├── README.md ├── advanced-campaign-finance-search-raw-data.md ├── advanced-google-searches.md ├── apis-and-datasets.md ├── apis-newsroom-webinar.md ├── churnalism.md ├── collaborative-reporting-tools.md ├── congressional-money-race-webinar.md ├── data-visualizations-google-docs.md ├── docket-wrench-training.md ├── election-day-countdown-webinar.md ├── exploring-state-legislative-data.md ├── fixed-fortunes-webinar-inn.md ├── fixed-fortunes-webinar.md ├── follow-midterm-money-trail-real-time.md ├── follow-money-campaign-2014-and-beyond-webinar.md ├── follow-money-election-2012-return-investment-webin.md ├── follow-unlimited-money-webinar.md ├── images └── logo.png ├── installing-datajam.md ├── intro-docket-wrench-webinar.md ├── intro-open-states-webinar-archived.md ├── introducing-foreign-influence-explorer-database-fo.md ├── learning-about-datagov.md ├── lobbying-contribution-report.md ├── lobbying-registration-tracker.md ├── lobbying-report-form.md ├── mapping-campaign-finance-data.md ├── opencongress-webinar.md ├── pivot-tables.md ├── political-ad-information-your-finger-tip-webinar.md ├── political-ad-sleuth.md ├── political-fundraising-unveiled-webinar.md ├── scout-training.md ├── scout-webinar.md ├── state-pac-data-and-influence-tools.md ├── uncover-political-fundraisers-political-party-time.md ├── uncover-political-fundraising.md ├── uncovering-spending-behind-political-ads-webinar.md ├── unlocking-api.md └── using-influence-explorer-track-campaign-contributi.md /README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | ![](images/logo.png) 2 | 3 | # Sunlight Academy Content 4 | 5 | Welcome to Sunlight Academy, a collection of interactive tutorials for journalists, activists, researchers and students to learn about tools by the Sunlight Foundation and others to unlock government data. 6 | 7 | Be sure to create a profile to access our curriculum, track your progress, watch videos, complete training activities and get updates on new tutorials and tools. 8 | 9 | Whether you are an investigative journalist trying to get insight on a complex data set, an activist uncovering the hidden influence behind your issue, or a congressional staffer in need of mastering legislative data, Sunlight Academy guides you through how to make our tools work for you. Let’s get started! 10 | 11 | ## Modules 12 | 13 | [Pivot Tables](pivot-tables.md) 14 | 15 | [Advanced Google Searches](advanced-google-searches.md) 16 | 17 | [Follow the Money in Election 2012: Return on Investment (webinar)](follow-money-election-2012-return-investment-webin.md) 18 | 19 | [Scout](scout-training.md) 20 | 21 | [Learning about Data.gov ](learning-about-datagov.md) 22 | 23 | [Political Ad Sleuth](political-ad-sleuth.md) 24 | 25 | [Lobbying Contribution Reports](lobbying-contribution-report.md) 26 | 27 | [Mapping Campaign Finance Data](mapping-campaign-finance-data.md) 28 | 29 | [Churnalism](churnalism.md) 30 | 31 | [Lobbying Registration Tracker](lobbying-registration-tracker.md) 32 | 33 | [Setting Up Datajam](installing-datajam.md) 34 | 35 | [Lobbying Report Form](lobbying-report-form.md) 36 | 37 | [Data Visualizations in Google Docs](data-visualizations-google-docs.md) 38 | 39 | [Introducing Foreign Influence Explorer: A database on foreign agents and their clients](introducing-foreign-influence-explorer-database-fo.md) 40 | 41 | [Unlocking APIs](unlocking-api.md) 42 | 43 | [Scout (webinar)](scout-webinar.md) 44 | 45 | [Exploring State Legislative Data](exploring-state-legislative-data.md) 46 | 47 | [Uncover Political Fundraising](uncover-political-fundraising.md) 48 | 49 | [Using Influence Explorer to Track Campaign Contributions](using-influence-explorer-track-campaign-contributi.md) 50 | 51 | [Collaborative reporting tools](collaborative-reporting-tools.md) 52 | 53 | [How to Follow the Money in your Congressional Race (webinar)](congressional-money-race-webinar.md) 54 | 55 | [Uncovering the Spending Behind Political Ads (webinar)](uncovering-spending-behind-political-ads-webinar.md) 56 | 57 | [Follow the money in campaign 2014 and beyond (webinar)](follow-money-campaign-2014-and-beyond-webinar.md) 58 | 59 | [Intro to Docket Wrench: Explore the Influence Behind the Regulatory Process (webinar)](intro-docket-wrench-webinar.md) 60 | 61 | [Political Ad Information at Your Finger Tip (webinar)](political-ad-information-your-finger-tip-webinar.md) 62 | 63 | [Election Day Countdown (webinar)](election-day-countdown-webinar.md) 64 | 65 | [Follow the Unlimited Money (webinar)](follow-unlimited-money-webinar.md) 66 | 67 | [Political Fundraising Unveiled (webinar)](political-fundraising-unveiled-webinar.md) 68 | 69 | [Intro to Open States: Legislative Data Across All 50 States (webinar)](intro-open-states-webinar-archived.md) 70 | 71 | [Advanced Campaign Finance Search With Raw Data](advanced-campaign-finance-search-raw-data.md) 72 | 73 | [APIs and datasets](apis-and-datasets.md) 74 | 75 | [Docket Wrench docket-wrench-training](docket-wrench-training.md) 76 | 77 | [Follow the Midterm Money Trail in Real Time follow-midterm-money-trail-real-time](follow-midterm-money-trail-real-time.md) 78 | 79 | [State PAC data and influence tools (webinar)](state-pac-data-and-influence-tools.md) 80 | 81 | [APIs in the Newsroom (webinar)](apis-newsroom-webinar.md) 82 | 83 | [Uncover Political Fundraisers with Political Party Time (webinar)](uncover-political-fundraisers-political-party-time.md) 84 | 85 | [Reintroducing OpenCongress: Federal Legislation Made Easy (webinar)](opencongress-webinar.md) 86 | 87 | [Fixed Fortunes: What top corporate political players get out of Washington 2014 (webinar)](fixed-fortunes-webinar.md) 88 | 89 | [Fixed Fortunes 2015 (webinar)](fixed-fortunes-webinar-inn.md) 90 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /advanced-campaign-finance-search-raw-data.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Advanced Campaign Finance Search With Raw Data

