Each year, people and companies contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to tax-exempt political organizations in an effort to influence elections nationwide. These organizations, commonly known as 527s after a section of the tax code, can raise unlimited sums for political spending. Today, ProPublica is releasing a database that will allow journalists, researchers and others to more easily search 527s’ finances and find patterns.
It’s a wide-ranging trove of data that includes well-known groups such as the Democratic Governors Association, which influences pivotal races nationwide, and many obscure ones, including the Minnesota-based organization Garbage Haulers for Citizen Choice, which says it advocates for local freedom of choice in waste pickup.
While the organizations in our database can affect the outcome of elections, their direct support of political candidates is often limited. This means much of their activity is not regulated by the Federal Election Committee or a state equivalent, and is therefore unavailable on the FEC’s easily searchable website.
The 527s in our database instead file reports with the Internal Revenue Service, much like charities, but their filings do not appear in the same locations as most nonprofits. Instead, they’re published on an entirely separate part of the IRS website that uses a dated, difficult-to-use search tool. But buried behind that clunky interface is some significant and useful information, from the names of organizations’ leaders all the way down to line-item expenditures and contributions.
Despite the influence of many 527s, experts said they receive little scrutiny and are rarely audited. Lloyd Mayer, a professor of law at Notre Dame, says that because these organizations’ filings don’t appear in the same place as those of most other nonprofits or political groups, they aren’t viewed as often. “FEC filings are a lot more searchable and therefore a lot more visible, and therefore it’s easier for reporters to make stories based on those and even for opponents or law enforcement investigators to discover stuff,” Mayer told us.
In this environment, questionable spending often goes unnoticed. Now that this data is more easily explorable, we look forward to seeing what you discover in it.
