# FEC Campaign Finance Scraper (`foo121/fec-campaign-finance-scraper`) Actor

Export US federal campaign-finance contributions (individual donations) by state, committee, employer, occupation, cycle and amount from the official OpenFEC API.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/foo121/fec-campaign-finance-scraper.md
- **Developed by:** [ziv shay](https://apify.com/foo121) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Lead generation, Business
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$4.00 / 1,000 result items

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## FEC Campaign Finance Scraper

**FEC campaign finance data and campaign donations scraper — pull political donor data from the official OpenFEC API, sorted biggest-donors-first, with donor, employer, and occupation filtering.**

Built for journalists, opposition researchers, compliance teams, and political data teams who need structured individual-contribution records without hand-querying fec.gov page by page. The actor reads the **official OpenFEC API** (37M+ individual-contribution records) and returns results sorted by amount descending, so the largest donors surface first.

**Bring your own free key.** OpenFEC works with the built-in `DEMO_KEY`, but it's heavily rate-limited and redacts some date fields. Grab a free key at api.data.gov (takes a minute) and pass it as `apiKey` for full speed and complete records.

### What you get

| Field | Description |
| --- | --- |
| `contributorName` | Name of the individual contributor |
| `amount` | Contribution amount in USD (number) |
| `date` | Date the contribution was received |
| `contributorState` | Contributor's state |
| `contributorCity` | Contributor's city |
| `contributorZip` | Contributor's ZIP code |
| `employer` | Contributor's reported employer |
| `occupation` | Contributor's reported occupation |
| `committeeName` | Receiving committee name |
| `committeeId` | FEC committee ID |
| `candidateName` | Associated candidate name |
| `candidateOffice` | Office sought (H/S/P) |
| `receiptType` | FEC receipt type code |
| `transactionId` | Unique transaction ID |
| `url` | Link to the record on fec.gov |

### Input

| Field | Type | Default | Description |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `apiKey` | string | — | Your free api.data.gov key (recommended; `DEMO_KEY` used if blank) |
| `cycle` | integer | `2024` | Two-year election cycle to query |
| `contributorState` | string | — | Filter by contributor state, e.g. `CA` |
| `committeeId` | string | — | Filter by FEC committee ID |
| `contributorName` | string | — | Filter by contributor name |
| `contributorEmployer` | string | — | Filter by reported employer |
| `minAmount` | number | — | Only return contributions at or above this amount |
| `maxItems` | integer | `1000` | Maximum number of records to return |

#### Example input

```json
{
  "apiKey": "YOUR_FREE_KEY",
  "cycle": 2024,
  "contributorState": "CA",
  "contributorEmployer": "Google",
  "minAmount": 1000,
  "maxItems": 500
}
```

### Example run output

```json
{
  "contributorName": "SMITH, JANE",
  "amount": 3300,
  "date": "2024-03-18",
  "contributorState": "CA",
  "contributorCity": "Mountain View",
  "contributorZip": "94043",
  "employer": "Google",
  "occupation": "Software Engineer",
  "committeeName": "EXAMPLE FOR CONGRESS",
  "committeeId": "C00123456",
  "candidateName": "DOE, JOHN",
  "candidateOffice": "H",
  "receiptType": "15",
  "transactionId": "SA11AI.123456",
  "url": "https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?transaction_id=SA11AI.123456"
}
```

### Use cases

- **Journalists** tracing who funds a candidate, sorted biggest-donors-first for fast lede-finding.
- **Opposition researchers** filtering political donor data by employer, occupation, and state.
- **Compliance teams** auditing contributions tied to a specific committee or cycle.
- **Political data teams** ingesting structured FEC campaign finance data into models instead of scraping fec.gov by hand.

### Pricing

Pay per result — billed only for the contribution records returned, no subscription.

### Keywords

FEC campaign finance data, campaign donations scraper, political donor data, OpenFEC API scraper, individual contributions data, political contributions scraper, donor employer occupation data, fec.gov scraper

# Actor input Schema

## `apiKey` (type: `string`):

Your free OpenFEC API key from https://api.open.fec.gov/developers/. Leave empty to use the shared DEMO\_KEY (heavily rate-limited; get your own free key for real runs).

## `cycle` (type: `integer`):

Even-numbered election cycle year, e.g. 2024 covers 2023-2024 contributions. Required by the OpenFEC contributions endpoint.

## `contributorState` (type: `string`):

Optional two-letter US state of the donor (e.g. CA, TX, NY).

## `committeeId` (type: `string`):

Optional FEC committee ID receiving the contributions (e.g. C00401224). Find IDs at fec.gov.

## `contributorName` (type: `string`):

Optional donor name search (e.g. SMITH).

## `contributorEmployer` (type: `string`):

Optional donor employer filter (e.g. GOOGLE).

## `minAmount` (type: `integer`):

Optional minimum contribution amount in USD.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Maximum number of contribution records to output.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "cycle": 2024,
  "maxItems": 1000
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("foo121/fec-campaign-finance-scraper").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("foo121/fec-campaign-finance-scraper").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print("💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/" + run["defaultDatasetId"])
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{}' |
apify call foo121/fec-campaign-finance-scraper --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=foo121/fec-campaign-finance-scraper",
                "--header",
                "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>"
            ]
        }
    }
}

```

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/0yeDZLjLXqMy87eTi/builds/pq9S9KC47Q0Nq5Lyy/openapi.json