2 | 3 | Once you've gotten the hang of Influence Explorer, take it to the next level. Go pro by clicking the "data" tab and digging into the raw data and spreadsheets. This tutorial walks you though the nitty gritty. 4 | In a previous module we showed how you can get information on campaign finance with Influence Explorer. Now we’ll demonstrate some deeper dives for those of you who want to work with the raw data yourselves. Geek-out warning: Extremely detailed explanations below. But once you are done with this module, you will be a certified campaign finance expert! 5 | 6 | Let’s head over to InfluenceExplorer.com and get started. 7 | 8 | Youtube Video 9 | 10 | Go to the “Search the Database” tab. Notice that the default is campaign finance searches. You can use the menu at the left to switch to other datasets. We’ll show you how to work with them in another module. 11 | 12 | For now, let’s stay with campaign finance searches. The drop-down menus make it easy to narrow your search to find exactly the data you’re looking for. For example, let’s say we want to search for campaign contributors to John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, but we want to find only those contributors from Boehner’s home state, Ohio, and only during the 2011-2012 campaign cycle. Here’s how we’d do that: 13 | 14 | Youtube Video 15 | 16 |

Decoding the Data Spreadsheet

17 | 18 | Once the spreadsheet has downloaded to your computer, open it in Excel or other compatible programs. Doing so reveals additional columns than the Influence Explorer preview showed. We’ll walk you through the spreadsheet in the next video, and because the information is detailed we’ve included a cheat sheet with screenshots. 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | Youtube Video 23 | 24 | Whew! Take a minute to decompress! 25 | 26 | That completes our dive into Influence Explorer’s campaign finance database. Armed with this knowledge, your explorations will be limited only by your imagination. Check back with us for more training on how to use the rest of Influence Explorer’s datasets on lobbying, earmarks, federal contracts, contractor misconduct and more. Happy diving! 27 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /advanced-google-searches.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Advanced Google Searches

