Alma: AI chatbot for political campaigns & PACs

A state-house challenger, six months out

Why campaign websites need a political chatbot

Canvassers send people to the website to sign up as volunteers. Every mailer asks readers to donate on the site, and the events page lists Saturday's rally. By Tuesday night the website is handling more requests than the staff, and most visitors who are ready to act arrive between 9pm and midnight, when the field director is asleep and nobody is watching the inbox.

/A · AFTER-HOURS VISITORS

A supporter who visits at 9pm will not usually wait until 9am for an answer.

A volunteer who clicks "Get Involved" at 9:47pm wants to know what they would actually be doing. A donor on the issues page wants a clear answer on housing before clicking the donate button. A visitor on the events page wants to know whether Saturday's rally has parking. No staff member is available to answer them at that hour, but Alma is on the page to ask the right screening questions and record their contact details.

Volunteer screening questions on the "Get Involved" page
Answers to position questions on the issues page
Event RSVP capture on the events page
Voter ID questions on the "Where I Stand" pages
Supporter sign-up forms (contact details and interest) for advocacy and ballot-measure work

Five ways campaigns run Alma

Political campaign chatbot flows: volunteer, donor, RSVP, voter ID

Each of these is a pre-built starting flow (a set of questions the bot asks in order) in the Political Campaigns category. Choose one, then edit your candidate name, issue positions, event list, and districts. After you add the widget to your site, the flow screens each visitor, records their details, and sends them to the right person on your team.

/01 · Volunteer

Volunteer recruitment qualifier

Records issue interest, availability (weekends, weeknights, election week), preferred role (door-knocking, phone-banking, or data entry), and contact information. Each signup is emailed to the volunteer dispatcher, and the most promising signups also send a hot-lead email.

→ Email · hot-lead email

/02 · Donor

Donor inquiry intake

A donor may ask "what's the candidate's position on X?" or "where do you stand on Y?" The bot answers from a list of questions and answers that you set up, and it records contact details for follow-up if the donor wants to talk to the finance director. It then passes the donor to your fundraising platform.

→ Email + CampaignCNX+ SMS sequence

/03 · Event

Event RSVP capture

For rallies, town halls, debate watch parties, and fundraisers, the bot records party size, dietary preferences for sit-down events, and ticket level for fundraisers (the ticket purchase itself happens on your fundraising platform). A reminder text message goes out 24 hours before the event.

→ Email · CampaignCNX+ reminder

/04 · Voter ID

Voter ID qualifier

Records each visitor's top issue, how likely they are to support the candidate, and their precinct. These website answers add to what your canvassers collect at the door, so persuadable visitors (people who have not yet decided) are in your voter ID file before the field team reaches their block.

→ Email · CoreCNX contact

/05 · Advocacy

Issue advocacy & supporter sign-ups

For advocacy nonprofits and ballot-measure committees, the bot collects each supporter's contact details and interest and asks for permission (opt-in) to send follow-up text messages. It then directs supporters to your next request, such as commenting on a proposed rule, calling a representative, or signing a pledge.

→ Zapier or webhook to your voter file or CRM

Example Alma conversations for campaigns

Four flows from a typical campaign site.

Campaign · Volunteer signup

Get Involved page

Hi! Thinking about volunteering with the campaign?

Yes, happy to knock doors

Great. Weekends, weeknights, or both?

Weekends, mostly Saturdays

Perfect. What's the issue you most want to talk to neighbors about?

Housing affordability

Got it. Best phone for the field organizer to text Saturday's launch?

Campaign · Issues page

Donor question on housing

Looking for the candidate's position on something specific?

Where does she stand on housing?

Three priorities: increase the supply via zoning reform, fund first-time buyer down-payment assistance, and protect renters from no-cause eviction. Want the full policy memo emailed?

Yes please

Sending. Email?

Campaign · Events page

Saturday rally RSVP

RSVPing for the Saturday rally at Lincoln Park?

Yes, party of 4

Got it. Do you need parking info or transit directions?

Parking would help

Sending the parking map. Number for the morning-of reminder?

Campaign · Voter ID

Where I Stand page

Quick question: what issue matters most to you in this race?

Housing, by a mile

Got it. After hearing where she stands, how likely are you to vote for her: definitely, leaning, undecided?

Definitely

Great. What's your zip so we can confirm your precinct + send GOTV reminders?

/B · POLITICAL CAMPAIGN TEMPLATES

Political campaign chatbot templates: 10 ready-to-use flows

The Political Campaigns category includes ten starter flows, one for each type of conversation a campaign website needs to handle. Choose the closest match and edit your candidate name, issue positions, event details, districts, and voter-information links. Then paste the widget on your site. Each flow is designed around the way a campaign field team works.

