Moving from NationBuilder

Cobber has a purpose-built importer for NationBuilder exports. It recognises the file from its headers and runs a different engine to the ordinary spreadsheet import — one built around NationBuilder’s own column names, so there’s nothing to map by hand.

It builds your people. Donation history comes across as a summary on each person rather than as individual transactions, which is worth understanding before you go looking for them.

What Cobber does automatically

You never choose “NationBuilder” from a menu. When you upload a file, Cobber looks at the column headers, and if enough of NationBuilder’s distinctive ones are present — nationbuilder_id, signup_type, tag_list, is_supporter, primary_address1 and the like — it switches into NationBuilder mode on its own.

The threshold is deliberately loose, because NationBuilder exports vary depending on what you tick when you export. An ordinary people or donations spreadsheet hits none of those headers, so there’s no risk of a normal import being treated as a NationBuilder one by mistake.

1. Export from NationBuilder

   Take a full people export. Include the donation summary columns if NationBuilder offers them — Cobber reads those onto each person, so a fuller export means a richer record.

2. Upload it to Cobber

   Go to Data Imports and upload the file. You don’t need to choose an import type; the screen changes to Import NationBuilder export once the file is recognised.

   

3. Review the locked mapping

   You’ll see every column in your file and where it’s going. This screen is read-only on purpose — the NationBuilder engine is hardcoded rather than driven by your choices, which is what makes it reliable. Columns with no equivalent in Cobber show as Won’t import.

   

4. Check the review screen, then commit

   The review step shows what will be created before anything is written. Read the counts — if the number of people is wildly different from what you expect, stop and check you exported everything.

What comes across

NationBuilder to Cobber

In NationBuilder	Where it lands
first_name, middle_name, last_name	Name fields on the person
email, email1–email4	Email address, with the extras kept as secondary emails
mobile_number, phone_number, work_phone_number	Mobile, home and work phone
primary_address1, primary_city, primary_state, primary_zip	Residential address, suburb, state and postcode
federal_district, state_lower_district, city_district	Federal electorate, state electorate and LGA
tag_list	Tags on the person
created_at	Date joined
is_donor	A donor tag on the person
donations_count, donations_amount, first_donated_at, last_donated_at	A donation summary stored on the person — not individual payments
is_volunteer, availability	Volunteer status and volunteer notes
unsubscribed_at, email_opt_in	Email opt-out

What doesn’t come across

Individual donations and memberships. This is the one to know about. The importer builds person records; it doesn’t create a payment for every historical gift, or a membership record for every member. What you get instead is each donor’s history summarised on their record — how many gifts, how much in total, and the first and last dates — plus a donor tag so they’re easy to find.

That’s usually the right trade. Historical transactions from another system have no Stripe payment behind them, so importing them as payments would put numbers in your Finances screens that you can’t reconcile against money actually received. Your donation reporting in Cobber starts from the day you start taking donations in Cobber, and the history lives on the person for context.

If you need memberships in Cobber, load them separately with the Memberships import after the NationBuilder import has created the people — see importing a spreadsheet.

Beyond that, anything not in the table above is skipped and shown as Won’t import on the mapping screen. The mapping is fixed, so Cobber won’t guess at a column it doesn’t recognise — guessing is how you end up with someone’s membership number in a notes field.

Do a dry run on a copy first. Export a hundred rows rather than the whole database, import those, and look at a handful of the resulting people. It takes twenty minutes and it’s the only way to find out what your particular export looks like before it matters.

After the import

• Check the opt-outs. Open a few people you know unsubscribed in NationBuilder and confirm they’re opted out here. This is the one thing that’s genuinely costly to get wrong.
• Check a donor. Open someone you know has given before and confirm their donation summary and donor tag came across.
• Check a local group. If your electorates came across, people should already be sitting in the right local group. If they aren’t, the electorate columns were probably not in your export.
• Don’t send anything yet. Verify your sending domain first — see your first week.