Researching Political Activities and Donations

A fast way to locate information about the political donations by corporate executives is to go to the Federal Election Commission's Web site at www.fec.gov. Under the Campaign Finance Reports and Data tab, use the Disclosure Database search features.

Two excellent private Web sites to find political donations at the state level are:

www.followthemoney.organd www.opensecrets.org.

Professional, albeit expensive, services like www.capitaliq.com from Standard & Poor's and www.boardex.com by Management Diagnostics Limited are phenomenal in their coverage of people and companies. Their analysts actually offer summarized data in their reports, much like investigators do, and biographies online.

Another service is Corporate Board Member magazine (www.boardmember.com). They maintain an extensive, proprietary database that can be used to not only search the information on the directors and officers, but also to illustrate relationships among directors and boards.

A great source for free searching is www.zoominfo.com. Keep in mind, though, that this information is being generated from other Web sites and needs to be verified.

Copyrighted excerpt from a new book, Business Background Investigations, by Cynthia Hetherington.