Advocacy Software for Nonprofits, and the Lobbying Rules That Come With It

The best advocacy software for most small nonprofits costs little or nothing. Change.org for Nonprofits charges no fees for petitions, New/Mode has a free plan with paid plans from $13 a month, and Action Network starts at $15 a month plus usage, but only for progressive organizations. Speak4 publishes a price of $9,900 a year for 12,000 advocates. EveryAction, Quorum, Muster and Engaging Networks sell on quotes. No vendor we checked markets software to track a charity’s lobbying limits, so that stays a bookkeeping job.

Advocacy tools let supporters email, call or petition decision makers, usually by matching each supporter’s address to their legislators. Two things set this category apart. Several vendors restrict who may use them on political grounds, which matters before you build your list in one. And a 501(c)(3) using them is lobbying, which has legal limits. We read each vendor’s own pages, and the IRS’s, on 7 November 2026.

The tools at a glance

Free and low cost

Change.org for Nonprofits

Change.org’s nonprofit offer says “No fees. Just change.” It provides petition creation, updates to supporters, analytics, tagging of decision makers and export of supporter lists. Its reach is the attraction; the trade-off is that supporters sign on Change.org’s platform, so read the export terms and make sure you can email signers afterwards. Best for a public petition that needs to travel.

New/Mode

New/Mode has an Individual plan that is “Free forever” with unlimited contacts, covering petitions, email-your-representative actions and email blasts. Grassroots is listed at $13 a month with 1,000 contacts, and Teams at $109 a month with 2,000 contacts and click-to-call. The same page’s comparison table shows $17.50 and $147 without saying whether the difference is billing period or currency, and New/Mode is based in Canada, so confirm your price. It also states plainly that it will not work with what it calls regressive forces, and lists prohibited uses, including promoting non-renewable resource extraction. Read the list before you sign up.

Action Network

Action Network starts at $15 a month for its Movement plan and $125 for Network, with no setup fees or contracts, plus email at $1.25 per 1,000 on Movement and SMS as an add-on at $10 per 1,000 messages plus telecom fees. It offers letter campaigns, petitions, district matching and call campaigns. Its usage policy says it is “only open for progressive individuals, organizations, and candidates.” Best value for organizations that fit that description.

CiviCRM

CiviCampaign, part of the open-source CiviCRM, handles surveys, petitions and campaign tracking, linking donations, mailings and events to a campaign. It is licensed under the GNU AGPL 3, which makes the software free to use, but hosting and setup are your cost. We did not see legislator lookup or click-to-call in its feature list. Best for organizations already on CiviCRM.

Paid platforms

Speak4

Speak4 is the only specialist we found that publishes a price: Base at $9,900 a year for 12,000 advocates, covering federal, state and custom recipients, recruitment through surveys and petitions, and reporting. Core, for 40,000 advocates, adds comments to regulations.gov and Zapier connections, and is priced on request, as are Prime (adding local recipients, get-out-the-vote and click-to-call), Pro and Elite. We found no SMS, free plan or nonprofit discount. A listing site we saw gives $9,000; Speak4’s own page says $9,900. Best for associations and larger nonprofits running repeated federal and state campaigns.

EveryAction

Bonterra’s EveryAction combines advocacy with fundraising and a CRM: online actions, petitions, click-to-call, virtual phone banking, canvassing, voter files and SMS. Bonterra says messages go first to legislators’ website comment forms, then email and fax. It explicitly supports organizations that run a 501(c)(3) and a 501(c)(4) together. Its pricing is by quote. Best for organizations that want one system for donors and advocates.

Quorum, Muster and Engaging Networks

Quorum sells grassroots texting, email and official contact directories, all by quote, and its PAC plan includes federal and state compliance for political action committees, which is a different thing from charity lobbying limits. Quorum acquired Capitol Canary in 2022, so if you knew that product, look at Quorum. Muster prices by the number of advocates uploaded or unique action takers, and connects to Salesforce and Zapier. Engaging Networks is modular and quoted, with support at no extra cost.

