Political Nonprofits

Nonprofits with 527 status are organized primarily to "influence the selection, nomination, election, appointment or defeat of candidates to federal, state or local public office." In a post Citizen's United world where powerful interest groups seek new ways to assert political influence data on political nonprofits are more important than ever.

Political Action Committees are formed when nonprofits, those typically incorporated with 501c4 status (as opposed to 501c3 charities) apply for 527 status by completing Form 8871. POL-ORGS-FM-8871 and POL-ORGS-SCHED-D, POL-ORGS-SCHED-E, and POL-ORGS-SCHED-R all contain metadata and disclosures from the application process. They are static files describing organizations traits.

Once recognized they are required to continue filing IRS 990 forms like typical nonprofits, but they are also required to complete Form 8872 disclosures described in tables POL-ORGS-FM-8872, POL-ORGS-SCHED-A, and POL-ORGS-SCHED-B.

The IRS regularly releases data on PAC activities described in Forms 8871 and 8872. Unfortunately, data is released in complicated ASCII formats: data types are mixed by row and a small percentage of cases break the ASCII structure because of malformed data. To make this data available to the sector Jesse Lecy has written a parser to convert the raw files into well-structured tables.

Usage

# 2023-05-POL-ORGS-FM-8871.csv  >>  organization details
# 2023-05-POL-ORGS-SCHED-D.csv  >>  director and officer information
# 2023-05-POL-ORGS-SCHED-E.csv  >>  election authority IDs 
# 2023-05-POL-ORGS-SCHED-R.csv  >>  related entities records

# 2023-05-POL-ORGS-FM-8872.csv  >>  required annual disclosures 
# 2023-05-POL-ORGS-SCHED-A.csv  >>  individual donations
# 2023-05-POL-ORGS-SCHED-B.csv  >>  organizational donations 


###
###   DATA PREVIEW
###

library( dplyr )
library( kableExtra )

FILENAME <- "2023-05-POL-ORGS-FM-8871.csv"
BASE.URL <- "https://nccsdata.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/public/pac/"
d <- read.csv( paste0( BASE.URL, FILENAME ) )

keep <- c( )

k <- 
  d %>%
  select( ORGANIZATION_NAME, EIN, PURPOSE ) %>% 
  head() %>%  
  kable( format="html" ) %>%
  kable_material_dark()
ORGANIZATION_NAME EIN PURPOSE
Dan Swecker for Senate Campaign 912121950 Tax exempt political organization - Political campaign
FRIENDS OF TOM CALDERON 954857244 RAISE FUNDS TO ELECT CANDIDATE
ASGM PAC 61596525 POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE TO PROMOTE LEGISLATION FAVORABLE TO WORKERS COMPENSATION SAFETY GROUPS IN NEW YORK STATE.
Comm to Elect Judge Robert Ross to Supreme Court 113601603 Committe to Elect Judge Robert Ross to the Supreme Court of the State of New York
CAMPAIGN TO RE ELECT BOB MC CASLIN 912082049 SENATORIAL RE ELECTION CAMPAIGN
Rosanne Bader for Mt. SAC School Board 330963550 Promoting and fundraising for candidate for election to office


Background

For more information on 527 political organizations and other types of political activity in the nonprofit sector check out the following resources:
LINK Bolder Advocacy's useful taxonomy: Comparison of 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s, and Political 527 Organizations
LINK Post, M. A., Boris, E. T., & Stimmel, C. L. (2023). The advocacy universe: A methodology to identify politically active 501 (c)(4) organizations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 52(1), 260-274.
LINK Post, M. A., & Boris, E. T. (2022, December). Nonprofit Political Engagement: The Roles of 501 (c)(4) Social Welfare Organizations in Elections and Policymaking. In Nonprofit Policy Forum (Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 131-155). De Gruyter.
LINK Bolder Advocacy's excellent guide for nonprofits: The Connection: Strategies for Creating and Operating 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s, and Political Organizations
REPLICATION FILES Lecy, J. D., Ashley, S. R., & Santamarina, F. J. (2019). Do nonprofit missions vary by the political ideology of supporting communities? Some preliminary results. Public Performance & Management Review, 42(1), 115-141.




More Datasets

IRS 990 Efilers

The most comprehensive data source for 990 filers from 2012-2022.

990 efile governance schedules 990

Business Master File (BMF)

All active organizations that have been granted nonprofit status by the IRS.

BMF sample-framework metadata