2 | 3 | Google has made search easy and effective, but that doesn't mean it can't be better. Learn how to effectively use Google's Advanced Search operators so you can get what you're looking for without wasting time on irrelevant results. I know you already know how to use Google to search the web, but do you know how to really use Google to search the web and answer your questions? 4 | 5 | For example, if you search, "What time is it in Hong Kong?" Google will give you the answer right on the result page. 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Or, if you're more concerned with financial figures, simply enter the stock symbol into Google's search bar and you'll get real-time prices. The ticker even updates as you watch it. 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | But those are just party tricks compared to the truly impressive things the search giant can do. 14 | 15 |

Search operators

16 | 17 | Google has a bank of advanced search operators -- terms that are used to help broaden or narrow a search -- that can make your search more specific and successful. 18 | 19 | One such operator, "site:URL," allows you to confine your search to a specific website: 20 | 21 | Youtube Video 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | Often, this method of searching inside of sites works better than using a site's own search tool. 26 | 27 | You can also use an operator to narrow what kind of files Google should be searching. In other words, you can tell Google to look for only Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, text files and many others. Just use the operator "filetype:XXX." 28 | 29 | Youtube Video 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 |

Mix and match

34 | 35 | Of course, you're not limited to using just one search operator at a time. You can mix and match them to craft narrow searches. For example, maybe you want to search for CSV, or comma-separated value files on the Sunlight Foundation's website. No problem: 36 | 37 | Youtube Video 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 |

Boolean booyah!

42 | 43 | Another way to search Google is to use what are known as the boolean operators, better known as "AND," "OR" and "NOT." 44 | 45 | By default, Google uses the "AND" operator to connect all of your search terms, which could eliminate some valuable results that the "OR" operator would catch. Here's an example: 46 | 47 | Youtube Video 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | (Tip: If typing "OR" is too tedious, you can use the pipe character -- that's the | on the backslash key -- instead and save a keystroke!) 52 | 53 | Meanwhile, the "NOT" operator helps you eliminate unwanted results. For example, let's say you're interested in the planet Saturn. Simply searching for "Saturn," could yield all kinds of unrelated results, such as the car or the Roman god. That's where the "NOT" operator, which can also be expressed with the minus sign, comes to the rescue. 54 | 55 | Youtube Video 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 |

Google's gone wild

60 | 61 | One of the limitations of search is the variation in language. If you're interested in car accidents involving teenagers, what should you search for? Teen? Teens? Teenagers? That's where the wildcard, or asterisk, comes in. 62 | 63 | Youtube Video 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | The tilde (typed as ~) is another powerful character in search, as it allows searchers to find similar words. Just put a tilde in front of the word you are willing to exchange and let the search results flow. 68 | 69 | Youtube Video 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 |

Math tutor

74 | 75 | Given Google's engineering roots, it's not surprising that the search engine is also a mighty calculator. Simply type in your math problem and let Google solve it for you. 76 | 77 | You can learn about Google's other hidden powers, or see the site's advanced search page that organizes all of these operators into a simple form. 78 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /apis-and-datasets.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

APIs and datasets

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from July 29, 2014 that explored Sunlight Foundation's APIs and datasets for the newsroom. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | In this session geared toward newsroom developers, you will learn how to access the Sunlight Foundation's APIs and bulk data to create customized, local news apps. Most of Sunlight's tools — Influence Explorer, Open States, Party Time — and more, have APIs accessible to anyone. Our developers will walk you through how to use them. 8 | 9 | Here are the datasets we covered: 10 | 11 | Influence Explorer/Real-Time
12 | Political Ad Sleuth
13 | Political Party Time
14 | Congress
15 | Open States
16 | Capitol Words
17 | 18 | This is part of Investigative News Network and Sunlight Foundation's Summer Webinar Series. 19 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /apis-newsroom-webinar.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

APIs in the Newsroom (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from December 9, 2013 that provides a tutorial for how to use Sunlight APIs for journalists. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | The Sunlight Foundation offers free APIs for a number of our tools and projects. Our six APIs (or application programming interfaces) are a great resource for news developers, researchers and reporters. Our APIs cover a variety of topics from what Congress says daily to upcoming bills in a state assembly to whom issues federal rulemaking comments. 8 | 9 | APIs covered during this one-hour webinar include: 10 | 18 | 19 | Learn more at http://sunlightfoundation.com/api/. 20 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /churnalism.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Churnalism

