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National Political Contributor Search

Search every itemized federal campaign contribution by a person’s name or by the company they work for. Results carry a street address, employer, occupation, amount and date, straight from the federal file.

Last name on its own casts the widest net. Add a first name to narrow it, and a city or state to narrow it further.
Leave all unticked to search every cycle at once.

State-level data

This searches the federal file. SkipLook searches the states too.

Federal filings only capture contributions to federal campaigns. A great deal of money moves through state and local races that never appears here. SkipLook runs a state-by-state political contributor search across those additional databases, plus people-search returns with extended detail — on the $25 and $50 plans.

See SkipLook plans

Why an investigator uses this

A campaign or committee has to itemize a donor once that donor passes $200 with them in an election cycle, and the itemization isn’t a name and a dollar figure. It’s a name, a residential address, a city, a state, a ZIP, an employer, an occupation, an amount and a date — supplied by the donor, filed under penalty of perjury, and published.

Do not stop at $200. Most online political giving now passes through a conduit — ActBlue on the left, WinRed on the right — and conduits report every single contribution they process regardless of size, with the full name and address attached. A $10 donation made through either one is in this file. In practice the $200 floor barely applies to anyone who gave online, and searching a person you assume is too small to appear is one of the more reliable ways to get a current address for free.

That makes it one of the few genuinely free sources of a current home address attached to a named individual. Not a mailing address, not a business address. Where they live.

It’s also self-updating in a way most public records aren’t. A person who gives every cycle leaves a dated trail of addresses, which is an address history you didn’t have to buy. And when the employer field changes between two contributions, you’ve just found a job change with a date on it.

Searching by business

The employer search is the part most people never try. Every donor types their own employer into the form, so searching a company name returns the people who work there — by name, with addresses. For a business you’re looking into, that’s a roster you can build in about thirty seconds.

It runs both directions. Find your subject, note the employer exactly as they typed it, then search that employer and you have their coworkers. Associates are often the fastest route back to a person who has gone quiet.

The catch: the employer field is free text. The same company shows up as ACME, ACME INC, ACME CONSTRUCTION, and ACME CONSTRUCTION LLC, and each is a different search. Use the shortest distinctive part of the name. Also expect a great deal of SELF, SELF-EMPLOYED, NONE, RETIRED and N/A — those are real entries and they’re worth searching on their own if you’re working a specific town.

What it will not show you

  • A small contribution given directly to a campaign that never crossed $200 with that committee. Note the word directly — if it went through ActBlue or WinRed it’s here no matter how small.
  • Cash, and anything given anonymously.
  • State and local races. This is the federal file only.
  • Dark money. Contributions routed through organizations that don’t disclose donors.
  • Anyone who has never given. Most people haven’t.

Related

Data comes from the Federal Election Commission’s public API. This site stores nothing and sends nothing anywhere except the FEC.