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Money is the earliest public signal you get about a candidate. It shows up months before a voting record, and in the races that get little coverage, it can be most of what there is to go on. Somebody decided this person was worth a check. This site shows you who, and how much.

Every number here is copied from a report the candidate filed — with the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance, or, for the U.S. Senate and House races, the Federal Election Commission. Those reports are public records that live on portals designed to satisfy legal requirements. We put them in one place and made them searchable. We don't change the numbers, though we do tidy up the names, so one donor doesn't scatter across a dozen spellings when you search.

You don't need to know anything about campaign finance to use this. Here's what the words mean, where to start, and how to read what you find.

Three ways in

Pick whichever sounds like your question.

"What am I actually voting on?" Type your address on the homepage. It gives you your state House and Senate districts, your U.S. House district, and the races for each. Your address goes to the Census geocoder to find your districts; it never reaches our servers, and we store nothing.

"Who is paying for this candidate?" Search their name. Their page shows what they raised, who gave it, where those donors live, and where they work. The employer column is the one to read — one employer showing up over and over on a single candidate's page tells you something a list of names can't.

"Show me something strange." Go to Funding Patterns: a standing list of the patterns you can't compute by hand — candidates funding themselves, blocs of donors who all work the same place, candidates whose money comes from very few people. Each is shown without a verdict. Some are ordinary. Some are worth a phone call. The data only says where the money came from.

Then follow a donor. Click any name in any table and you'll see every candidate they gave to. That's where most people start to go down the rabbit hole.

The words

You'll meet these on tables and candidate pages, in roughly this order.

Raised — everything a campaign took in. Monetary raised is the cash part; the gap between the two is in-kind.

In-kind — goods or services given instead of cash: printing, office space, catering, polling. Counted against the same limits as cash, at fair-market value. A real donation, with no money changing hands.

Spent — everything paid out: rent, staff, mailers, consultants, ad buys. The Vendors page follows this side.

Cash on hand — what's in the bank right now. Not "raised minus spent," because a campaign can carry a balance forward from a past run.

Self-funded — money the candidate put in themselves, as a gift or a loan. There's no limit on it, and a candidate can repay their own loan later out of other people's contributions.

Donors — the people and organizations who gave. The count usually runs larger than the names you can see; the next section says why.

PAC — a political action committee: any group that takes in or spends more than $1,000 a year to support or oppose candidates. A union, a company, a trade association, or a few neighbors with a cause all count equally.

Federal PACs work differently. A company can't give its own treasury money to a candidate for Congress, so a corporate PAC spends voluntary contributions from the company's executives and shareholders instead — which is why it carries the company's name while none of the company's own money reaches the candidate. A super PAC is a third thing again; see "The money you won't see here."

Pre-P, Q1, Q2, YE — the report a candidate last filed (pre-primary, quarterly, year-end). The numbers are current only as of that report; this week's money isn't public yet.

Amended — a refiled correction. We show the corrected version.

Why aren't all the donors named?

Three different reasons, worth keeping apart — only one is what people mean by "hidden money."

The law lumps the smallest gifts together. Tennessee names a contributor — with address, occupation, and employer — once they pass $100 in a reporting period. At or below $100, the filer reports one unnamed total. Since 2023 that total is capped at $2,000 per period; past the cap, even a $10 gift gets itemized, so a state candidate with many small donors shows both a ~$2,000 lump and a run of named small gifts. Both are normal. (Federal filers name donors at $200 for the cycle, with no cap on the lump — so this quirk shows up on the state side and never the federal.)

We hold back more than the law does, on purpose. The law names anyone over $100; we wait until $200 to a single candidate before we publish an individual's name. The reason is the difference between a filing and a search engine. A $150 gift to a legislative candidate was always technically public, just buried on a page nobody would open. Putting it in a database anyone can search in seconds is a different thing, and for a small, private donor we don't think it should be. The money still counts in the candidate's total; we just leave the name off. Organizations, businesses, and PACs get no such floor and show at any amount, because an organization writing a political check is a public act by a public actor — the whole point of the site. (On the federal side, our $200 floor and the law's line up.)