2 | 3 | Discover journalism you can trust with Churnalism, a Sunlight Foundation tool, that matches newspaper articles against a large corpus of press releases to determine if any text has been copied. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | Churnalism searches the text you enter against a large corpus of press releases and determines the best match. Sometimes, exact fragments will match that are clearly not plagiarism. These often include expanded organizational names (such as The United States House of Representatives) or boilerplate copy about a particular company that is usually appended to the end of each press release. In order to filter out uninteresting matches and provide the best user experience, we use a relevancy ranking that is derived from the total character overlap, and the density of that overlap. 8 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /collaborative-reporting-tools.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Collaborative reporting tools

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from July 22, 2014 that explored Sunlight Foundation's collaborative reporting tools: Political Ad Sleuth and Political Party Time. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | This webinar explored how you can contribute to and find great leads in the Sunlight Foundation's collaborative datasets that are unlocking information that has never before been centralized and made public. With Political Ad Sleuth, local volunteers and reporters are helping to analyze a national, online database of TV stations’ public ad files. By July 1, more than 2,000 stations in every TV market nationwide will be uploading files, creating a trove of important information about who is buying airtime for political ads, how much they are paying and what demographic they are targeting. Find out how to unlock them. Political Party Time chronicles the political fundraising circuit. From breakfasts, luncheons, barbecues, and golf outings, use Party Time to track who is fundraising, when and with whom. Find out how you can use this data for stories and help us add more. 8 | 9 | This is part of Investigative News Network and Sunlight Foundation's Summer Webinar Series. 10 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /congressional-money-race-webinar.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

How to Follow the Money in your Congressional Race (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from October 2, 2012 covering Sunlight's suite of tools for tracking congressional races including Influence Explorer, Party Time, Follow the Unlimited Money and other tools. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | As the 2012 election comes down to the wire, the Sunlight Foundation will introduce you to a suite of tools that no one covering congressional races should be without. We'll show you how to get the latest campaign finance totals, historical information on donors and their legislative interests, up-to-the-minute reports filed by super PACs and other outside groups--and how to get alerted via email or text message whenever the a candidate, super PAC or shadowy stealth committee files a new report with the Federal Election Commission. 8 | 9 | This webinar will teach you to use: 10 | 11 | 17 | This in-depth tutorial will teach you how to get the most out of these resources as you cover campaigns. This webinar will be a practical how-to, featuring examples from ongoing races. 18 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /data-visualizations-google-docs.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Data Visualizations in Google Docs

2 | 3 | While Google is often used for internet searches and maps, it can also help with data visualizations via Google Charts. Learn how to use Google Docs to generate interactive charts in this training.

Getting started

4 | 5 | For this exercise, we're going to use a small dataset: the 2010 FBI uniform crime statistics for violent and property crimes by state. 6 | 7 | With that data, we're going to make several different Google Chart Tools, which can be saved as images or embedded as interactive graphics. 8 | 9 | For the purposes of this lesson, we're assuming you're comfortable enough with spreadsheets to bring the data into Google Docs. 10 | 11 | Once you have your data in Google Docs, you're ready to get started. 12 | 13 |

Charting made easy

14 | 15 | Youtube Video 16 | 17 | With Google's Chart editor on the screen, you must select the appropriate chart for your dataset. Think carefully about what chart best explains the data you have. 18 | 19 | For example, you might be tempted to use a pie chart to compare the number of crimes in each state. However, a pie chart with 50 slices would be difficult to read. And a pie chart with a subset of states would give distorted information. 20 | 21 | In our example, we look at the total number of property and violent crimes in each state. We can use a stepped-area chart to show that breakdown on a state-by-state basis, and then customize it. 22 | 23 | Youtube Video 24 | 25 | Having a chart in your Google Doc is nice, but it's not especially helpful for publishing the chart with your story or blog post. That's where embedding comes in. 26 | 27 | Youtube Video 28 | 29 |

Non-adjacent columns

30 | 31 | The example above uses data that are in adjacent columns, but sometimes we want to chart data in columns that are not adjacent. 32 | 33 | For example, what if we want to look at crime rates on a state-by-state basis, rather than overall crime numbers? After all, you would expect more populous states to have more crime. 34 | 35 | Here's how we'd do that: 36 | 37 | Youtube Video 38 | 39 |

