Our Impact: Making Disclosure the Norm, Political Spending

The Center for Political Accountability in Washington DC is the only group successfully reshaping how American corporations engage in political spending in order to influence our election process. Our uniquely collaborative approach achieves significant and measurable results regardless of who controls Congress, the regulatory agencies, or the White House. In fact, today, companies that have weak or non-existent disclosure and accountability policies are now seen as outliers.

As a result of CPA’s leadership and efforts:

Three-fifths of the S&P 500 are disclosing some or all of their political spending with corporate money.
Close to 200 large companies — including more than half of companies in the influential S&P 100 — have struck political disclosure agreements with CPA and/or its shareholder partners.
Companies have disclosed more than $670 million in previously secret payments to trade associations.
One third of the S&P 500 companies are disclosing and/or restricting their dark money payments to trade associations and 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups.
Corporate political disclosure and accountability has become the norm as the result of CPA’s efforts, according to a 2017 law review article. Companies with no or weak political disclosure and accountability policies are now seen as outliers.
The annual CPA-Zicklin Index, the first comprehensive benchmarking of large public companies for disclosure and accountability, shows that disclosure is becoming a mainstream corporate practice.
You can learn about best practices for managing and overseeing company political spending in The Conference Board’s Handbook on Corporate Political Activity, which featured CPA as the lead author.
You can read the Harvard Business Review’s A Board Member’s Guide to Corporate Political Spending, which includes a checklist of effective steps and guidelines for directors in reviewing political spending, co-authored by CPA.
The CPA-Zicklin Model Code of Conduct for Corporate Political Spending provides a framework for companies to govern and assess the impact of and risk from their political spending, should they choose to do so, and policies for managing and overseeing it.