The nonpartisan alternative to NGP VAN and i360

If you're running for school board, city council, or mayor in Texas, you've probably heard the names: NGP VAN and i360. They're the heavyweight campaign data platforms — and if you've tried to sign up for either, you may have run into a wall. NGP VAN is built for Democratic campaigns. i360 is built for Republican ones. Both gate their voter data by party. That's not a knock on either product; they do exactly what they were designed to do. The problem is that most local races in Texas are officially nonpartisan — no party labels on the ballot — which means the candidate in front of you often can't use either tool. This article lays out the gap honestly and walks through the open, all-in-one alternative built specifically for nonpartisan local races.

What are NGP VAN and i360, exactly?

Both are mature, capable platforms — and credit where it's due, they helped define modern campaign data. NGP VAN is the canonical voter-contact and data system for the Democratic ecosystem; access flows through party and aligned organizations. i360 is its counterpart on the Republican side, the data backbone for conservative campaigns and committees. If you're running a partisan race and you're inside the right ecosystem, both are powerful. The catch is in that word: *inside*. Access is conditioned on party alignment.

Why does party-gating lock out local candidates?

Here's the structural mismatch. In Texas, the May Uniform Election Date is when nearly all local races run — and the offices on that ballot are officially nonpartisan by law:

• School board (ISD trustee) races carry no party label.
• City council races carry no party label.
• Most mayoral races carry no party label.

A candidate for these seats isn't running as a Democrat or a Republican — they're running as a neighbor. But the leading data platforms require you to pick a side to get in the door. So the school board candidate who just wants a clean voter list, accurate turnout history, and walk lists finds that the obvious tools won't let them register. They fall back to a static spreadsheet — which, in a place like Collin County, goes stale fast.

What should a nonpartisan alternative actually do?

Replacing a party-gated tool isn't just about swapping the voter file. The point of the leading platforms is that they connect data to action. So the alternative has to do the same — openly. At minimum it should give a local candidate:

That's the definition of an all-in-one campaign platform — except built without the party wall. The difference for a nonpartisan candidate is night and day: instead of cobbling together a spreadsheet and a few apps, you get one system that does what NGP VAN or i360 does for partisan campaigns, available to everyone on a nonpartisan ballot.

Is Mandate the nonpartisan alternative to NGP VAN and i360?

Yes — that's exactly the gap it was built to fill. Mandate is a nonpartisan, all-in-one campaign platform for local candidates. Where NGP VAN and i360 require party alignment to access voter data, Mandate is open to every eligible candidate, because the races it serves — school board, city council, mayor — are officially nonpartisan in the first place. And rather than just handing you a data table, it runs the whole campaign in one login: it builds your voter universe, generates walk lists, sends mail and texts, and keeps your Texas compliance current. It doesn't just store your campaign — it runs it.

How do you switch from a stitched-together stack?

1. 1.Stop maintaining the stale spreadsheet. A one-time export can't keep up with Collin County's churn — start from live data instead.
2. 2.Consolidate your outreach. Move mail, texting, and dialing into one place so every contact attaches to the same voter record.
3. 3.Connect your money to your reports. Put donations and expenses where your Texas reports are generated, not in a separate sheet.
4. 4.Get your plan. Pull your votes-needed number and a week-by-week timeline so the data turns into action.

The bottom line

NGP VAN and i360 are strong tools — for the partisan campaigns they were designed to serve. But officially nonpartisan local candidates are left out by design, and a static spreadsheet is no match for a county that adds tens of thousands of residents a year. The honest fix isn't a better partisan tool — it's an open, nonpartisan platform that any candidate can use. Explore Mandate's platform, read why nonpartisan campaign software matters, or grab the free Collin County filing kit to get started.