AO Tech Tools Migration 

HQ has been making significant changes to our technology and tools over the past year to help us campaign more effectively and win elections in a data-driven way.

This document summarises the technology tools available for AOs and provides information on how you can get access. 

If you have any other questions please email support@libdems.org.uk

Lighthouse

We are excited to invite AOs to migrate their membership data to Lighthouse. This will enable you to manage your membership information, set up donation pages, submit returns, and much more!

Many of you will already have experience using Lighthouse for other party business, but in case you have not used it before, this guide outlines some of its key features and provides useful training on using the system.

Migrating Membership Data to Lighthouse

To get your data transferred over from your previous website platform, we’ll need some information to make the process as smooth as possible. We’ve created this spreadsheet to show what we’ll need from you.

The most important information we’ll be migrating is a list of your current members, so you will need to export this from your previous website platform if you have not already. We’ll also need to know when they last paid for membership of your AO, and how much this was, because Lighthouse considers anyone who has made a successful payment in the past 365 days to be an active member.

You need to include as much data as possible, particularly for unique identifiers like email addresses and phone numbers, as this allows us to match your members to people in the main party membership database. 

The “Membership Data to Include” tab shows what types of data we’ll need to get this set up, and the “Sample Membership Data” tab shows how your spreadsheet should look when you send it to us.

Once your list of current members is on Lighthouse, you will be able to keep this up to date yourself by adding new members and recording payments for them. 

Migrating Additional List Data

We know that some AOs used their previous website platforms to maintain other types of lists - for example, a list of non-paying supporters or active volunteers. Although this will not be displayed on Lighthouse immediately, this will form the next part of Prater Raines’ work on the AO section of the system.

If you’d like to maintain these lists, we’ll need you to send over similar information as for your membership list. This will allow us to safely store the data until it can be shown on Lighthouse. 

The “Additional List Data to Include” tab shows what we’ll need from you to do this. Please note that we do not require payment information for these lists, but we do need to know the name you want to give the list - e.g. “Supporters”, or “Volunteers”.

Next Steps

Once you’ve prepared and tidied your data, please email support@libdems.org.uk and make sure to include the spreadsheet as an attachment (or link to a Google Sheet). The team will then review your data, advise if anything else is needed, and then schedule your migration.

If you are not already using Lighthouse, we’ll also need to know the names and email addresses of one or two people in your AO to act as super users. They will be able to add new users to the system and decide who can access which features.

If you need a hand preparing your data, please email support@libdems.org.uk and one of the team will be happy to help. You can also join us on the Tech Projects Slack workspace - click here to sign up if you haven’t already!

Fleet 

Fleet is our new custom-designed website solution for Party Organisations. You can learn more about Fleet here and the costs are listed here. Access to Fleet can be assigned via Lighthouse Superusers or by emailing support@libdems.org.uk

Fleet sites have Donation buttons which are linked to HQ. Donations received via your Fleet sites will be returned to you via your monthly rebates. 

Please note that due to limited resources and the very tight timelines around the website migration project, HQ has not yet been able to prioritise the development of custom-designed features for AOs on Fleet. 

Functionality which would allow AOs to recruit new members via their websites directly into Lighthouse is on the backlog, but cannot be prioritised until we have completed migrating and onboarding local parties to the new tools. Until we can prioritise this development work, we have removed the default ‘Join’ button from AO Fleet sites

All AOs using Lighthouse and Fleet will have a default donation page linked to their Fleet site. When donations are made on this page, they will appear on the “Donations” page of Lighthouse and will be distinguished from other donations by the “Tracker” column, which will show the name of your default donation page.

For more information on how Fleet donations work with Lighthouse, click here.

Please note that AOs cannot use Fleet’s ‘Connect Forms’ feature for email sign-ups and petitions as it is not possible to provide AOs with access to Connect. We have recommended alternative email sign-up and survey tool solutions below.

Typeform

AOs can use Typeform for handling surveys. Links to Typeform surveys can be added to your Fleet site. Please note that data from Typeform surveys will need to be manually added to your bulk email tool (Mailjet). 

You can find out about pricing and sign up for Typeform here. Additional information about using the tool, including templates for surveys, can be found here.

Mailjet

Mailjet is the bulk email tool we are providing to AOs. You can request access to Mailjet by emailing support@libdems.org.uk

HQ will provide each AO with access to Mailjet for two users.

HQ and Prater Raines will ensure that your sending domain is validated for use in Mailjet and that you have access to an inbox where you can manage your replies to your bulk emails.

AOs will be responsible for adding and maintaining their email data in Mailjet. We recommend that you keep a well maintained email list within Mailjet for your members based on data from Lighthouse, as well as maintaining additional email lists for your supporters and email subscribers. You will shortly be able to add Mailjet ‘email sign up’ forms to your Fleet site so that you can build your list of email subscribers.

Development work to integrate Mailjet with Lighthouse is on the backlog but we do not have the resources to prioritise this at this time.

Eventcube

Eventcube is our recommended tool for handling ticketed and social events. Prater Raines has integrated Eventcube with Fleet so that you can display your event calendar on your website.  You can find out more about the tool and sign up here.

Income from Eventcube (like donations) is returned to AOs via monthly rebate payments. You can learn more about the rebates process here.