The short version: every ActBlue campaign gets a hosted contribution page with its own link, and your Electbase site's donate button sends donors there. The money goes straight from your donor to ActBlue to your committee — Electbase never touches it. On Rally and above, you can also have ActBlue send each donation back to Electbase, so donors land in your supporter list and gifts show up on your Finance page.

Who can use ActBlue

ActBlue decides who can fundraise on it, and it serves Democratic candidates and progressive organizations. A few details catch campaigns out:

Connecticut: ActBlue isn't available to state and local candidates in Connecticut. Federal candidates there can use it.
Local races: ActBlue works with some local candidates, not all of them.
Nonpartisan races: ActBlue accepts a candidate who is affiliated with Democrats or endorsed by the Democratic Party.

If you're not sure, ActBlue's help center has an article titled "Can I use ActBlue?" with the full rules.

Electbase's ActBlue connection on the Connections page follows the same rules: it isn't available to state and local campaigns in Connecticut, and for a nonpartisan race it shows ActBlue's rule so you can check it applies to you.

ActBlue or Raise by ActBlue?

ActBlue offers two kinds of account, and which one you have changes what you can do:

Raise by ActBlue is built for state and local campaigns. You get one fundraising page, which works perfectly with your Electbase donate button. It does not include webhooks, so donation data can't flow back into Electbase automatically; you'd export reports from ActBlue instead.
ActBlue (the standard account) lets you create multiple contribution forms and set up webhooks, which is what the data sync below needs.

To check which one you have, sign in to ActBlue and open My Dashboards, which lists the type beside each dashboard. A white "Raise by ActBlue" logo on a navy bar also means Raise.

Finding your ActBlue link

Your donate link is the address of your hosted contribution form. It starts with secure.actblue.com/donate/, followed by the form's name. On a standard ActBlue account you can create several forms (a main donate page, a form for a specific ask, one for an event), each with its own link, so pick the one you want your site's donate button to use.

Connecting it in Electbase

In the editor, open the Campaign details panel. In its Donate card, choose ActBlue as the Processor, and paste your link into Donate page link, including the https:// at the start.

Changing your link later?

Change it in Campaign details again. The editor moves your donate section to the new link too, unless you'd pointed that section at a different link yourself. Then publish, and click your live donate button to check it lands on the right ActBlue page.

Your donate page carries your "Paid for by" disclaimer in the footer, as every page on your site does. Electbase adds it for you and won't publish a page without it, but read it on the live page anyway.

Your amount buttons and refcodes

When your donate link is an ActBlue link, each amount button in your site's donate section opens your ActBlue form with that amount already selected: "$50" opens it at $50. "Other" opens the form with nothing chosen, so the donor picks.

The buttons in your donate section, and in a "volunteer or donate" section, also carry a refcode, ActBlue's tag for where a donation came from. Your website's refcode is website. To see what your website raised, open your contribution form in ActBlue, click Stats, and look for website in the refcode list. The donate button at the end of an Issue Poll tags its clicks with a refcode of its own, so poll gifts show up separately.

Electbase also fills ActBlue's second slot, refcode2, with the button the donor used. It doesn't show on Stats, but it's in your form's export:

ladder is one of the amount buttons.
cta is the big donate button in your donate section.
panel is the donate half of a "volunteer or donate" section.

If your donate link already carries a refcode of its own, Electbase keeps yours and fills in only the slot you left empty. If your link names an amount, each dollar button still opens at its own amount, while "Other" and your other donate buttons keep yours.

Electbase never turns these into ActBlue Express Lane links, which give with a single click. If your own link is an Express Lane link (it contains express_lane), your buttons open your form exactly as your link does, with the refcodes added, so nobody gives $50 with one click by accident.

Your site picks this up the next time you publish.

Can I embed ActBlue's form on my page?

ActBlue lets federal campaigns, federal PACs and 501(c)(3)/(c)(4) organizations embed its forms and donate buttons on their own sites. Electbase doesn't offer an embedded ActBlue form yet. Every Electbase site uses the donate button that opens your hosted ActBlue page, and that works for every campaign ActBlue serves.

It's also no downgrade. The hosted page is the one donors already recognize, it's mobile-optimized, returning donors can give with their saved ActBlue Express details, and it can take Apple Pay, which ActBlue's embeds can't.

Getting donation data back into Electbase

This needs a standard ActBlue account (not Raise by ActBlue) and an Electbase plan of Rally or above. In ActBlue you need an Admin, Integrations or Data role, the roles that can set up webhooks.

In Electbase, open the Connections page and find the ActBlue card. ActBlue doesn't give you a password for this; you make one up. Choose a long, random one, paste it into the ActBlue webhook password (you choose it) field, and connect. The card then shows your Webhook receiver address and the username, electbase.
In ActBlue, go to Tools → Integrations → Webhooks and click Create a new webhook. Choose ActBlue Default, and enter the receiver address exactly as the card shows it (ActBlue doesn't follow redirects), the username electbase, the password you made up, and a contact email. To bring in contributions from before today, set a backfill date.
Create a second webhook for refunds. Refunds come through a separate webhook type, ActBlue Default Refunds. Use the same address, username and password. Without it, refunds never reach Electbase and your totals won't reflect them.
Wait for the first donation. ActBlue may need to activate a new webhook, and it contacts the email you gave if so. The ActBlue card switches to Connected when the first donation arrives.

From then on, each donation adds the donor to your supporter list and the gift to your Finance page, and new donations show up in your weekly digest. A refund appears as its own line and comes off your total. A refund for a gift made before you connected is listed but not subtracted, because that gift was never counted here. Once ActBlue is connected, new ActBlue gifts come in automatically rather than being typed in by hand; if you backfill, don't also enter those same gifts by hand, or they'll be counted twice.

A few more things worth knowing:

Check the last delivery. The ActBlue card shows when the last donation arrived. If that date stops moving while donations are still coming in on ActBlue, check the webhook in your ActBlue dashboard.
If your plan drops below Rally, ActBlue's deliveries are kept but not added to your supporter list or Finance page until you're back on Rally.
Keep ActBlue's reports for compliance. ActBlue recommends its CSV reports as the source of truth for reporting, and so do we: the Finance page is a visibility tool, not your books.
Don't test on your live campaign. ActBlue's Webhook Simulator sends mock donations, and they'd become real records on your Finance page that you can't delete.
Disconnecting stops Electbase accepting deliveries immediately, so delete the webhooks in ActBlue too. If you reconnect later, the card gives you a new receiver address to put into ActBlue.

Quick checklist

Check that ActBlue will work with your campaign, and whether your account is ActBlue or Raise by ActBlue.
Copy your hosted form link from your ActBlue dashboard.
In the editor, open Campaign details and set ActBlue and your link.
Publish, then check your "Paid for by" disclaimer and click the live donate button. After your first website gifts, look for the refcode website on your form's Stats page.
Optional, on Rally and a standard ActBlue account: connect ActBlue on the Connections page, then create ActBlue Default and ActBlue Default Refunds webhooks in ActBlue with the receiver address, username and password from the card.

Not sure ActBlue is the right processor for your race? Start with Which donation processor is right for your race?

Not legal advice. Electbase publishes the Help Center as general information for campaigns. ActBlue's eligibility rules, fees, and terms change — confirm current details directly with ActBlue.

Connecting ActBlue to your Electbase site