About DonorTrail

When someone gives money to a federal candidate, party, or political committee, the law requires that gift to be disclosed. Those disclosures are public — but they live in government databases and bulk files built for compliance, not for the people the money is meant to represent. DonorTrail takes the same public records and makes them searchable, readable, and traceable: who gave, to whom, how much, and when.

What we do

We collect the Federal Election Commission’s published record of itemized contributions. We resolve each donor — who appears under many spellings across many filings — into a single profile. We connect the money from donor to committee to candidate. And we link every figure back to the original FEC filing, so you can check the source yourself.

What we don’t do

We don’t add interpretation to the numbers. A contribution on DonorTrail says exactly what the public filing says — nothing more. We don’t score people, rank their politics, or draw conclusions about why anyone gave. The record speaks for itself.

Everything here is already public

DonorTrail doesn’t reveal anything the FEC hasn’t already disclosed; it makes existing public records easier to find and understand. Federal law prohibits using contributor names and addresses for commercial purposes or to solicit contributions or donations. DonorTrail exists to inform the public, not to sell or solicit — and we ask that you use it the same way.

Corrections

If a donor profile looks wrong — two different people merged into one, or a contribution attributed to the wrong person — tell us at corrections@donortrail.com. The underlying records belong to the FEC; where the source filing itself is wrong, the FEC is the place to correct it.