Volunteer Signup Bot · issue interest, availability, role preference, contact
Donation Nudge Bot · suggested amount, recurring or one-time, then a handoff to ActBlue, WinRed, or Anedot
Event Information & RSVP Bot · rally, town hall, debate, or fundraiser RSVP with party size
Voter Registration Helper · registration check based on the voter's state, plus polling place, absentee ballot, and early-voting information
Issue Deep-Dive Bot · longer Q&A on a single issue, with an offer to send the policy memo
Campaign FAQ Handler · candidate bio, endorsements, contribution limits, where to find the campaign HQ
Email & SMS Signup Bot · signups for the supporter list with double opt-in (the supporter confirms twice)
Campaign Greeter & Navigator · a friendly general greeting that directs visitors to the right flow
Opposition Response Bot · pre-written responses to the most common criticisms of the candidate
Campaign Merchandise Bot · yard signs, t-shirts, bumper stickers, with order capture into your fulfillment vendor

The Alma template library at 145 ready-to-use templates across 15 categories, grouped by job: lead generation, qualification, booking, retargeting and support.

There are 10 political-campaign templates in the templates/political/ category. Each one is a starting flow: you edit the candidate name, issue positions, event details, districts, and voter-information links, then publish.

The CNX Suite, for political teams

The CNX Suite for political campaigns: chatbot, SMS, canvassing, CRM

A campaign like Madison Chen for State Senate may use all four CNX Suite products together: Alma as the website chatbot, Beacon for door-to-door canvassing, CampaignCNX+ for texting, and CoreCNX (the suite's contact database, or CRM) for a single record of each supporter. Each product can be bought and billed on its own. Bought together as the CNX Suite, the products are billed on one subscription, and each product keeps its own account and login. The suite is for campaigns that want all four products to share data. Using Alma on its own is also fine. Most campaigns start with Alma and add the other products as their program grows.

/C · CROSS-PRODUCT FLOW

When a supporter contacts you once, every product in the suite has the record.

A volunteer who completes the Alma conversation on Tuesday night should not be asked the same questions again when a Beacon canvasser knocks on her door on Saturday. The suite keeps every contact in one record. Alma captures the supporter on the website, CampaignCNX+ follows up by text message, Beacon records the door visit, and CoreCNX shows all of it in a single timeline.

Alma Captures the supporter on the website. Volunteer signups, donor questions, event RSVPs, voter ID answers, and advocacy supporter sign-ups.
CampaignCNX+ Sends the text message follow-up. Welcome messages for new volunteers, donor reminders for each fundraising period, day-of-event reminders, and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) messages to your full list.
Beacon Handles the door-to-door program. A canvasser visiting someone who has already chatted with Alma sees that history before knocking.
CoreCNX Holds a single timeline for each supporter. Website chats, door visits, text replies, and fundraising emails all appear on one contact record across the four products.

The Alma leads inbox for a campaign, showing five captured supporters tagged by the volunteer flow: a first-time Saturday canvasser, a Tuesday phone banker, a yard sign delivery, a house party host, and a weekday literature drop.

From sign-up to first volunteer

Set up your campaign chatbot in 30 minutes

Each template asks the questions a working field organizer already asks: name, ZIP code, what the volunteer wants to do (knock doors, make phone calls, enter data, or host an event), and availability. Most campaigns start with the Volunteer Signup, Event RSVP, and Donor Inquiry flows. You edit the wording, add your candidate's details, and paste the snippet on your site.

/01

Pick a template

Choose Volunteer Signup, Event RSVP, Donation Nudge, Voter Registration Helper, or Campaign FAQ, then click "Use this." The flow loads with proven questions.

/02

Edit your candidate

Enter the candidate name, election date, district, issue positions, event list, and links to ActBlue, WinRed, or your registration-check page. Then edit the wording to match your campaign's voice. This takes 20 minutes at most.

/03

Paste the widget

Add one line of JavaScript code to your campaign site, whether it runs on WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow, NationBuilder, or a custom build. The widget is live as soon as the page reloads.

/04

Receive new supporters

Each volunteer signup is emailed to the dispatcher, and the most promising signups also send a hot-lead email so they are followed up first. Donor questions go to the finance team, and RSVPs are added to the CampaignCNX+ reminder list.

Start the trial → Ask Alma

The scope of Alma

What Alma does, and what it does not do.

