Who funds Congress

About this data

What's counted

Direct contributions from political committees (PACs, leadership PACs, party and candidate committees) to the campaigns of current members of Congress, 2021–2026, as reported to theFederal Election Commission. Each member's page shows how much they raised from individuals in total, but individual donors are only named when they give large sums to outside spenders (below).

A PAC's money comes from the employees, members or owners of the organization that sponsors it, not from the organization's treasury. Corporations can't give directly to federal candidates.

Outside spending and big donors

Super PACs and other groups can raise and spend unlimited amounts for or against candidates, as long as they don't coordinate with the campaign. These independent expenditures are shown separately from contributions, split into spending supporting and opposing each member, because money spent attacking someone isn't money given to them.

For every group that spent on current members (other than party committees and campaigns), donations of $50,000 or more are listed as reported to the FEC. A donor's money isn't traced to particular ads: once given, it's pooled with everyone else's.

Who is behind each PAC

Each PAC is traced to the organization behind it, in this order:

  1. FEC filings name a PAC's connected organization and its type (corporation, labor union, trade association, membership group), and the members of Congress who run leadership PACs.
  2. SEC EDGAR gives an industry code for publicly traded companies.
  3. Lobbying disclosures list the issues an organization lobbies on, and which PACs belong to which lobbying registrants.
  4. Keywords in the organization's name (“Association of Realtors”, “Physicians”) for associations with no SEC or lobbying record.

These feed a fixed set of sectors. PACs with no sponsoring organization are counted asIdeological & Single-Issue. Some classifications are set by hand; the rules are in the project's source code. Mistakes are possible, so check the linked FEC filings for anything important.

The Bluesky labeler

Members of Congress with a Bluesky account are labeled with their top funding sectors and organizations by the @contributions.fyi labeler. Subscribe to it to see the labels on their posts.

Data last updated November 15, 2026.