FEC Itemized campaign finance records for each election cycle.
XXXX here replaces the second year in a cycle. So the 2013-2014 cycle will have files names with '2014'; such as 'cand2014')

The Federal Elections Commission itemized contributions and transactions database has been an invaluable tool for reporters wanting to "follow the money" in federal elections campaigns. 

Information from the Federal Elections Commission shows campaign contribution information for all candidates seeking federal office and all federal political action committees. The database contains four tables, which include information about candidates and committees as well as individual contributor information and campaign contributions by political action committees, or PACs.

The data contains the amount of each contribution given by the individuals and PACs. Some of the fields include the candidates name, party, address and district and the committees name and candidate ID number.

NICAR grabs the data from the FEC's FTP site, which doesn't contain all the information included in the disclosures. It does not, for example, include donor's addresses. 
A note about the data from the FEC's website: 
"Please note that complete entry from each reporting period takes about 30 days. It is important to be careful when making conclusions from these data because some information may not have completed the entry process when these files where create.(http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/ftpdet.shtml)

Included in this purchase are the following text files to be used as data tables. For each table, NICAR has included a record layout file with the table's partial name on it (commlay.xls is the record layout for the committee table, for example). The names of these tables will depend on the format you have chosen to download. See the layout files for details. 

commXXXX.csv/dbf (fec_itemized_comm_XXXX in MySQL): List of all FEC licensed campaign committees for the election cycle. This table can be used as a reference when using the tables describing money changing hands. From the FEC Web site: "The committee master file contains one record for each committee registered with the Federal Election Commission. This includes federal political action committees and party committees, campaign committees for presidential, house and senate candidates, as well as groups or organizations who are spending money for or against candidates for federal office. The file contains basic information about the committees. The ID number the Commission assigned to the committee is first, along with the name of the committee, the sponsor, where appropriate, the treasurer's name and the committee's address. The file also includes information about what type of committee is being described, along with the candidate's ID number if it is a campaign committee." Contains 14,699 records.


candXXXX.csv/dbf (fec_itemized_cand_XXXX): Master list of candidates for the election cycle, providing information on the candidate, his or her campaign office, political party and office sought. In addition, the candidate's principle committee ID is listed with this record. From the FEC Web site: "The candidate master file contains one record for each candidate who has either registered with the Federal Election Commission or appeared on a ballot list prepared by a state elections office. The file contains basic information about the candidate, including name, party, whether the candidate is an incumbent, challenger, or involved in an open seat, address, state and district in which the candidate is running and the year of the election for which the candidate is registered. (Note that incumbent/challenger status is dynamic in the current election cycle and there may be delays in identifying districts that will involve open seats. The file also includes the ID number assigned to the candidate by the FEC which is used in tracking campaign finance information about the campaign, as well as the ID number of the candidate's principal campaign committee." Contains 5,506 records.

indivXXXX.csv/dbf (fec_itemized_indiv_XXXX in MySQL): Each contribution from an individual to a campaign committee, if the donation is more than $200. This is almost always the largest table in the dataset, and the filesize can be quite large. Contains 1,588,529 records.

pasXXXX.csv/dbf (fec_itemized_pas_XXXX in MySQL): The itemized committee contributions table contains each contribution from a committee to a candidate's campaign committee. From the FEC site: "You will need to use the committee master and candidate master files in conjunction with this file to set up a relational database to analyze these data". Contains 241,125 records.

othXXXX.csv/dbf (fec_itemized_oth_XXXX in MySQL): Miscellaneous transactions by committees. According to the FEC, it contains all the information in the pas table, plus transactions with committees that are not necessarily principle campaign committees for a candidate. Example include money transfers from state committees and PAC contributions to party committees. Contains 401,262 records.

cclXXXX.csv/dbf (fec_itemized_ccl_XXXX in MySQL): All links between candidates and committees that are registered with the FEC. Contains 6,204 records.

In addition to the aforementioned layout files in Excel format, (comm_lay.xls, indiv_lay.xls, etc), NICAR has included the raw FEC documentation for each table. There should be two files for each table, one being the data dictionary / record layout for the raw files before they were processed by NICAR (cn_dictionary.txt, cm_dictionary.txt, etc.) and files showing the "frequency counts", i.e. how often some of the different values appear in each table (cn14.txt, cm14.txt, etc.). Use these to decode some of the values in the type-oriented fields, like "contribution time" in the individual table.

MySQL users: To load the tables into your database, go to the command line, navigate to the folder with the fec.sql file in it  and type: "mysql -p -u [YOUR MySQL USERNAME] -D [YOUR DATABASE NAME] < fecXXXX.sql"

Further documentation -- and the raw files as they appear before NICAR processes them -- are here: http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/ftpdet.shtml