For more information

40 | 41 | Google can create a wide variety of charts, from tree maps to bar graphs, from columns to candlesticks. You can learn more about them and see what works best for you at Google's chart playground. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /docket-wrench-training.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Docket Wrench

2 | 3 | Docket Wrench is a Sunlight Foundation tool that allows you to examine the submissions and comments to agencies who amend the code of Federal Regulations. Learn how to search for comments, agencies, dockets and submitters as well as explore cluster of comments to see how businesses and organizations shape federal rules and regulations. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | Public policy doesn’t stop when Congress passes a bill and the president signs it. Laws include rules and regulations that become the responsibility of agencies within the executive branch to write. The Department of Energy, the FDA and the ATF are among the 300 federal agencies tasked with dictating these finer points of public policy. 8 | 9 | The Sunlight Foundation’s 10 | Docket Wrench helps you at this stage of policy making. 11 | 12 | Before an agency finalizes a proposed rule, there is a period of public commenting, which many special interests in Washington use to wield their influence beyond the halls of Congress. (Individuals can submit comments, too.) However, this exertion of influence in the rulemaking process has, for the most part, taken place outside the public eye. 13 | 14 | Until now. 15 | 16 | Docket Wrench makes following this influence easier by providing a suite of tools to help researchers and members of the public delve into regulatory comments. Users can search more than 3.5 million regulatory documents to see how companies, interest groups and NGOs submit public comments on proposed rules, with many also linked to their profile on Sunlight’s Influence Explorer. Docket Wrench’s visualization feature groups textually similar documents together to help find evidence of form letter campaigns by these groups. 17 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /election-day-countdown-webinar.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Election Day Countdown (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar on November 2, 2012 featured a briefing by Sunlight Foundation’s money and politics experts on the influence at stake before voters head to the ballot box on November 6. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | The long 2012 campaign season is finally about to come to an end. This webinar featured a briefing by Sunlight Foundation’s money and politics experts on the influence at stake before voters head to the ballot box on November 6. Topics include how you can use our online tools such as Follow the Unlimited Money, Political Ad Sleuth, and Ad Hawk in your Election Day reporting and to how to sort through and mash-up the massive amounts of data available after the polls close. 8 | 9 | Watch the webinar to get the latest stats on super PAC spending, dark money donations and campaign war chests. 10 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /exploring-state-legislative-data.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Exploring State Legislative Data

2 | 3 | Open States lets you find information about your state representatives and legislation. This tutorial provides an overview on how to use Open States to identify your representative, search and track legislation, explore bill history and votes and contact lawmakers. Youtube Video 4 | 5 | Open States is a free service that allows you to discover how bills are written and passed across all fifty states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico in one place. This tutorial provides an overview of the tool using the bill S.B 1070 in Arizona as an example. 6 | 7 | Bill, legislator, committee and event data is collected from official sources, linked at the bottom of each legislator, bill, vote, committee or event page. For more details, visit the methodology page. 8 | 9 | All Open States data is available via the website, our API, bulk downloads and the Open States iOS Application. For more about the project please visit: http://openstates.org 10 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /fixed-fortunes-webinar-inn.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Fixed Fortunes (webinar) 2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from Jan 27, 2015. This session provided analysis and data from the Fixed Fortunes project and was hosted by Sunlight for the Investigative News Network. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | How much do the biggest donors to political campaigns get out of Washington? When firms put millions into the political process, and get tens of billions out, is there an appearance of corruption? The Sunlight Foundation examined a subset of large campaign contributors—the 200 biggest givers among for-profit corporations (of course, we mean their executives and political action committees)—and looked at their financial relationship with the federal government. 8 | 9 | In this webinar, we reviewed data we've assembled from federal budget documents and legislation to show you how special interests, Congress and the executive branch interact to bring home the bacon in a post-earmark era. Find companies in your area whose defense business is baked into the federal budget. And while we've looked at historical data (from FY 2008 through FY 2013), the methodology can be applied to the upcoming procurement season. 10 | 11 | This webinar is hosted by the Sunlight Foundation for the Investigative News Network. 12 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /fixed-fortunes-webinar.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Fixed Fortunes: What top corporate political players get out of Washington (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from Nov 24, 2014. This session provided findings from Fixed Fortunes as well as explained the methodology and presented ideas for further analysis. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | How much do the biggest donors to political campaigns get out of Washington? When firms put millions into the political process, and get tens of billions out, is there an appearance of corruption? The Sunlight Foundation examined a subset of large campaign contributors—the 200 biggest givers among for-profit corporations (of course, we mean their executives and political action committees)—and looked at their financial relationship with the federal government. 8 | 9 | We found that, between 2007 and 2012, those companies spent a total of $5.8 billion to influence Washington. The 200 corporations benefited from $4.4 trillion in federal business and support over the same time period--more than the $4.3 trillion that roughly 50 million Americans got from the Social Security system over the same period. 10 | 11 | This webinar provided a step-by-step walk through our Fixed Fortunes project—the findings, the methodology and the meaning. 12 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /follow-midterm-money-trail-real-time.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Follow the Midterm Money Trail in Real Time

