Campaign Contributions by Non‐profit Executives and Government Grants

Abstract

United States election candidates seek monetary support for their campaigns and many individuals oblige. Non‐profit organizations are limited in their political spending, but their executives, in a personal capacity, are not. This paper investigates whether individual campaign contributions are a political workaround for non‐profits. I pair non‐profit tax filings and Federal Election Commission records to form the first large‐scale panel linking non‐profit executive contributions and non‐profit financials. My analysis covers the 1998, 2000 and 2002 elections for 29,682 non‐profit organizations. I estimate a series of models and find an economically significant, robust and positive relationship.