Congress Plus Advocacy

Pros: The program makes it so easy for our members to contact their legislators about important pieces of legislation. It is flexible enough to allow letters to just a select individual or group of individuals. It was very easy to set up.

Cons: For our use, we had no problems using the software.

Pros: Very easy to set up and use. It was also easy to track which of our members were contacting which legislators. It could be set up so that an entire membership could contact the members of a specific committee regardless of whether or not those members lived in those legislators districts.

Cons: I really can't say anything bad about this platform.

Pros: The implementation of Congress Plus was seamless. Data patches are uploaded quickly and accurately. You have the option of pulling reports in the most useful format, be it PDF or Excel.

Cons: Most features are intuitive, but to get the most out of the system, especially trying to pull specific reports, may require some guidance. The good news, is CongressPlus has staff at the ready to assist.

Pros: Congress Plus Advocacy has made my work so much more efficient. The software is user friendly and intuitive, which makes it simple to train new staff. There are endless customization tools which makes the software nimble and adaptable to our organizations need. There are also regular updates being made to the software, and in the case that there is a feature we'd like, the team is always willing to build out software capacity where they're able.

Cons: The interface is simple, which might not appeal to others. For our purposes, it's perfect!

Pros: For anyone who wants to turn street action into organized street power that can then influence institutions and policy, the Soft Edge is the tool you need. At one protest using the text-advocacy action feature, we were able to empower people who wanted change at that moment to message policy makers as the protest was happening. The Soft Edge's text-advocacy action feature resulted in nearly 13,000 emails being sent to elected officials across our state and we also enrolled 1500 new advocates into our list-serve. Without the Soft Edge, this simply would not happen.

Cons: Any advocacy action software has a learning curve. However, the Soft Edge has what I would call second to none customer support which reduces this learning curve dramatically.

Pros: The web-based interface that houses grassroots data and communications center, public-facing online action center and congressional (legislator and staff) data and digital communications all in one place. With limited staff members and capacity to cover all elements of advocacy and government relations the Congress Plus platform essentially provides the benefit of an additional Advocacy & GR staffer. Tracking of advocate actions and advocacy and GR activity is unmatched across the industry.

Cons: Impressive platform overall. Areas for possible improvement could be building on current robust reporting to include ability to pull multiple reports views together and building on existing email builder tool to expand email design features such as increased bullet and table options, full dashes, etc.

Pros: Congress Plus is able to handle all aspects of our advocacy program needs, in one place. We have a scorecard, manage constituents, and create and send actions, all in one platform.

Cons: Some features were not included, however, the Soft Edge has been great about listening to our needs and adding new features when possible. Sometimes the platform is clunky, or customers have trouble completing actions compared to other platforms, though, seeing as the information needed to successfully contact legislators, we feel that priority outweighs this.

Pros: It's fairly intuitive, all information is saved in the system (to use as models for future actions, for example), and our plan allows us to share the software with our state leaders (we are the national office). We use it for federal and state advocacy efforts.

Cons: I'd like to be able to actually SEE pending state actions in our Legislative Action Center without clicking on a specific state. That's not the current set-up.

Pros: Super easy to set up and use for multiple types of advocacy campaigns including legislative (both federal and state) and administrative (government agencies, etc). Support staff are super responsive and have been helpful in setting up special forms for BLM online commenting and more. Definitely the most functionality for the price compared to other services.

Cons: Not a lot of customization in the widget formatting but the layout is simple and consistently clean and easy for users to navigate.

Pros: It seamlessly connects to all of our digital platforms, action systems and databases. It's updated regularly and the customer service is truly outstanding and responsive.

Cons: It can be a little glitchy sometimes and there are custom solutions needed sometimes for systems integration but the customer support is fantastic and always helps us solve any issues.

Pros: I like that it is very intuitive! It very easy to work with and its not hard to figure out. If I want to try something new, the staff is always very supportive. If there is a feature that I need that is not currently available, the people at Congress Plus always work with me to find a resolution. They have even created features just for us.

Cons: Nothing really comes to mind as things I like least. As I mentioned above, the staff always goes above and beyond to help me out.

Pros: In a variety of ways, the Congress Plus software allows our work to be more efficient, effective and impactful. It has allowed us to monitor how many of our communications are reaching individual lawmakers, follow-up with users in a targeted manner to urge them to take more action and more. The software has also been magnificent in helping us manage our citizen lobby days, both in terms of reaching out to congressional offices and scheduling meetings, and organizing our advocates for their meetings.

Cons: No software is perfect, and we sometimes find circumstantial instances where the software does not meet a specific need. That being said, the Congress Plus staff is always willing to consider our thoughts and work with us for solutions.

Pros: Does the job fine. It's easy enough to set up and is easy enough for the user. Great customer support, in my experience.

Cons: Looks a little crude. It is challenging to collect multiple actions from one computer at an on-site event. The cookies remember the individuals and you have to reset the browser, which is not user-friendly.