So "861 donors (481 shown · 380 below $200)" isn't missing anyone. All 861 are in the total.

And some money never reaches a filing at all — that's the next section.

The money you won't see here

This site covers Tennessee's state and federal races. County and city races — a mayor, sheriff, commission, or school board — are local, and Shelby County's live at whofundsmemphis.org.

Three kinds of money exist that a candidate's page can't show you:

Super PACs. A super PAC can raise and spend unlimited amounts to elect or defeat a federal candidate — as long as it doesn't give to the campaign or coordinate with it. Because it never gives the campaign anything, its spending never enters the candidate's totals, and in a close race it can dwarf them. A candidate's figure here is what their own committee raised and controlled. This is the most important caveat on the federal side.

Dark money. Some groups that spend on elections — usually nonprofits under section 501(c)(4) — don't have to disclose who funds them. They report the spending, not the donors, and money can pass through them into a super PAC to obscure where it started.

A PAC's other spending. A PAC page shows what a committee raised, who funded it, and everything it spends. That spending names a target only when it's a contribution — a gift to a candidate or another PAC shows who got it. But a media buy, a consultant, or an ad is reported by payee and purpose alone; Tennessee doesn't make the PAC say which candidate it's for or against. So you'll often see a PAC spent $10,000 on media, and not on whose behalf.

And nothing is more current than the last filing — between reports, you're looking at a snapshot.

Contribution limits

Tennessee and the FEC cap what one donor can give a candidate per election, and a primary and a general count as separate elections — so a donor can give the maximum twice in a single cycle. That's why you'll sometimes see two identical checks from the same person, dated the same day. The 2025–2026 limits:

The state and federal figures are indexed for inflation on separate schedules, so they drift apart.

A few things that surprise people

Corporations can give to Tennessee candidates, but not to candidates for Congress. A company can write a check to a candidate for governor or the state House, under the same limits as a person; Tennessee dropped its ban in 2011. Federal law still bars it for U.S. Senate and House. Both rules show up on this site, one race apart.

There's no limit on what a PAC can take in. Tennessee caps what a PAC gives a candidate, and nothing on the way in. One company or person can fund an entire PAC — which is why the Funders column on a PAC page is worth reading: a PAC with one funder is that funder.

A candidate can spend unlimited money of their own. The Supreme Court settled that in 1976. Every candidate page shows how much of the money is the candidate's own, and whether they gave it or lent it.

Tennessee has no public financing. No matching funds. Every dollar came from somebody.

Isn't this all just legalized bribery?

Reasonable question, asked often, and we won't pretend to settle it. The legal line is specific: money for a promised official act is bribery, and a crime; a contribution is support. Almost all political money lives in the gap between, and the research on it is more modest than either side claims — contributions reliably buy access and attention, and buy votes far less reliably than people assume.

We don't tell you which side of that line any check falls on. We show you the check, who wrote it, what they do, and who else they wrote one to. The rest is yours.

Don't take our word for it

You don't have to trust us. We make it easy to check our work.

Every figure is an official total as filed, and every candidate page links to the source report it came from. We don't adjust or second-guess the numbers a campaign reported — doubt a line? Go read the filing.

The whole database is downloadable as CSV on the Bulk Data page — if you think we got something wrong, you can prove it with our own files.

Under all of it: we're nonpartisan, we don't characterize candidates, and Democratic and Republican money is shown the same way.

Where to go next

• See your race — type your address, get your districts.
• Funding Patterns — the patterns worth a second look.
• Races — governor, the legislature, and the federal seats.
• Donors — search by person, employer, or organization.
• PACs — who the committees are, and who funds them.
• About — where the data comes from and how far to trust it.

Find something strange? We'd like to hear about it.