Top Tools to Track Legislative Data

Legislative Data is a valuable tool for creating effective outreach campaigns to your constituents. Knowing a constituent’s legislative data allows you to target your communications in a way that ensures constituents are only contacted about legislative opportunities that are relevant to them. Finding a legislative tool that works for your organization can be daunting and we would like to share some tips on how to make a good choice.

Legislative data typically comes in three levels: National Districts (Congress), State Districts, and Local Districts. Not every tool provides access to all three levels of information, but every tool we discuss here provides access to at least one of those levels using Address to District Matching. This type of matching allows you to provide a 3rd party tool with an address, and the tool will return the constituent’s legislative data.

The tool we previously used most often was Cicero. It is a fairly affordable tool that offers access to all three levels of legislative data and it had a Salesforce integration that allowed for automatic retrieval and storage of legislative data directly on Address records in Salesforce. Unfortunately, as of June 1, 2024, Cicero’s NPSP integration ceased to function so it can no longer be used for automated legislative data retrieval with NPSP in the way it once could. Fortunately, Cicero still offers APIs that allow for automated legislative data retrieval as well as the ability to upload a spreadsheet of addresses directly to their website for manual legislative data retrieval.

ZDM by KnowWho is another tool that offers access to all three levels of legislative data. Unlinke Cicero, ZDM offers a managed package through the AppExchange for a no-code setup and maintenance. This tool provides much more than Address-to-District Matching; it also provides comprehensive data on all legislative offices. ZDM keeps legislative data up to date in real time and automatically updates legislative data in Salesforce when redistricting occurs. Although this tool is the most comprehensive and user-friendly of the tools we discuss in this post, it is also the most expensive. At the time of this article, KnowWho does not offer nonprofit discounts and, even with any special deals sales representatives are able to provide, the cost of the tool may prove to be prohibitive.

Geocodio is a comprehensive tool that provides access to all three levels of data, but it is entirely API-based. There is no managed package so we only recommend it if you have access to a developer who can create and maintain the code needed to use the APIs. It is the cheapest of all the tools listed here. As of June 1, 2024, Geocodio offers 2,500 free lookups per day for free, and $0.50 per every 1,000 lookups after that.

Smarty provides a managed package through the AppExchange for a somewhat no-code setup and it is the least comprehensive of all the tools listed here. It only provides access to congressional data and retrieving that data requires the use of APIs, which is not included in the managed package and must be set up separately.

If you have questions about adding legislative data to Salesforce contact records or could use some support deciding on or setting up a solution, please reach out. We can help!