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How to export
How to export

You can export people, financial, and supporter data from your control panel.

Updated over a week ago

📌 Note: Memberships and additional permission sets are available as add-ons. For more information on adding new features please see the add-ons page in your nation.

Table of Contents

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Where to start

Before starting an export, make sure exporting best meets your needs. If you are trying to share data with other nations, tag sharing will prevent you from having to manually export and import data. If you want to backup your nation, create and download a snapshot of your entire database.

When you’re ready to export data, you have to enable the export permission set in your control panel. Either create a new permission set or edit an existing permission set and enable “Export” in the “People” area by toggling “Yes.”

If you want to export financial data, such as donations or invoices, you must enable both the “Export” permission set and the “Finances” permission set from your control panel.

In order to export certain types of data (donations, invoices, memberships, petitions, and households) from your nation, you must also enable the relevant features under Settings > Nation Defaults > Basics. Memberships are only available with the Pro plan or above. To export voter ballots, you must enable voter features.

Once you set up the appropriate permission sets and features, you are ready to begin your first export.

Export from the People section

To export information from people profiles in your nation, you will need to start in the People section. Use the Actions dropdown to select Export:

Select the type of export and whether or not you wish to customize which fields will be exported:

1. Choose your export type (people or voter ballots). More often, you will find it helpful to filter people in list view and export just the people or voter ballots that meet the criteria at that moment.

2. When exporting people profiles, select the Export all fields button to generate a CSV with all available fields. You might do this if you’re migrating these records to another nation or a different system. Download an example CSV with all of the exported fields.

3. Once the export begins processing, you will be directed to a list of previous exports. Here, you can review who started each export, the filter criteria used (if applicable), the size of the export file (in rows and bytes), the time spent running the export, and the date each export completed. Under the file column, click the name of the export to download the CSV.

Customize fields for export

If you regularly run exports to create reports or perform tasks outside of NationBuilder and only care about specific fields, select the Customize fields to export button to choose which fields you want to include.

To begin, type a filename for your export file. A descriptive and unique filename will be helpful if you choose to reuse these field settings for another export. Your filename is limited to 250 characters.

In the Use fields from a previous export dropdown, you will see a listing of previous people profile exports that include customized fields.

When you select an export from the list, all fields included in that export will be preselected in the “fields to export” below. Clicking the X icon next to the previous export’s filename will remove any field selections you have made.

All exports include a column for NationBuilder ID to ensure that the generated CSV has a unique identifier and that the profiles included in the export can safely be re-imported into the nation without creating duplicates. You can add or remove all other fields from your export by clicking on the checkboxes next to the field group headings (e.g. Phone numbers, Addresses).

If you see a check icon next to a group, all fields in that group will be included in your export. A -minus icon means that only some fields in that group will be included. To see which fields are available for export in each group, click the > icon to reveal all fields in the group.

Select the Export selected fields button to start the export.

📌 Any control panel user with “Export” permissions will be able to use field selections from any previous export, but some fields may not be available for you to export based on your permission set or nation settings. If you select a previous export that includes field selections for features you do not have access to or that aren’t currently enabled in your nation, those fields will not appear in your file.

Export from the Finances section

People profile exports include some summary information about donation and invoice history for individual people, but to export information about individual financial transactions (donations, invoices, and expenditures), you will need to start in the Finances section. Customizing fields for export is not currently available in the Finances section.

Export financial transactions

To export all donations, invoices, and expenditures from the nation, go to Finances > More > Exports.

    

Select the Export all financial transactions button to begin the export.

Similar to people profile exports, you can first filter financial transactions and then export only those that are returned by selecting the Actions dropdown and choosing Export.

Once the export begins processing, you will be directed to a list of previous exports. Here, you can review who started each export, the filter criteria used (if applicable), the size of the export file (in rows and bytes), the time spent running the export, and the date each export completed. Under the file column, click the name of the export to download the CSV.

Export other supporter information from your nation

Other supporter information is available for export as a CSV from your nation. Customizing fields for export is not currently available for these export types.

  • To export endorsements, go to Website > [Your site] > Pages and select the slug of the page for which you want to export endorsements, then go to Endorsement Settings > Download CSV.

  • Memberships can be exported by membership type.

  • To export petition signatures, go to Website > [Your site] > Pages and select the slug of the page for which you want to export signatures, then go to Petition settings > Download CSV.

  • RSVPs for a single event are also available for export.

  • To export all responses to a survey, go to People > More > Surveys, click on Surveys and select the pencil button next to the desired survey. Next, click Export and select the Start export button.

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