Capital Research Center conceived of this project after identifying a need for more fact-based, accurate descriptions of all of the various influencers of public policy issues. Many so-called “watchdog” groups are instead opponents of the outlets they are watching. Armed with 30-years of research and data on advocacy organizations, foundations, and donors, CRC utilizes a universe of well-trained contributors to help build the individual and organizational profiles that populate the website.
CRC has a perspective on the public policy process as well, but this resource is more important than that. We let the information speak for itself—information that frequently is not cited in reports about these individuals and organizations.
InfluenceWatch strives to be comprehensive, and profiles are frequently updated and written in a manner that’s accurate and measured. InfluenceWatch brings unprecedented transparency to the funding, motives, and interconnections of the entities profiled.
The InfluenceWatch team constantly edits published profiles to present up-to-date facts, add new connections, provide more information or context, improve sources, and otherwise strengthen the value of all of the information on the website.
The nonpartisan, nonprofit National Institute on Money in Politics (NIMP) promotes an accountable democracy by compiling comprehensive campaign-donor, lobbyist, and other information from government disclosure agencies nationwide and making it freely available at FollowTheMoney.org.
The Institute researches and archives a 50-state federal/state database of contributions documenting $100+ billion, plus more than 2 million state lobbyist-client relationships that are registered annually. Recent expansions include selected local-level data, collecting independent spending reports for federal campaigns and in 31 states, and lobbying spending in 20 states.
Has a REST API: https://www.followthemoney.org/our-data/apis
You have to register for a free API key to use it. By default, you can pull up to 1000 records per year.
How to find your API key:
- Log in.
- https://www.followthemoney.org/show-me
- Scroll down to Data Export.
- Click JSON.
- A modal will pop up with a link that contains, among other things, your API key.
- Click the link.
- Grab your API key out of the URL.
LittleSis is a site and mapping engine that data mines contributions, payments, and influence between political figures, lobbyists, contributions, and the very wealthy. Good for finding out who owns which politician, or which ones to "invest" in.
REST API: https://littlesis.org/api