Writing:Campaign donors for Congress

Main article: Congress Project writing guidelines

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United States Congress News desk • Guidelines

This page is a content-and-style guide about how to fill in campaign donor sections for articles about Congress. This is for previous years' campaign fundraising summaries. Candidates' campaign finance reports should also be included; for instructions on how to add these FEC reports, go to Writing:Campaign finance reports.

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Every incumbent should have campaign donor information from the prior election, at minimum. Over time, we will want to expand that to include multiple years.

The best website for campaign donor information is Open Secrets. There are several bits of information to include in a campaign donor section.

• Overall sum of money raised for an election
• Overall sum of money spent for an election
• Overall sum of money raised by the opponent for an election
• Overall sum of money spent by the opponent for an election
• Top 5 donors by contributor
• Top 5 donors by industry

More notes

• The Congress Donor box is long and therefore, built to automatically collapse.
• The information can be found at Open Secrets website here
• Like with the election box, the template changes year to year. Such as:

{{Congress donor box 2006}} or {{Congress donor box 2004}}

Usage

Copy this code on the page

{{Congress donor box YEAR
|winner = 
|Chamber = 
|party = 
|total raised = 
|total spent =
|opponent raised = 
|opponent spent = 
|org1 = 
|org2 = 
|org3 = 
|org4 = 
|org5 = 
|orgdonor1 = 
|orgdonor2 = 
|orgdonor3 = 
|orgdonor4 = 
|orgdonor5 = 
|ind1 = 
|ind2 = 
|ind3 = 
|ind4 = 
|ind5 = 
|inddonor1 = 	
|inddonor2 = 
|inddonor3 = 
|inddonor4 = 
|inddonor5 = 
|}}

Explanation

Here is an explanation for each parameter.

{{Congress donor box YEAR
|winner = This designates whether the candidate won the election, Y for yes N for no.
|Chamber = This is the title of the box
|party = The party of the official
|total raised = Total amount of money raised by the candidate/official during that campaign period
|total spent = Total amount of money spent by the candidate/official during that campaign period
|opponent raised = Total amount of money raised by the major opposition during that campaign period
|opponent spent = Total amount of money spent by the major opposition during that campaign period
|org1 = Name of the organization that gave the most money
|org2 = Name of the organization that gave the second most money
|org3 = Name of the organization that gave the third most money
|org4 = Name of the organization that gave the fourth most money
|org5 = Name of the organization that gave the fifth most money
|orgdonor1 = Amount of money given by org1
|orgdonor2 = Amount of money given by org2
|orgdonor3 = Amount of money given by org3
|orgdonor4 = Amount of money given by org4
|orgdonor5 = Amount of money given by org5
|ind1 = Name of the industry that gave the most money
|ind2 = Name of the industry that gave the second most money
|ind3 = Name of the industry that gave the third most money
|ind4 = Name of the industry that gave the fourth most money
|ind5 = Name of the industry that gave the fifth most money
|inddonor1 = Amount of money given by ind1
|inddonor2 = Amount of money given by ind2
|inddonor3 = Amount of money given by ind3
|inddonor4 = Amount of money given by ind4
|inddonor5 = Amount of money given by ind5
|}}

Example

U.S. Senate, Massachusetts, 2008 - Writing:Campaign donors for Congress Campaign Contributions
Total Raised	$11,105,663
Total Spent	$17,016,823
Total Raised by General Election Opponent	$2,072,027
Total Spent by General Election Opponent	$2,005,358
Top contributors to Writing:Campaign donors for Congress's campaign committee
University of California	$634,225
Harvard University	$365,239
Goldman Sachs	$308,250
Time Warner	$301,624
Citigroup	$296,681
Top 5 industries that contributed to campaign committee
Lawyers/Law Firms	$385,356
Democratic/Liberal	$312,901
Securities & Investment	$243,900
Retired	$187,222
Real Estate	$176,030

See also

• Congress Project writing guidelines
• Overall congress project