NGP VAN is an important tool for campaigns to manage contact history, canvass results, and much more. We’ve created the following guide to help campaigns set up the necessary configurations in Impactive and NGP VAN so that important data and workflows are synchronized.

Impactive offers an integration with NGP VAN so that campaigns can keep their VAN instance synchronized with Impactive. Admins can synchronize the following data between VAN and Impactive:

We trigger syncs instantly. The speed that those syncs realize themselves in VAN, however, largely depends on traffic to both platforms. Usually, contact history, activist codes, and opt outs are quicker, typically take less than an hour. Larger jobs, like list syncs could take a few hours.

This article will review setting up integrations and common use cases.

Getting your VAN integration configured will require you to navigate outside of Impactive to obtain your VAN API key. This credential will give Impactive access to sync data over to your database.

A VAN API key is required to give Impactive permission to sync back to your VAN instance. If you’re having trouble configuring your API key, refer back to your NGP VAN administrator for more assistance.

If successful, you’ll see an “Active” Status under your API key. If your configuration was unsuccessful, you’ll see an “Error” under Status.

PRO TIP: If you ever need to switch or change VAN committees to pull from, but want to keep your same sync instructions, we suggest updating your current key to the new one (as opposed to creating a new key and new sync instructions from scratch). To edit or update your API key click on the "..." button next to the existing API Key, select edit, and enter the information of the new API key.

Once the VAN API key is configured, you’ll need to create a sync instruction. Sync instructions are basically settings that tell Impactive what data to synchronize over to the VAN database. You can find sync instructions under DATA > Integrations directly below the API key summary table.

We recommend creating sync instructions for every type of integration you’ll want to maintain between us and VAN. These syncs include, but are not limited to:

For more information about creating, uploading, and managing contacts, visit our help page How To Create and Manage Contacts.

There are numerous components to creating sync instructions and it’s easy to get overwhelmed, but rest assured: the goal is to match an Impactive tool, or “Instruction”, with a VAN endpoint, or “Type”.

You can synchronize the following Impactive tools:

To the following VAN endpoints:

Impactive components (mandatory):

VAN components (mandatory):

Variable VAN components

Depending on the VAN endpoint selected under “Type”, additional components will need to be configured:

As a best practice, we recommend that your instruction name follow the format “Tool: Name of item”. For example, if you are integrating an Impactive tag called “Volunteer”, name the instruction “Tag: Volunteer”.

Impactive understands that campaigns, advocacy organizations, and unions often use NGP VAN to create lists by cutting turf and segmenting voters using its many filtering tools. Setting up this sync will allow for data to flow two ways - to and from VAN and Impactive.

Contact list sync turnaround time depends on traffic to both the Impactive platform and VAN, but the list sync should typically complete within 24 hours. Update your NGP VAN list syncs with manual resyncing on contact lists syncs in the Data > Integrations tab. After clicking “re-sync” the contact lists in Impactive will be updated to reflect the state of the static list in NGP VAN.

Important Note: When there’s multiple phone numbers listed in VAN for one contact, Impactive will only pull the default or "preferred" number. We do not recommend pulling multiple numbers per contact.

To set up a Contact List sync:

IMPORTANT NOTE: Contact list syncs are not dynamic. If you need to re-sync changes from a static list in VAN, revisit the DATA > Integrations tab and click on the "..." next to your list sync integration to reveal the "Re-sync List" button. When you click on this button, the list will re-sync within a few hours. You can also re-sync the list in the CONTACTS tab.

As the old adage goes: “if it’s not in VAN, it didn’t happen”! Campaigns need Impactive actions to create contact history in NGP VAN so that they can carefully track performance, retarget voters, and create segmented lists. Keep VAN integrated with Impactive by syncing back contact history any time a contact is reached in Impactive.

Here’s an example for Peer to Peer:

After this instruction is configured, every contact with a valid VAN ID will receive contact history in NGP VAN. A similar sync can be achieved for friend-to-friend, canvassing, and phone banking actions using the “F2F Messaged At”, “Canvassed At” and “Last Called At”/”Call outcome”.

Leverage activist codes by creating a sync instruction that applies an activist code to contacts any time a tag is submitted on them in Impactive.

After this instruction is configured, every time you submit the tag on a contact with a valid VAN ID, the corresponding activist code will be created in NGP VAN.

Need to track if voters or contacts have unsubscribed? Impactive automatically tags voters who have unsubscribed from Peer to Peer (P2) campaigns using the opt-out tag. Set up a sync instruction for the opt-out tag and pass it back to the VAN “Result Code” type as a “Do Not Text” object. This will ensure all texting opt-outs in Impactive are labeled as “Do Not Text” in VAN. Pass the “Opt-Tut” tag to NGP VAN result codes to track contacts who have unsubscribed from P2P campaigns.

After this instruction is configured, every time a voter unsubscribes using “Stop”, “Cancel”, or “Unsubscribe” keywords, or if a volunteer manually opts-out the contact, NGP VAN will automatically create a “Do Not Text” result code in the contact’s history.

