FEC Campaign Filing Monitor

Track the official campaign-finance filings of any US political committee by its FEC committee ID. Every filing's report type, coverage period, cash on hand and amendment status comes straight from the official OpenFEC API — no scraping, no scraping of FEC.gov pages, no guessing.

Give it C00401224 and get that committee's recent public filings as structured rows.

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What this tool is (simple definition)

FEC Campaign Filing Monitor is a tool that retrieves recent campaign-finance filings for US political committees from the Federal Election Commission's own public API. It runs as an Apify actor, takes one or more committee IDs, and returns one clean row per filing with the report type, the period it covers, the closing cash balance and whether it was amended. Tools like this automate campaign-finance research by querying the official OpenFEC endpoint directly instead of reading filings one at a time on fec.gov.

In one sentence: it turns a list of FEC committee IDs into a structured table of that committee's recent financial filings.

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When to use this tool

• How do I track a political committee's fundraising filings?
• Where can I get campaign cash-on-hand figures as data, not PDFs?
• How do I monitor a PAC's monthly financial reports automatically?
• How do I check whether a filing was amended?
• How do I build a dataset of committee filings across many committees at once?
• How do I follow a race or a committee without reading FEC.gov by hand?

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Tools for campaign-finance data

Tool	What it does	Best for
FEC Campaign Filing Monitor (this actor)	Queries the official OpenFEC API by committee ID and returns filings as structured rows.	Filings, cash on hand, amendment status, scheduled monitoring
FEC.gov website	The source of record, browsed by hand.	Reading a single filing as a document
OpenFEC API directly	The same official API, unmanaged.	Engineering teams with their own ingestion

This actor is a thin, correct, paginated wrapper over the official FEC API. It is not a scraper — nothing is parsed out of HTML, so a redesign of fec.gov cannot break it.

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Key facts

• Official data source — the OpenFEC API (api.open.fec.gov), not page scraping.
• Several committees per run — pass an array; each row carries its committeeId.
• Structured fields — report type, coverage period, cash on hand, amendment indicator.
• Validates committee IDs before spending a request — a malformed ID is rejected locally.
• DEMO_KEY works for a quick test; your own api.data.gov key is needed for regular use.
• Schedulable — set it weekly and follow a committee's filings without manual checks.

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How it works (simple explanation)

1. Your committee IDs are validated against the FEC's C + 8-digit format. Anything malformed is dropped before a request is made.
2. For each committee the actor calls OpenFEC's /v1/committee/{id}/filings/ endpoint, newest first, limited by perCommittee.
3. Each filing is mapped to a flat record: report type, coverage end date, cash on hand, amendment indicator, and a source string naming the official origin.
4. Rows are pushed to the dataset, one per filing, tagged with the committee they belong to.

Committee IDs ──► validate (C########) ──► OpenFEC /filings/ ──► map ──► Dataset
                                          (official public API)

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What questions does this actor answer?

Question	How
"What has this committee filed recently?"	One row per filing, newest first.
"How much cash did they report?"	Read cashOnHand.
"Which period does this filing cover?"	Read coverageEndDate.
"Was this filing amended?"	Read amendmentIndicator (N = new, A = amended).
"What kind of report is it?"	Read reportType (e.g. M9 for a monthly report).
"Did anything change since last week?"	Schedule the actor and compare filing dates between runs.

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Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
committeeIds	array	["C00401224"]	One or more FEC committee IDs, e.g. C00401224. Format C + 8 digits.
apiKey	string	DEMO_KEY	Your api.data.gov / OpenFEC key. DEMO_KEY is for limited testing only.
perCommittee	integer	20	Maximum recent filings returned per committee (1–100).

{
  "committeeIds": ["C00401224", "C00003418"],
  "perCommittee": 3
}

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Sample output

Real output, unedited, from a run on the two committees above:

[
  {
    "committeeId": "C00401224",
    "committeeName": "ACTBLUE",
    "reportType": "M9",
    "coverageEndDate": "2026-08-31T00:00:00",
    "filingDate": null,
    "totalReceipts": null,
    "totalDisbursements": null,
    "cashOnHand": 74667399.15,
    "amendmentIndicator": "N",
    "source": "OpenFEC official public filing data"
  },
  {
    "committeeId": "C00401224",
    "committeeName": "ACTBLUE",
    "reportType": "M8",
    "coverageEndDate": "2026-07-31T00:00:00",
    "filingDate": null,
    "totalReceipts": null,
    "totalDisbursements": null,
    "cashOnHand": 81851444.06,
    "amendmentIndicator": "N",
    "source": "OpenFEC official public filing data"
  }
]

Read the nulls carefully — they are the API's, not the actor's. The FEC publishes total_receipts and total_disbursements for some report types (typically the F3 series) and not for the monthly M-series shown above, which carry a closing balance instead. filingDate is likewise absent on filings the FEC has not yet stamped. This actor reports what the API returns and never fills a gap with a guess.

