Today, we at OpenSecrets.org are unveiling our newest tool to track the influence of organizations here in Washington: at-a-glance profiles that tie together the many different types of information the Center for Responsive Politics collects on any given organization, including campaign contributions, lobbying expenses and even how many members of Congress invest in a company. In the past, we’ve maintained all of this data, but unless an organization qualified as a “heavy hitter,” the various pieces of information were found in separate locations.

The new profiles, which can be found in the “ Organizations ” section under the “Influence & Lobbying” tab on our menu bar, cover over 20,000 organizations that we’ve identified, including corporations, labor unions and trade organizations. Profiles for individual organizations can also be found by searching for them through the main search tool.

Not only do the new organizational profiles collect all the relevant bits of information we offer to help you better understand an organization’s influence in Washington, they also include rankings so you can see just where a particular group falls on the spectrum. And they offer new analysis and angles on data that has always been on our site, but has never been mashed up in this way. For instance, not only does a profile show the basics of an organization’s lobbying activities (lobbying expenses and issues lobbied); it also, for the first time, displays which bill was the subject of the greatest amount of lobbying by the entity, and which lobbyists the organization employed that have spun through the revolving door. Previously, users would have had to go to a separate page for each of those pieces of information.

Google Inc.’s new organization profile , for instance, ties together the $9.7 million the company has spent on lobbying this year (which puts it seventh on the list of 3,874 organizations that we are tracking) with the $2.3 million that the company’s employees and PAC have given this election cycle (that’s 74th, out of 19,346 organizations that we’ve tracked).

And, as you can see above, the new profiles provide a much more convenient and easy-to-understand breakdown of where exactly those contributions came from and who they went to. In the case of Google, the company’s new profile shows that the tech giant’s PAC has made $568,500 in contributions this cycle, and has given slightly more to Republicans than Democrats. But the profile also shows that employees of the company have given more money than the PAC has, and these individual contributions go overwhelmingly to Democrats.

An example of the stark contrast that sometimes exists between the political interests of a company (demonstrated by PAC donations) and the interests of employees (demonstrated by their donations), which is being illustrated for the first time by these new profiles, can be seen in BP’s organizational profile . BP’s PAC has a strong preference for Republicans (not uncommon in the oil and gas industry), but its employees’ giving is almost evenly split between the two parties.

BP’s new profile also shows how the new presentation of data can help give users a quick snapshot of a company’s lobbying interests in a way that’s never been done before. According to the new profile, the piece of legislation that BP has most frequently lobbied was H.R. 1229 — Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back To Work Act . And, the profile shows, 30 of the 47 lobbyists the company has employed this year previously worked for the government.



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About The Author Russ joined the Center in March 2012 as the money-in-politics reporter. His duties include reporting for OpenSecrets Blog and assisting with press inquiries. Russ has a background in investigative journalism, having worked as a reporter for the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, and he spent five years as a newspaper reporter in New Hampshire. He has a degree in political science from Muhlenberg College and a M.A. in journalism and public affairs from American University. Follow Russ Choma

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