Did your volunteers obtain important survey information during their conversations with voters using Impactive? Use a custom field sync instruction to pass back the results of these survey questions to VAN. Capture responses to survey questions in VAN by creating sync instructions on multiple choice custom fields.

First, set up a sync instruction for the custom field and pass it back to the VAN “Survey Questions” type. Next, select the appropriate Custom Field under Object. You’ll then need to map the multiple-choice responses to the correct survey question response.

Sync the custom field “Support Rating” with the "Survey Question” type, while toggling the “Do Not Text” object.

After this is configured, every time a volunteer submits a multiple choice custom field response on “Support Rating”, NGP VAN will apply the appropriate survey question response on the contact.

You can integrate Impactive with VAN nationally or across multiple states using the "Target State" field. This enables campaigns to sync VAN using the same API key in an Impactive campaign by overcoming the limitation where VAN_ID's are not unique state-by-state. You will need an API key that has access to your national or multi-state instance in VAN. You'll need a different API key for each VAN instance. So if each state has its own VAN instance, you'll need a separate API key for each state. If you're syncing them all back to one Impactive dashboard, you'll need to add each VAN instance's API key to that dashboard. Then you can set up the sync instructions for the data you'd like to sync back and forth between Impactive and each state. When you're setting up each sync instruction, you'll be able to select which API key you'd like it to point to. This way you can sync back result codes, survey questions, or activist codes into the VAN instance of your choice.

Upload a contact list as you usually would using the instructions here: How to Create and Manage Contacts; however, use the 'state_abbrev' column as well as the ‘van_id’. Include state abbreviation as a value: ie, "VA" for Virginia. Here's an example:

Create a sync instruction as you normally would by following the instructions here; however, include the "Target State" field in the sync instruction. This ensures that VAN syncs to IDs in a particular state (ex: Virginia).

Simply select the state abbreviation you will integrate under "Target State". For example, below, we want to make sure that the field is syncing to IDs in the state of Virginia. We'll select "Target Value": "VA".

Go ahead and create your sync instruction. Once the two steps above are completed, Impactive will sync to the correct contact in your national or multi-state VAN instance.

Sync dialer activities to NGP VAN by setting up sync instructions for dialer-specific custom fields. There are two dialer-specific custom fields that Impactive configures by default to allow campaigns to sync back phone bank activities to NGP VAN.

The custom fields are the following:

The “Last Called At” custom field is appended to a contact on Impactive anytime the predictive dialer attempts to call a contact in a phone bank. This means that regardless of whether the contact was reached or the call went to voicemail, the custom field is recorded. This custom field gets recorded as a “Last Called At’ custom field in our system with a timestamp as a value. Use the “Last Called At” custom field in your Impactive sync instructions to ensure that your contact history in NGP VAN is up-to-date.

Once the sync instruction is correctly configured in Impactive, the platform will pass contact history to the voter’s profile in NGP VAN with the timestamp, contact method, and result code.

The “Call Outcome” custom field is a multiple-choice custom field that is surfaced to the volunteer when they are recording the outcome of a connected call on an Impactive phone bank. When the call outcome prompt is surfaced, the volunteer should pick the appropriate outcome of the call:

The selected result will be recorded as the value of the “Call Outcome” custom field for the contact. The field is also auto-populated automatically by the dialer when answering machine detection is enabled for a particular phone bank action. It will map its auto-detected outcomes to the call outcomes listed above.

Use the “Call Outcome” custom field in your Impactive sync instructions to ensure that your contact history in NGP VAN is up-to-date.

Note: A sync instruction will need to be created for each call outcome.

For more information, visit our Syncing Phone Bank Results article here.

Need to track which voters or contacts have been canvassed on Impactive? Impactive automatically appends a custom field to contacts when canvassed in an open canvassing action.

Set up a sync instruction for the “Canvassed At” custom field and pass it back to the VAN as a “Canvasser Response” type. We encourage you to use the “Walk” Object and the “Canvassed” Result Code. This will ensure all canvassed contacts in Impactive are show up as canvassed in NGP VAN.

This section will help you set up a sync instruction to keep your text message custom fields in sync with NGP VAN's "Canvass Response" endpoint. Impactive enables two custom fields by default: P2P Messaged At and F2F Messaged At. The F2F Messaged At custom field is appended to a contact when you text them in a friend-to-friend text messaging action. The P2P Messaged At custom field is appended to contact when you text them in a peer-to-peer text messaging action. You can create an instruction to sync these fields with NGP VAN's "Canvass Response" endpoint.

To sync the "P2P Messaged At" custom field with "Canvass Response"

If implemented correctly, any time a contact receives a peer-to-peer text in Impactive, they will receive a canvass result in NGP VAN under the "SMS Texted" contact type and "Texted" under the result code.

To sync the "F2F Messaged At" custom field with "Canvass Response":

If implemented correctly, friends or family receiving a friend-to-friend text in Impactive will receive a canvass result in NGP VAN under the "Personal Phone" contact type and "Texted" under the result code.