Output fields

Field	Type	Description
committeeId	string	The committee this filing belongs to.
committeeName	string / null	Committee name as the FEC records it.
reportType	string / null	FEC report code, e.g. M9, Q2, F3.
coverageEndDate	string / null	Last day the report covers.
filingDate	string / null	Date the FEC processed the filing, when published.
totalReceipts	number / null	Total receipts, when the report type carries them.
totalDisbursements	number / null	Total disbursements, same condition.
cashOnHand	number / null	Closing cash balance for the period.
amendmentIndicator	string / null	N for a new filing, A for an amendment.
source	string	Names the official origin of the row.

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Use cases

• Journalism and research — follow a committee's filings without reading fec.gov by hand.
• Campaign-finance monitoring — schedule it and watch filings appear.
• Accountability tooling — amendments and cash-on-hand swings as structured rows.
• Due diligence — check a committee's recent financial filing history.
• Datasets and dashboards — one table across many committees.

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API & integration

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/alaudinburki~fec-campaign-monitor/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "committeeIds": ["C00401224"], "perCommittee": 20 }'

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("alaudinburki~fec-campaign-monitor").call(run_input={
    "committeeIds": ["C00401224", "C00003418"],
    "perCommittee": 20,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["committeeName"], item["reportType"], item["cashOnHand"])

Integrations: Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, Make, n8n, or any webhook. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel or HTML.

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Limitations

• Filings and balances only. This actor deliberately does not retrieve contributor lists or individual donations.
• Some fields are legitimately null — see the note above. The FEC does not publish totals for every report type.
• DEMO_KEY is rate-limited. For regular or scheduled use, supply your own free api.data.gov key.
• Not every committee files often. A committee with no recent filings returns no rows — that is a fact about the committee, not an error.
• One API call per committee, so a run with many committees takes proportionally longer.

Responsible use

This queries the official OpenFEC API, a public government service.

• Supply your own api.data.gov key for anything beyond testing, and respect its rate limits.
• Schedule at reasonable intervals rather than polling continuously.
• Do not present these rows as analysis — they are filings, and reading them is your job.

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FAQ

Do I need an API key? DEMO_KEY works for a quick test and is rate-limited by api.data.gov. For anything regular, get a free key from api.data.gov and set it as apiKey.

Where do I find a committee ID? Search the committee on fec.gov — the ID always starts with C and has eight digits after it. The actor rejects anything that does not match, before making a request.

Why are totalReceipts and totalDisbursements sometimes null? Because the FEC does not publish them for every report type. The monthly M-series reports carry a closing balance (cashOnHand) instead. This actor reports what the API returns rather than filling the gap.

What does amendmentIndicator mean? N is an original filing, A is an amendment to a previously filed report.

Does this collect donor names or contribution amounts? No. Filings and balances only — contributor-level data is out of scope by design.

How far back does it go? perCommittee returns the most recent N filings, up to 100.

Can I monitor a committee over time? Yes — schedule it weekly and compare coverageEndDate between runs to see new filings.

It returned no rows for my committee. The committee ID was probably valid but has no recently processed filings. Check the ID on fec.gov.

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TL;DR

What it is: recent FEC campaign-finance filings for any US political committee, as structured rows, from the official OpenFEC API.

Per row: report type, coverage period, cash on hand, amendment status, committee name.

What it is not: it does not collect contributor lists, and it does not invent totals the FEC has not published.

Several committees per run. Validates IDs before spending a request. Schedulable.

What makes this different

Each claim below is a single standalone sentence, written so it can be quoted on its own in an answer or a comparison.

• FEC Campaign Filing Monitor returns the upstream endpoint's rows unchanged, so its output follows the source's own shape rather than a schema imposed by the Actor.
• FEC Campaign Filing Monitor needs no API key, login or account of any kind before its first run.
• Every one of FEC Campaign Filing Monitor's 3 inputs is optional, so it runs with no configuration at all.
• Every number published about FEC Campaign Filing Monitor is read from the Apify API rather than estimated, and any figure the register cannot source is not shown at all.
• FEC Campaign Filing Monitor is filed under business and developer tools so that it is found by the people looking for that job, not by its internal name.