What happened to Salsa?

Salsa Labs’ address now redirects to Bonterra’s homepage, and Salsa is not in Bonterra’s current product list. Several pages that rank for this search still recommend Salsa Engage. Treat it as gone, and look at EveryAction if you want the Bonterra route.

The law, briefly

The IRS says no organization may qualify for 501(c)(3) status “if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation.” Urging the public to contact legislators about specific legislation counts as lobbying; nonpartisan education about an issue does not. That means most campaigns run through these tools are lobbying when a 501(c)(3) runs them. Supporting or opposing candidates is banned outright, which matters for any tool with get-out-the-vote features.

Charities can measure their lobbying in one of two ways. Under the substantial part test, the IRS weighs all the facts, including volunteer time. Under the expenditure test, chosen by filing Form 5768, there are fixed dollar limits:

From the IRS expenditure test page; examples are our arithmetic. Grassroots lobbying, asking the public to act, is limited to a quarter of the total. Going over brings a 25% excise tax on the excess. Under the expenditure test, volunteer time costs nothing, which makes it attractive for organizations whose campaigns rely on supporters. Very few charities come close: our analysis of Form 990 data found only 4.9% report any lobbying. The full rules, the figures and what the board should put in place are in can a nonprofit lobby. If advocacy is central, a related 501(c)(4) may suit better.

Tracking it, since no software does

We found no vendor that markets tracking of a charity’s lobbying expenditure against these limits. Quorum’s compliance features are for PACs, and EveryAction’s claims are about keeping 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) work separate. So the tracking is in your books: give lobbying its own expense account or class, record the staff time spent on it, and report it on Schedule C of your Form 990. Record the board’s decision on the 501(h) election with a board resolution, and set an advocacy rule in your policies.

Running a campaign without dedicated software

Many charities run their first campaign with what they have. Email supporters a link to their legislators’ official contact pages, give them a short script, and ask them to reply once they have acted, so you can count responses. It lacks automatic district matching and delivery tracking, but it costs nothing and shows whether your supporters will act at all. If they do, move to a tool. Record the staff time and costs either way, because they count toward your lobbying limits whether or not you use software.

Things to check before you choose

• Who the vendor will serve. Action Network and New/Mode restrict use by politics; if your board or funders are cross-partisan, choose a neutral tool.
• Where the data lives. Make sure you can export every advocate with consent status, so a supporter list built in one tool is not stranded there. Advocates’ views and addresses are sensitive data; see data security.
• How messages are delivered. Many legislative offices filter mass email. Ask how the tool delivers, and whether messages can be personalized.
• Whether you need SMS. Texting adds cost and consent rules; see text fundraising.
• Whether it fits your other tools. If you already have an email platform and CRM, a free petition tool may be all you need.
• Your other discounts. Some software programs exclude advocacy organizations: TechSoup’s QuickBooks offer, for one, lists them as ineligible. See QuickBooks for nonprofits.

Which to choose

• An occasional petition: Change.org for Nonprofits or New/Mode’s free plan.
• A progressive organization running regular campaigns: Action Network.
• A neutral or cross-partisan organization on a budget: New/Mode paid plans after checking its use policy, or CiviCampaign if you run CiviCRM.
• Repeated federal and state campaigns at scale: Speak4, or quotes from Quorum, Muster and Engaging Networks.
• One system for donors and advocates: EveryAction.

Advocacy works best as part of the rest of your communications: see nonprofit marketing, social media tools, and, for the people who carry campaigns, how to recruit volunteers.

How this list was made

We read each vendor’s pricing and product pages, and the IRS’s lobbying pages, on 7 November 2026, from outside the United States. FiscalNote’s site showed a security check, which we did not try to get around, so it is not included. Where a vendor publishes no price, we say so; where its own page gives two, we show both. We did not run campaigns through these tools. This is general information, not legal advice. No vendor paid to be included and we take no referral fees.