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from Oct 15 that provides a training for the Real-Time Federal Campaign Finance tracker. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | With the 2014 elections just around the corner, the Sunlight Foundation hosted this webinar to follow the money in congressional races regardless of your technical expertise. This session featured the Real-Time Federal Campaign Finance tracker, a component of Influence Explorer, that allows you to search committees, candidates and races and get the latest campaign finance totals. We showed how to download the data as well as get up-to-the-minute alerts on reports filed by super PACs and other outside groups with the Federal Election Commission. 8 | 9 | This in-depth tutorial highlights how to get the most of these resources as you cover campaigns as well as provide practical how-tos, ideas for stories and feature examples of current use cases of the data from ongoing races. 10 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /follow-money-campaign-2014-and-beyond-webinar.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Follow the money in campaign 2014 and beyond (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from July 15, 2014 that explored various Sunlight Foundation tools to track influence on the federal and state level with a focus on the 2014 elections. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | Training included live demonstrations of Sunlight Foundation tools that make tracking influence on the federal and state levels doable, no matter what your level of technical expertise. A couple of the tools reviewed: Influence Explorer helps you track influence by lawmaker, company or prominent individual, and Real Time FEC, a component allows you to search and download bulk data from Federal Election Commission filings and even set up email alerts when filings are made by candidates or in races that you’re covering. Scout makes it easy to search for topics you’re covering across the Congressional Record, the Federal Register, federal and state courts, GAO reports and the legislatures of all 50 states. You can also create customized email or text alerts for topics or bills you’re following. 8 | 9 | This is part of Investigative News Network and Sunlight Foundation's Summer Webinar Series. 10 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /follow-money-election-2012-return-investment-webin.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Follow the Money in Election 2012: Return on Investment (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from Nov. 29, 2012 that looked at the percentage return of investment of outside organizations. 4 | Youtube Video 5 | 6 | The 2012 election was the most expensive election in history, with outside organizations spending nearly $1.4 billion buying television ads and influencing the political process. To understand the impact of these groups, the Sunlight Foundation calculated the percent of their spending in an election that helped winning candidates and called that percentage return on investment (ROI). In this webinar, we dived into the data from our tool Follow the Unlimited Money and took a granular look on the story behind the percents. We also debuted our congressional ROI data set, to look at how groups did in hotly contested congressional races, not including the large amounts these outside groups spent on presidential races. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /follow-unlimited-money-webinar.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Follow the Unlimited Money (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from August 8, 2012. This webinar covered tools to follow the millions of dollars being spent this election year by super PACs and other outside groups. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | Sunlight Reporting Group Editorial Director Bill Allison conducted this online training for journalists and covered tools and resources including Follow the Unlimited Money and Influence Explorer. Click here to download the presentation. 8 | 9 | To find out more about our live trainings, please visit our webinars page. 10 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /images/logo.png: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sunlightlabs/sunlight-academy-content/8ac9665ad39e2e353cbd7a6dbb7bc41cafc90b3f/images/logo.png -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /installing-datajam.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Setting Up Datajam

2 | 3 | Learn how to install and configure our award-winning real-time reporting platform, Datajam. It's the platform that powers our own Sunlight Live and can enable real-time reporting, context and analysis on your site quickly, easily and cheaply. 4 | