New Filings Shed Light on Hundreds of Millions in Dark Money Spending

Open Secrets
Robert Maguire 

It's been more than a year since voters went to the polls, after months of constant, targeted and often negative TV ads and mailers in what would be the most expensive election ever.

There are still unanswered questions, though, about how a significant portion of that barrage was paid for, with some of the answers just starting to trickle in. 

Politically active nonprofits reported spending a record $336 million in 2012 -- not including many millions more they spent in the form of issue ads that weren't required to be reported to the Federal Election Commission. Dark money groups -- 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) groups that don't, and aren't required to, disclose their donors to the public -- accounted for the vast majority of the spending. 

 

Though their donors will likely never be made public, these groups do file critical financial information with the IRS that gives the public a sense of how the groups financed and coordinated their political activities in 2012 -- long after the fact. Last Friday, Nov. 15, many of the most prominent and well financed dark money groups active in 2012 submitted their annual 990 tax forms to the IRS.

The Center for Responsive Politics is collecting those as quickly as we can and reporting on newsworthy findings in OpenSecrets Blog. 

In addition, as the filings come in, we're manually inputting the data for display in our political nonprofits section. We play a unique role here, because even though the documents are public, the IRS does not provide them in a searchable database, nor does it process the information they contain and provide it in a machine-readable form.

The data we input in the coming weeks will add to the more than 16,000 records CRP has already entered, cataloging more than $400 million in grants to political nonprofits since 2008.

Visualized context

Using data that we've already input, we're also unveiling a new, dynamic visualization that shows how a large and growing amount of anonymous money has flowed through an expanding network of nonprofits and into elections around the country.  

The visualization -- produced with the help of designer and data journalist Anna Flagg -- can be found on the grants over time page of the political nonprofits section. Though this data was drawn from filings submitted to both the IRS and the FEC, it was largely created by CRP and does not exist anywhere else, including the agencies charged with overseeing the activities of politically active nonprofits.  

The visualization focuses on the top 10 most politicized nonprofits, tracking the churn of money into and out of each group as it moves from anonymous donors to its ultimate destination as spending reported to the FEC. (Keep in mind it does not yet include any of the 2012 data that has been coming in over the last week.)

The vertical bars in the middle represent different groups, some of which act only as donors while others wear multiple hats as donors, recipients and political spenders. The height of the bar represents the amount of money flowing into the group that ultimately would be spent on politics, either directly by the group or by the group's grant recipients.  

Users can click on any of the vertical bars, and then use the slider at the top to see the group's evolution as its receipts, grants and political spending fluctuate from election to election. The FEC and IRS data are matched up by the start date and end date of the donor group's IRS filings. The dates in the slider signify a date that will be found within the start date and end date of all of the filings represented below.  

This visualization is only the beginning. Along with adding in new 2012 data as it comes in, we'll also be posting new, complementary charts and links to the display to direct users to sections of the site with relevant information.  

Reporting the 2012 filings

OpenSecrets Blog has been reporting on the most interesting aspects of the new filings as they come in.  Over the next few weeks, we will update this post to link to our stories, and highlight reports elsewhere that use documents and data from CRP.  

Our recent Shadow Money Trail posts thus far:

• ATR's Tax Forms Raise Questions About Use of Crossroads Grant, "Social Welfare" Purpose: Americans for Tax Reform's IRS filing triggers questions about whether it kept its political spending under 50 percent, as tax rules require of social welfare nonprofits, and whether it spent most of a grant from Crossroads GPS on political activity.

• Americans for Prosperity Helped Churn Koch-Linked Money: In 2012, the Koch-linked Americans for Prosperity spent more than it had spent in the previous ten years combined. Tens of millions went for ads attacking President Obama, and some went back into the Koch network. 

• Priorities USA Relied on Handful of Donors: The dark money group founded by former Obama aides spent more than half of its money on grants to other politically active nonprofits, including one mysterious group run by very well-connected Democratic operatives. 

• Small Trade Associations Give Big to Crossroads GPS, Others: Crossroads GPS raised $180 million last year, including one donation of $22.5 million. But it was also pulling in some much smaller grants from construction industry and nursing home trade groups, OpenSecrets.org has learned.

• PhRMA, API Give Little to Dark Money Groups, Shun Liberal Ones: Top trade groups for the drug and oil industries didn't ante up big for dark money groups, but those that received grants were all conservative.

Elsewhere, stories have used documents obtained by CRP or expanded on reports by CRP. 

• The Daily Beast looked into the Chamber of Commerce and the League of Conservation Voters using filings obtained by CRP. 

• The Center for Public Integrity used 990s obtained by CRP as it looked into the American Energy Alliance's claim that the $1.3 million it spent on ads in the 2012 elections were not actually political. In another rundown of new filings, CPI also cited tax documents and data from CRP. 

• The Huffington Post cited CRP's grant data pertaining to the liberal Patriot Majority USA in a report about labor money given to the organization. In two other posts on Crossroads GPS, the Huffington Post cited our reports on Crossroads receipts from trade associations and its large grant to Americans for Tax Reform.