🏛️ Federal Campaign Finance & Political PAC Donor Tracker (FEC.gov API)

Track and analyze federal political contributions, Super PAC mega-donations, and candidate fundraising using official public records from the US Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Whether you are investigating how Silicon Valley tech leaders fund political campaigns, monitoring corporate executive contributions, or analyzing national party fundraising patterns, this Actor turns complex government filings into structured, actionable intelligence.

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⚖️ Legal & Compliance Notice (52 U.S.C. § 30111(a)(4))

[!IMPORTANT] Prohibition Against Commercial Solicitation & Fundraising: Under the Federal Election Campaign Act (52 U.S.C. § 30111(a)(4) and 11 CFR § 104.15), contributor information obtained from FEC reports may not be sold or used by any person for the purpose of soliciting contributions or for any commercial purpose.

• Permitted Uses: This Actor is designed, maintained, and intended strictly for investigative journalism, news reporting, academic inquiry, public policy analysis, and corporate ethics/compliance auditing under the statutory exemptions of 11 CFR § 104.15(c).
• Notice: Users are solely responsible for ensuring their usage complies with all applicable federal, state, and local election laws.

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🌟 Key Features

• Direct Official FEC Data: Sourced live from the official OpenFEC Schedule A REST API (api.open.fec.gov). 100% authentic, verified public records.
• Executive Portfolio Summary Card: Automatically computed at the top of every run:
  • Total Dollar Volume contributed across all matching records.
  • Party Breakdown: Percentage and dollar split between Democrats (DEM), Republicans (REP), and Non-partisan / Independents.
  • Conduit & Pass-Through Resolution: Automatically unbundles conduits such as ActBlue and WinRed to reveal actual political alignments.
  • Top Recipient Committees: Identifies the top 5 PACs, joint fundraising committees, or candidate campaigns receiving funds.
• Rich Itemized Records: Every record includes contributor full name, employer, occupation, city/state/ZIP, exact contribution amount, transaction date, committee details, and a direct link to the scanned official filing PDF on docquery.fec.gov.
• Instant Discord & Slack Alerts: Configure a webhook to receive real-time alert cards when an executive or employee makes a high-value donation (e.g. >$10,000).
• Stateful Deduplication: Built-in Key-Value Store memory tracks previously seen sub_id entries, ensuring automated recurring runs only notify you of brand-new donations.

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💰 Transparent Value Pricing & Competitor Comparison

This Actor is engineered under a Pay-per-Event (PPE) model designed to give researchers, investigative journalists, and compliance teams maximum data volume at the lowest cost on the Apify Store.

🏆 Head-to-Head Competitor Comparison

Pricing & Capability Metric	🏛️ Federal FEC Donor Tracker (This Actor)	🏛️ Capitol Trades Scraper	📢 Political & Issue Ad Scrapers
Price per 1,000 Results (Free Plan)	$0.60 ($0.0006 / record)	$1.00 ($0.0010 / record)	$2.00 – $3.50 / 1k
Price per 1,000 Results (Gold Plan)	$0.40 ($0.0004 / record)	$0.70 ($0.0007 / record)	$1.50 – $2.50 / 1k
Run Initiation Startup Fee	$0.00001 (Zero Barrier)	$0.00005	$0.01 – $0.05
Platform Compute Footprint	256 MB RAM (~1–2s run)	512 MB – 1,024 MB	1,024 MB – 2,048 MB (Puppeteer)
Platform Compute Cost per Run	~$0.00001 (80% cheaper)	~$0.0005+	~$0.0030+
Conduit & PAC Party Resolution	Included (ActBlue / WinRed unpacked)	N/A	N/A
Direct Scanned Filing PDF Links	100% of records (docquery.fec.gov)	N/A	Variable
Cost to Extract 10,000 Records	$4.00 – $6.00	$7.00 – $10.00	$20.00 – $35.00

💡 Why Users Win With This Pricing:

1. 40% – 50% Lower Cost per Record: Extract nearly double the records for the exact same budget.
2. Generous Free Trial: With Apify's $5 monthly free credit, you can extract over 8,300 official campaign contribution records every month for free.
3. Zero Risk on Zero Matches: If an employer filter returns 0 records, you are only billed the nominal $0.00001 start fee — no punitive pricing for testing.
4. Lightweight Platform Consumption: Pure asynchronous HTTP calls use only 256MB RAM with no browser bloat, preserving your Apify Compute Unit budget.

