Built in fall, 2016, NoFossilFuelMoney.org is an online tool that allows the user to look up congressional candidates by name, location or party to see if that candidate has accepted fossil fuel money as part of the current election cycle.
The site is a simple WordPress site with a responsive custom design, focused on individual profile pages that display the content of data culled from a few different sources. We used custom fields to enable profiles to display imported data as WordPress content. There are close to 1,000 candidates with profiles on the site that show the amount of money that candidate has accepted from fossil fuel companies. Users can share any individual page through a "share this page" with a customized message that is prepopulated with the candidate’s name.
We wanted the client to be able to update the data tables behind the profiles on their own, both in the current election cycle and for future candidates and future election cycles. That meant having a process that they could control, without being dependent on a back-end developer. We used a well-documented WordPress plugin that allows non-developers to update custom content and trained the client in how to do it themselves. The updates to the dataset were not so frequent that they require an automated update process, although that is also an option within this configuration.
The site also includes a newsroom and an embedded ActionKit petition. It allows them to grow their list with new users interested in the issue.
We also built in a "Tweet @" function, so that any site visitor can, with a single click, send a Twitter mention to their candidate, including a pre-populated but customizable message. This happens once the visitor has seen the amount of money their candidate has accepted from fossil fuel companies, and shares the website URL.
