Do you have a spreadsheet or list of addresses that you want to turn into action by adding contact information for Congress?

This article will show you how to upload your list to get the information you need.

Step 1: Normalize Address Data In A Spreadsheet

The first step is to put your supporters, customers, or donors' data into a spreadsheet. If you're planning to later upload this information to an email platform like ConstantContact, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, or another platform, you'll probably also want to add their email address and, if you have it, their first name.

At a minimum, you will need their address. We can also convert ZIP codes to Congressional districts, but as ZIP codes often cross Congressional district boundaries, this method is lower-accuracy and not recommended. We will return all possible Congressional districts for a ZIP code in our API (see docs) and the most likely district with spreadsheet uploads.

Address components should either be split up into separate columns, or all in one column. See our guide to formatting your spreadsheet here. Make sure you include the recipient's email and first name at a minimum, as well. Geocodio will normalize the address data as well, splitting it into the various components (street, city, zip, county).

Step 2: Add Congressional Districts and Congress Contact Information to Your Spreadsheet

Geocodio helps you add Congressional districts and Representative and Senator contact information to a spreadsheet, whether it's a CSV or an Excel file.

Go to the Upload a Spreadsheet tool and go through the steps to upload your spreadsheet. On the second-to-last step called "Appends," you'll see the ability to add Congressional districts and legislator data. You'll want to make sure you click both boxes.

This will add the following to your spreadsheet: Congressional district, Congress number, Congress years, and for each Senator and Representative, first and last name, birthday, gender, party, website, DC address, phone number, contact form URL, RSS URL, Twitter handle, Facebook URL, YouTube username, YouTube ID, Bioguide ID, Thomas ID, OpenSecrets ID, LIS ID, CSPAN ID, GovTrack ID, VoteSmart ID, BallotPedia ID, Washington Post ID, ICPSR ID, and Wikipedia ID. They are all included with the data append. You can download an example of a spreadsheet of addresses with Congressional districts added here.

If you're trying to get people to contact Congress, you're probably most interested in phone numbers, contact form links, Twitter handles, and Facebook profiles, so you can delete the other pieces of data from the file later.

Make sure to click "Submit" to process the file. If there are any charges for your list, you'll see that before you upload. You'll get an email when your spreadsheet is done processing, so you don't have to stay on the page. You can then download the geocoded spreadsheet here.

Step 3: Get Your Spreadsheet of Addresses with Congress Contact Data Added

Once you download the geocoded spreadsheet from Geocodio, you can now upload it to your email platform.