contributions to/thru joint fundraising committees

[Kevin Connor]

Hi Susi & co,

First off, thanks for maintaining this incredible data set! 

I'm not sure I'm understanding how the data works when it comes to joint fundraising committees like Obama Victory -- my sense is that individual contributions to these committees may or may not appear twice, first as the contribution to the jfc, then as a second set of records, with transaction type 15j, showing how the contribution to the jfc is split up. For some donors, these contributions seem to add up almost exactly to the amount of the original contribution to the jfc; for others, they don't. 

A Benjamin Stiller, for instance, gave 25k to Obama victory, 5k of which ended up at Obama for America. Is there any way to figure out where the other 20k went? Can we say that Stiller gave $5k during the 2012 cycle to Obama, or did he give $25k? 

I'm not sure I'm understanding the 15j transaction type correctly, either. The only explanation I'm seeing from the FEC is "15J - Memo (Filer's Percentage of Contribution Given to Join Fundraising Committee)." How do you figure out which joint fundraising committee & contribution the filer is referring to? 

Any guidance would be helpful and much appreciated! Thanks again. 

Kevin

(LittleSis.org)

[Sarah Bryner]

Hi Kevin,
This is a good question.  For the type of contributions you're talking about, they will indeed appear "twice" -- once as a type 15 (the $25,000 to Obama Victory Fund) and then again as type 15J.  Each 15J transactions corresponds to a related type 15 transaction, but the type 15 will be larger than any of its related 15Js.  So, the $5,000 to Obama from Stiller would be one of several contributions disbursed through the Obama Victory Fund -- you'd probably also see a $20,000 contribution to the Democratic National Committee, for example, also coded 15J.

For the second part of the question, as in how you can tell which JFC the contribution came through, there isn't a way to do that in our indivs table.

Generally, when we are calculating totals for an organization or a person, we'll link the indivs table to the cmtes table and exclude contributions to groups that are Joint Fundraising Committees -- that way, we can see the smaller totals to candidates, which provides more information as to the ultimate recipient of the money.

Let us know if you have any more questions!

Sarah