When I learned there was a way to make NGP work like VAN I was all YES PLEASE. Then my finance director came on and made me change it back. Nevertheless, I am stoked about this new development and couldn't wait to share it with you! See below for my interview with NGP's Lou Levine about the new, great NGP 8!
First things first tell us about yourself. What's your position at NGP VAN and what were you doing beforehand?
I’m the Sr Vice President and General Manager for Political Fundraising and Compliance. I’ve been at the company for 18 years now, and started back when it was just NGP. I wear a lot of hats, but my main role here is to be the person generally in charge of the traditional "NGP" side of our business. Before joining the company, I was in college at Claremont McKenna in California. [Editor's note: Dang. 18 years in the same job is a campaign person's eternity.]
Okay now tell us about NGP 8. What is it and why should we be excited?
NGP 8 is the latest iteration of our industry-standard fundraising and compliance toolset, and it's the culmination of years of work. There is a ton to be excited about in NGP 8. We've already added a lot of new functionality around call time, including custom call sheets, enhanced mobile call time, and the ability to run call time from within the application. It works seamlessly with our amazing digital tools - Digital 8, allowing you to have an full view of your supporters both online and offline, and interact with them the way that best works for them.
And of course, NGP 8 still has a tightly integrated compliance functionality, so you can take care of all aspects of the campaign from one place. The thing i'm most excited about is that we've built it on top of the same underlying database as VAN - the Action Platform. So what that means is that as we've been making improvements to NGP 8, we've also been making improvements to VAN. And when someone learns how to use VAN, that means that they can look at NGP 8 and immediately know the basics of how that system works. And over the long term, we expect that to be a big win for the progressive movement as a whole. (Click here to listen to more of why Lou’s excited about NGP 8.)
What has the reception been so far?
We've seen a lot of positive reaction so far to NGP 8, especially from down-ballot campaigns. I'm pretty excited to say that in the few short months that we've had it up, we have over 300 campaigns already using it. We've also acknowledged many people’s fear of new and different things, and that change can sometimes be challenging. That said, we always try to listen and respond to our users' feedback.
As a field person turned manager I love NGP 8, but I know some finance directors and compliance firms still prefer NGP 7. Are there some things 7 can do that 8 can't or are these just growing pains?
A lot of it is growing pains on the part of the user and the fact that changing your workflow is hard. It's not an exaggeration to say that many finance and compliance directors spend the bulk of their day in NGP, so naturally any change is going to be a disruptive one, and take some getting used to.
I'm hard-pressed to think of things that NGP 7 can do that you can't do in 8. In general, when building features in NGP 8, we used the criteria of "the user needs to be able to do what they were able to do in 7". But as you said, there are some users that still prefer 7, and it's just going to be a steady process of listening to their feedback and winning them over. Having been around here as long as I have been, we've successfully navigated that process with users a number of times, and i'm confident we'll be able to do it again.
Is the plan to eventually only have this NGP or is the old NGP here to stay?
Generally, we've taken the approach that we don't force people off a platform they are happy using. We still have people using NGP Classic, and we still have folks on NGP 7. I'd really like to retire NGP Classic in the coming years, and we'd like for the overwhelming majority of people to move to NGP 8 as soon as they’re ready. The long term plan is for there to be only one NGP. In a perfect world, I'd wave a magic wand and everyone would be using the most recent version of our tools.
Can a campaign go back and forth between the two?
Not really. We do offer a way to move online fundraising data from NGP 8 into NGP 7, but that's about it.
This is really exciting! What else exciting is on the horizon for NGP VAN?
We've got a lot going on right now! We're continuing to improve the NGP tools, coming out with further improvements to our fundraising and call time tools, and adding tighter integration with VAN.
We are on-boarding our first state party committees onto NGP 8 as well. We've got an improved, actual integration with ActBlue coming soon. Our EveryAction business has been growing rapidly, and pushing us to do even more innovation, which is really exciting. And we've been working with lots of the new companies that have sprung up out of the tech resistance. And let's not forget, we've got some big elections to win in 2018 and beyond - and we're already planning for that.
And the question I ask everyone on the blog. What is something you wish you had known earlier in your career?
I wish someone had told me just how long impressions, both good and not-so-good can last. I've been doing this for 18 years, and I've seen how good work that I did early on has continued to pay dividends now, and missteps over the years have been hard to get folks to forget. I've been fortunate in that the good has heavily outweighed the bad, but people at all stage of their careers should keep in mind that people have long memories.
Thank you so much, Lou! If you are not using NGP First of all what?! Second of all, you can learn more here.
