About | Who Funds Tennessee

Our mission

Who Funds Tennessee is an independent, nonpartisan civic data project. We have no affiliation with any candidate, party, or political organization. Our only goal is transparency.

Campaign finance reports for Tennessee state offices are public records, filed with the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance. The official portal holds the data, but it’s hard to browse, compare across races, or follow a single donor through the system. We built this site to change that — turning those official filings into a searchable database anyone can use.

Whether you’re a voter researching candidates before the August 6, 2026 primary, a journalist investigating political money, a researcher studying Tennessee politics, or a civic organization tracking accountability, this data belongs to you. We just made it easier to find.

Looking for a county or city race — a mayor, sheriff, county commission, or school board? Those are local offices and aren’t on this site. Shelby County races live at whofundsmemphis.org. Federal races are covered here from Federal Election Commission filings.

Who Funds Tennessee is built and maintained independently. The underlying database is built entirely from public records filed with the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance.

The site covers the 2026 Tennessee election — the race for governor, all 99 state House seats, and the state Senate seats on the ballot this cycle — plus Tennessee's 2026 U.S. Senate seat and all nine U.S. House districts.

What the numbers mean

Total raised / Monetary raised: Cash contributions from donors, plus self-contributions and loans from the candidate. When a candidate also received in-kind support, the candidate page splits this into Monetary Raised (cash) and In-Kind Received (goods or services donated at fair market value) so the two aren't conflated. Leaderboards and race comparisons use the pooled total of both.
In-kind contributions: Goods or services donated to a campaign instead of cash — for example, a printer providing signs at no charge, or a consultant donating their time. Filers report an estimated fair-market value. In-kind donors appear in the contributions table with an In-Kind badge.
Total spent: Sum of all expenditures reported by the campaign for the period, minus any refunds.
Cash on hand: The ending cash balance reported on the campaign's most recent disclosure, taken directly from the filing.
Self-funded: Money a candidate put into their own campaign, either as direct contributions or personal loans. Shown separately on candidate pages when present.
Donors: Count of unique donors disclosed by name (see the threshold below). One donor who gives to a candidate multiple times is counted once.

Where the data comes from

Every figure on this site is an official total as filed with the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance. Candidates and political committees file periodic disclosure reports under Tennessee law, and the Registry publishes each report as a structured spreadsheet.

We load those official spreadsheets directly. Because the totals come from the Registry's own structured exports — not scanned or handwritten paper — there's no character recognition and no parsing-accuracy step: the numbers you see are the numbers in the official filing. Each candidate page links back to the source report so you can check it yourself.

We don't adjust, correct, or second-guess the figures a campaign reported. If a filing contains an error, that error is the filer's to amend with the Registry; we reflect the official record as filed and update when amended reports are published.

Federal races — FEC filings

The U.S. Senate and U.S. House races come from a different official source: candidates’ electronic filings with the Federal Election Commission (quarterly reports plus FEC bulk data). Each federal filing row links to the exact FEC document. We verify per committee that we hold the FEC’s complete itemized record — both individual and PAC receipts — against the committee’s own summary lines. A candidate’s headline total is the committee’s total reported receipts, so transfers from joint-fundraising and party committees are counted even though they aren’t broken out donor-by-donor in the tables.

What federal coverage does not include: independent expenditures by outside groups and super PACs. Those organizations spend money about candidates without giving it to them, file separately, and can out-spend the campaigns themselves in competitive federal races. Every federal page carries this disclosure. Federal donor names appear in candidate contribution tables but do not (yet) have donor profile pages or appear on the donor leaderboard, which remains state-races-only.

Privacy & donor display threshold

We display individual donor names at or above $200 per candidate, following the common federal disclosure standard. Smaller individual contributions are counted in a candidate's total, but the donor is not named individually on this site.

Organizations, businesses, and PACs have no threshold. Every contribution from an organization is shown by name, at any amount. The floor exists to protect private individuals making small gifts, not the organizations whose spending this site exists to expose.

How the threshold works on donor pages

The threshold is applied per candidate. A donor profile shows their giving to each candidate they crossed $200 for (and, for organizations, every candidate). Smaller gifts to other candidates are not shown — a donor page and each candidate page display the same contributions. A person who gave smaller amounts to several different candidates will not appear even if their combined total exceeds $200, matching how disclosure works at the candidate level.

Not every named donor gets their own profile page: a donor gets a page when they gave to two or more campaigns or PACs, or gave $1,000 or more. A smaller donor with a single recipient still appears in the donor list, which links directly to that recipient.

Public records stay public. When a donor's name appears in a publicly filed disclosure, it is displayed here permanently. Campaign finance records are public records; there is no mechanism for a past contribution to be erased from the public record.

Known limitations

Donor totals are limited to this site's jurisdiction. A donor's giving in Shelby County on Who Funds Memphis is not included in the totals shown here.
Coverage is state and federal offices. The governor's race, all 99 state House districts, and the state Senate seats up in 2026, plus Tennessee's U.S. Senate and U.S. House races. County, municipal, and judicial races are out of scope.
Donor deduplication is ongoing. We use fuzzy name matching and review to merge records for the same person across different candidates' filings (e.g., "Robert Smith" vs. "Bob Smith"). Duplicates likely remain — particularly for common names or donors whose information varies across filings.
Committees (PACs) are ranked under PACs, not on the donor leaderboard. A PAC both files reports and gives to others, so we show each committee once — on its own PAC page. A committee's contributions to candidates still link through to that page. One caveat: if a committee also appears under a slightly different, not-yet-merged name, that unmerged variant can still show up as a donor until deduplication links the two.
Data is refreshed as new reports are published. We pull new and amended filings from the Registry on a regular schedule; figures update as the official record changes.
Totals are as filed. We present the official totals each campaign reported. We do not independently audit a campaign's math; an amended filing supersedes an earlier one once the Registry posts it.
Names, addresses, and employers come from the filings. Spelling, abbreviations, and formatting vary from one report to the next, which can affect search results and employer-based analysis. As of the latest data refresh, 98% of contributions from individuals name an employer or occupation (80% of individual contributions over $1,000). Employer and occupation apply only to individuals; 40% of contributions over $1,000 come from organizations and PACs, which have neither.

Data accuracy & legal

We work to present the official record faithfully, but this site is not an official government resource. If something looks off, check it against the source filing linked on each candidate's page, or contact the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance for the official records.

The processed data on this site is free to use with attribution. If you use our data in reporting, research, or other projects, please credit Who Funds Tennessee and link back to whofundstn.org. Bulk CSV downloads are available on the bulk data page.

Who's behind this

Mavrick Fitzgerald

I'm an urban planner from Memphis. I built Who Funds Tennessee because the state's campaign-finance records are public but clunky to use, and following the money is one of the most basic ways to see who has a say in our politics. I run it independently, on my own time: no campaign, party, or donor funds it or has any say in what it shows.

Get in touch

Found a data error? Have a question about how we load filings? Want to use our data for a story or research project? We'd like to hear from you: tips@whofundstn.org

If you're reporting a data issue, please include as much detail as you can — the candidate name, what looks wrong, and where you noticed it. Each candidate page links to the official source report if you want to compare.