Alma is a tool for building chatbot flows that run in a widget on your campaign website. It is not a voter-file system, not a fundraising platform built for compliance, and not an FEC-reporting tool. Your voter file stays in the voter-file or CRM system your campaign already uses, such as NationBuilder. Fundraising compliance is handled in ActBlue, WinRed, or Anedot. Alma records the contact and what the person wants, and your other systems handle the regulated work.

Captured supporters are sent into your voter file or CRM through Zapier or, on the Agency plan and up, a webhook (an automatic message Alma sends to another system). Your team sets up this connection, including field mapping (matching Alma's fields to your system's fields), opt-in language, and custom-code splits. It is not a one-click setting. Campaign teams who have connected these systems before will recognize the work. Teams who have not should know in advance that it takes about an afternoon of setup to go from the first lead in Alma to leads that copy automatically into the voter file. We state this plainly so that campaigns are not surprised by it later.

Political FAQ

Political campaign chatbot FAQ

Does Alma integrate with voter-file and CRM systems such as NationBuilder?

There is no native one-click integration. Zapier, or a webhook on the Agency plan and up, connects Alma to these systems. Alma sends the full profile it collected, and your team sets up the field mapping into your system's import tools, such as NationBuilder's people endpoint. Most campaigns finish this setup in an afternoon, and we will point you to the right documentation during onboarding.

Is Alma FEC-compliant?

Alma is a chatbot, not a fundraising platform. The conversation records that a donor intends to give. The donation itself, the contribution-limit check, the occupation and employer fields, and FEC reporting are all handled by your fundraising platform (ActBlue, WinRed, Anedot, or your campaign's chosen processor). Alma passes along the contact and the donor's intent. Fundraising compliance stays with the platform that processes the money.

What about TCPA and SMS consent?

If your bot collects phone numbers for text message follow-up, you write the opt-in (consent) language. Alma asks whatever you tell it to ask, including the TCPA consent disclosure (TCPA is the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act): program name, message frequency, message and data rates, and how to reply STOP to cancel. The Email & SMS Signup Bot template includes a starting double opt-in setup that you can edit in your own words. Sending the texts, handling opt-outs, enforcing quiet hours, and keeping consent records are handled in CampaignCNX+ (or whichever texting platform you send the contact to). Alma records the person's request and their written consent, and your texting platform must honor that consent on every message.

Can it handle multi-state or multi-candidate setups?

Yes. The Agency tier ($199/mo) includes sub-account workspaces (separate account areas), which our team turns on when the account is set up, and each workspace's data is kept separate. You can set up one workspace per candidate, per state, or per ballot measure. State parties and federated PACs use the Agency tier to give each candidate program its own bot, dashboard, and lead inbox under one main account. The Agency tier includes 20 active bots and 50,000 subscribers.

What about Spanish or other languages?

You write the bot's messages, so the bot uses whatever language you set up. You can run the volunteer-signup flow in Spanish for one candidate and in English for another, with both bots in the same workspace. Switching languages inside one bot (the same flow in a different language, based on the visitor's answers) is planned for a future release. Today each bot uses one language.

Where on the campaign site should the widget go?

Most campaigns put it on the Get Involved, Issues, and Events pages, plus the homepage, because that is where most 9pm visitors go. Installation is one line of JavaScript, so if you only want the bot on a few pages, paste the snippet on those pages instead of the sitewide template. It works on WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow, NationBuilder, and custom-built sites.

What about voter-file matching at the doorstep?

That is handled by Beacon, the door-to-door canvassing app in the suite. Alma saves captured contacts to CoreCNX, which can update Beacon's contact record. A canvasser visiting someone who chatted with Alma at 11pm can then see that conversation history before knocking at 2pm on Saturday. The supporter has been in touch twice, and both contacts appear on one record.

How is supporter data stored?

Data is kept separate for each workspace, and it is not mixed with data from any other campaign or organization. It is encrypted at rest (while stored), and standard data export and deletion are available on request. If your campaign is bound by a state attorney general's requirements, a consent decree, or other regulation, please talk to sales about the regulated setup. We have worked with campaigns under specific consent decrees before and can configure Alma to fit.

Can I run separate bots for the candidate site, the volunteer hub, and the donor portal?

Yes. The Growth tier ($79/mo) includes 5 active bots, and the Agency tier includes 20. For example, you could run a Volunteer Signup bot on the main candidate site, a Donation Nudge bot on the donor portal, an Event RSVP bot on the events microsite, and an Issue Deep-Dive bot on the policy hub. Each bot has its own dashboard, leads inbox, and conversation log.

The political campaigns chatbot: volunteer at 11pm, donor at 7am, both captured.