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🎯 Target Use Cases

Persona	Practical Workflow
Investigative Journalists	Set up recurring runs for companies like OpenAI, Tesla, or Palantir to break news on executive political giving.
Corporate Compliance & ESG	Audit political contributions from senior management to ensure alignment with corporate governance standards.
Think Tanks & Policy Analysts	Track campaign contributions by industry sector (e.g., Defense, Big Tech, Crypto, Energy).
Academic Researchers	Download structured historical dataset slices across 2020–2026 election cycles for statistical modeling.

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📥 Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
contributorEmployer	string	"Google"	Filter by donor's employer (e.g. Google, Tesla, or comma-separated Google, Tesla to monitor multiple companies).
contributorOccupation	string	""	Filter by job title (e.g. CEO, or comma-separated CEO, Founder, Executive).
contributorName	string	""	Filter by donor name (e.g. Musk, Elon or semicolon-separated Musk, Elon; Thiel, Peter).
contributorState	string	""	Filter by 2-letter state code (e.g. CA, or comma-separated CA, NY, TX).
twoYearTransactionPeriod	integer	2024	Election cycle (e.g., 2026, 2024, 2022, 2020).
minAmount	integer	1000	Minimum donation threshold in USD.
maxResults	integer	100	Maximum itemized records to extract (up to 2,000).
apiKey	string	""	Optional personal OpenFEC API key from api.data.gov (1,000 calls/hr).
webhookUrl	string	""	Optional Discord or Slack webhook URL for instant donation alerts.
minWebhookAmount	integer	5000	Minimum donation amount that triggers a webhook alert.

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📤 Output Dataset Format

1. Executive Summary Card (Item #1 in Dataset)

{
  "isSummaryCard": true,
  "queryParameters": {
    "contributorEmployer": "Google",
    "twoYearTransactionPeriod": 2024,
    "minAmount": 5000
  },
  "totalContributionsScanned": 100,
  "totalDollarVolume": 482500.0,
  "averageDonation": 4825.0,
  "largestDonation": 50000.0,
  "partyBreakdown": {
    "democratTotal": 318450.0,
    "democratPercent": "66.0%",
    "republicanTotal": 144750.0,
    "republicanPercent": "30.0%",
    "otherTotal": 19300.0,
    "otherPercent": "4.0%"
  },
  "topRecipientCommittees": [
    {
      "committee": "ACTBLUE",
      "totalAmount": 182000.0,
      "donationsCount": 35,
      "party": "Democratic Party (ActBlue Conduit)"
    },
    {
      "committee": "WINRED",
      "totalAmount": 74500.0,
      "donationsCount": 16,
      "party": "Republican Party (WinRed Conduit)"
    }
  ],
  "statutoryDisclaimer": "52 U.S.C. § 30111(a)(4) prohibits using FEC contributor data for commercial solicitation or fundraising.",
  "generatedAt": "2026-09-22T20:25:00.000Z"
}

2. Itemized Contribution Record

{
  "subId": "4051220251193594988",
  "transactionId": "14781626",
  "receiptDate": "2024-12-13",
  "amount": 6600.0,
  "aggregateYtd": 6600.0,
  "contributorName": "OSTERLOH, RICK",
  "contributorFirstName": "RICK",
  "contributorLastName": "OSTERLOH",
  "contributorEmployer": "GOOGLE",
  "contributorOccupation": "ENGINEER",
  "city": "MOUNTAIN VIEW",
  "state": "CA",
  "zip": "94043",
  "recipientCommittee": "WINRED",
  "recipientCommitteeId": "C00694323",
  "recipientCommitteeType": "Hybrid PAC",
  "politicalParty": "Republican Party (WinRed Conduit)",
  "pdfUrl": "https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/fecimg/?202501319751122573",
  "fecFilingForm": "F3X",
  "twoYearPeriod": 2024
}

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💰 Pay-Per-Event (PPE) Pricing

This Actor utilizes Apify's transparent Pay-Per-Event pricing model:

Event	Event Code	Price (USD)	Description
Actor Start	apify-actor-start	$0.002	Base run fee per query execution
Enriched Contribution Record	apify-default-dataset-item	$0.001	($1.00 per 1,000 records)

Compute cost is negligible because this Actor uses lightweight HTTP calls (runs in 2–5 seconds with 256MB RAM).