Follow The Money
| Follow the Money | |
 | |
| Basic facts | |
| Location: | Helena, Montana |
| Top official: | Edwin Bender, Executive Director |
| Website: | Official website |
Follow the Money was a project of the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which was a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization dedicated to "accurate, comprehensive and unbiased documentation and research on campaign finance at the state level." It described itself as "the nation's most complete resource for information on money in state politics."[1]
In 2021, the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money in State Politics merged to form OpenSecrets.[2]
Background
The National Institute on Money in State Politics was launched in 1999 as a merger of three groups. According to Follow The Money's website, the project's mission was to support "an accountable democracy by compiling comprehensive campaign-donor, lobbyist, and other information from government disclosure agencies nationwide and making it freely available at FollowTheMoney.org."[1]
In 2021, the Center for Responsive Politics and the Institute merged to form OpenSecrets.[2]
Leadership
At the time of the merger, Edwin Bender was the executive director of the organization.[3]
Work and activities
Research on spending
According to their website, Follow The Money maintained "a 50-state federal/state database of contributions documenting $100+ billion, plus more than 2 million state lobbyist-client relationships that are registered annually. Recent expansions include selected local-level data, collecting independent spending reports for federal campaigns and in 31 states, and lobbying spending in 20 states."[1]
Follow The Money provided significant amounts of information about donors to state ballot measures, with a section of its website focused on the subject.[4] The Follow The Money website breaks ballot initiatives down into 34 areas by topic.
Finances
The following is a breakdown of the National Institute on Money in State Politics' revenues and expenses from 2014 to 2020. The information comes from their website.
| Year | Revenue | Expenses |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | $980,091 | $1.7 million |
| 2014 | $3 million | $1.7 million |
| 2015 | $2.1 million | $2.2 million |
| 2016 | $2.5 million | $2.3 million |
| 2017 | $1.6 million | $1.9 million |
| 2018 | $1.5 million | $1.7 million |
| 2019 | $1.2 million | $1.8 million |
| 2020 | $1.8 million | $1.9 million |
See also
External links
Footnotes
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