The
Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) is a
nonpartisanIn political science, nonpartisan denotes an election, event or organization in which the participants do not declare or do not formally have a political party affiliation....
research group based in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790...
, that tracks money in politics, and the effect of money and lobbying activity on elections and public policy.
Founded in 1983, the nonprofit Center aims to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more responsive government.
The
Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) is a
nonpartisanIn political science, nonpartisan denotes an election, event or organization in which the participants do not declare or do not formally have a political party affiliation....
research group based in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790...
, that tracks money in politics, and the effect of money and lobbying activity on elections and public policy.
Founded in 1983, the nonprofit Center aims to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more responsive government. Support for CRP comes from a combination of foundation grants and individual contributions. Major donors to CRP include the
Sunlight FoundationThe Sunlight Foundation is a 501 educational organization founded in January 2006 with the goal of increasing transparency in the United States Congress....
, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the
Carnegie Corporation of New YorkCarnegie Corporation of New York, which was established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 "to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding," is one of the oldest, largest and most influential of American foundations...
, the
Joyce FoundationThe Joyce Foundation is a charitable foundation based in Chicago in the United States and operating principally in the Great Lakes region.The Foundation primarily funds organizations in the Great Lakes region .- Programs :* Education: Focuses on public schools in Chicago, Cleveland, and Milwaukee;...
, and the
Ford FoundationThe Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....
. CRP accepts no contributions from businesses, trade associations, or labor unions. According to the organization's 990 form, in 2007, it had just over $1 million in revenue and net assets of $1.6 million.
CRP’s website OpenSecrets.org has won four
Webby AwardsThe Webby Awards is an international paid-entry-exclusive award honoring excellence on the Internet, including websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile web sites, presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences since 1996...
(2001, 2002, 2006, 2007) for being the best politics site online. This site is the online incarnation of a project the Center launched on paper in the 1980s. OpenSecrets.org provides freely available databases to track federal campaign contributions and lobbying in a variety of ways, such as by industry and interest group. Other popular resources include the personal financial disclosures of every member of Congress, the president and top members of the administration. Users can also search their own ZIP codes to learn how their neighbors are allocating their political contributions.
Sheila Krumholz has been the Center's executive director since
December 2006, having served for eight years as CRP’s Research Director. She first joined the CRP staff in 1989 and was assistant editor of the very first edition of the printed volume of Open Secrets.
Information Technology Director Susi Alger and current Research Director Jihan Andoni have both worked for the Center since 1999. Communications Director Dave Levinthal, who serves as the Center's spokesman and edits the
Capital Eye Blog, joined in 2009 after working for seven years as a political reporter at
The Dallas Morning News.
Krumholz and Levinthal regularly appear as commentators and analysts on national news networks and programs, including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Company. Hundreds of newspapers and magazines, including the
New York Times,
Wall Street Journal,
Washington Post and
USA Today, have also cited CRP data and quoted its directors. On October 30, 2007, the Center's former communications director, Massie Ritsch, was featured on the Colbert Report.
External links