Connecting Action Network to your Electbase site

Who can use it

Action Network is Democratic and progressive-vetted, and Electbase follows that: the connection is not offered to campaigns in nonpartisan races, and the card says so.

You also need your own Action Network partner account at the Movement tier, which Action Network charges for (from $15 a month, paid to Action Network, not Electbase). That is what gives your group an API key. Electbase's side of the connection costs nothing.

What gets sent

Electbase adds a person to your group when someone:

• fills in your sign-up form, your contact form, a yard-sign request, or an endorsement form;
• signs up to volunteer.

Each person goes over with the name, email address, phone number and postal address they gave you, plus the tag electbase-website. Action Network matches people on email, so someone who signs up twice is one record, and a submission with no email address cannot be sent at all; it is recorded on our side so you can see it.

RSVPs are different: they are recorded as attendances on an Action Network event, which means Electbase has to know which of your events is which of theirs. That is the matching step below.

Getting your API key

In your Action Network dashboard, open Start Organizing → Details → API & Sync and generate or copy the group's API key. It is the group's key, not a personal one, and it has no partial permissions: it can do everything or nothing.

Connecting it in Electbase

1. From your dashboard, open Connections in the top navigation and find the Action Network card.
2. Paste the key into Action Network API key and click Connect. Electbase checks the key with a harmless read against your group before it reports Connected; a key Action Network rejects is refused on the spot and never stored.
3. Under RSVPs and events, give the group a name for your own reference and decide whether Send event RSVPs to Action Network as attendances stays on. Click Save RSVP setting.

The key is stored encrypted and is never shown again; the card shows only its last four characters.

Matching your events

If RSVP sending is on, click Match your events. Electbase lists each of your events that is taking RSVPs beside a menu of your group's upcoming Action Network events, read from your group. Pick the matching one for each. The link is saved as soon as you pick it.

Until an event is matched, its RSVPs are held, not lost: the card turns yellow and names the event, and the moment you match it the held RSVPs are sent. If you would rather keep RSVPs in Electbase only, turn RSVP sending off and nothing below it is sent.

Two things to know:

• Create the event in Action Network first. If your group has no upcoming events, there is nothing to match to.
• The menu shows the first page of your group's upcoming events as Action Network returns them. A group with a very long upcoming list may not see every event in the menu yet. Tell us if that happens to you.

Your Action Network events on your site

The events read above is used only for matching. Electbase does not show your Action Network events on your website today. Your site's Events block shows the events you create in Electbase; if you want visitors sent to an Action Network event page, link to it from a button.

When the card turns yellow

A Degraded chip means deliveries are held, and the text says why:

• An event has no match. Match it, or turn RSVP sending off.
• The key was rejected. Action Network answered that the key is bad or revoked. Generate a new one and paste it again. The held queue drains on its own.

Disconnecting

Disconnect Action Network destroys our stored copy of the key and stops queued deliveries. Your site keeps working and your group is untouched. Action Network has no way for us to revoke a key from our side, so regenerate it under Start Organizing → Details → API & Sync if you want the old one dead.

Has this been tested against the real Action Network?

Not yet, and you should know that before you depend on it. The connector was built from Action Network's published API documentation and is tested against a stand-in, but as of this writing nobody has watched a real signup land in a real Action Network group, or a real RSVP appear as an attendance. Doing that needs an approved group and a real key, which only a campaign has.

The stand-in has already fooled us once: until 2026-09-26 the matching step did not exist, so every RSVP on a connected campaign was discarded while the card read Connected. That is fixed (unmatched RSVPs are now held), and it is why we say plainly what has and hasn't been proven.

If you connect, be our first real check: submit a test signup on your live site and look for the person in your group's people list, then RSVP to a matched event and look for the attendance. If either does not appear within a few minutes, contact us and tell us what you saw.

Quick checklist

1. Make sure your group is on Action Network's Movement tier and copy its API key from Start Organizing → Details → API & Sync.
2. On your Connections page, paste the key into the Action Network card and click Connect.
3. Save your RSVP setting, then Match your events to the group's Action Network events.
4. Submit a test signup and a test RSVP on your live site, and check your group's people list and the event's attendances.
5. If you ever disconnect, regenerate the key in Action Network too.