EveryAction is strong tool but pricey

EveryAction needs to do a better job onboarding and supporting customers in setting up and using their tool well. I’ve seen multiple groups struggle with this and witnessed it myself. The whole system is extremely sophisticated and it is only as good as your ability to really leverage all the features well. For example, how you set up codes, create naming conventions for scripts and online actions - or whatever you name it— all have enormous implications for volunteers, organizers, fundraising, comms, etc. It comes as a blank slate so getting things set up well and right for your org takes a minute and EveryAction could do such a better job at helping folks. I tell people to start by considering what they need reporting to look like, what they need to measure, and how granular too. That’s probably the most important question to answer before setting things up.

Very rarely are there problems with the system.

When we have had to rapidly deploy advocacy actions and measure progress forward specific goals it has been great. The ability to integrate email and fundraising to support that work is also great. Making it easy for staff and volunteers to follow up and engage people works well too. The biggest challenge has been weak support for local advocacy. School boards and some local data aren’t available, and custom targets aren’t sufficient when trying to support statewide work. It might be okay on a county-by-county basis but still, the lack of school board data is a problem. The other challenge is the out of the box tools don’t look great unless you embed them with code on your current website. Depending on what that is it might be a challenge. We use WordPress and regularly embed actions and forms and it works well. I previously had a problem embedding them in Wix and square space because it would strip codes that help us track information.