in which advocates can sign
- Share: Email message that advocates can share with their friends
To create a new method, click on Create.
Select the method you want to configure on next screen. Depending upon the type of communication different configuration options are available.
When something is editable, it means that an advocate can change the message, subject, or post before submitting it. Letters and Petition are non-editable by default.
Users can add tokens to their messages, these tokens will personalize the message from the advocate and easily link any posts back to the action center.
Targets
CharityEngine’s advocacy application allows for highly customized targeting. Navigate to the Targets tab to configure the contacts that should be contacted about your issue.
Click on the 
Add New to add a new target or target type.
The new target modal will appear. To select Representatives based on their type (House, Senate, President), use the Representative Type option.
Note that State Level Data is only available for accounts that are subscribed to it.
If the user wants to select a specific representative, select Representative and search for them.
Members of the public, non-elected officials, and media can also be added as targets for your Advocacy issue using the Custom option.
After making your selection, click Add.
All advocates will see selections made by the user upon entering their information into the Action Center.
Social & Contact Info
The Facebook and X messages used with the Share method are configured on the Social & Contact Info tab.
Note that the messages have been seeded with the token for the URL of the issue.
The Footer tab is where the Footer Share box is enabled.
This share box appears whether or not the advocate has entered their contact information into the Action Center. This tools allows contacts to promote your issue with fewer steps.
Advanced
Additional options can be configured in the Advanced section.
Options
- Goal: Number of Actions taken goal
- Min.Display Goals: Count will not appear until the minimum is met
- Enable Login: This requires the advocate to create a log in to take action
- Auto-Move User: If multiple actions associated with issue, will automatically move the user to the next action
- Sign Up Take Action: Compatible for single action pages - upon sign up, constituent's action is recorded
- Position: Internal position the bill/issue
- Position Statement: Internal position statement
- Admin Action Email: Action notifications will be delivered to this email address
- App Mode: test mode disables email sending
Action Taken Email
- Email Message: select from configuration tab to select the email message following the action taken email
- Subject: email message subject language
- Sender Name: email message sender name
- Reply Email: email message reply
Regions
To restrict your issue to advocates in a specific state or states, add the state on the Regions tab.
Please note, the constituent's location will be identified upon sign up. This option should be used if the user needs to further refine and restrict constituents within one or more specific regions
From the dropdown, select the state you want to restrict the issue Representative types to, and click Add.
Security
Activate a notification for visitor cookies
Developer
If you want to use the default template and theme CharityEngine® provides, leave Layout Theme as Baseline. To remove that, select None.
Note that it is recommended to use the theme and styling CharityEngine® provides.
CharityEngine®’s action centers can be placed in a third party site using the iframe widget. Copy the widget code by clicking on Copy on the Widget page and paste it into your third party website.
Please note iFrame issues may arise due to browser security changes. Please review the following article prior to electing to leverage iFrames: Browser Security Changes & Iframeing CharityEngine Donation Forms & Online Fundraising Apps
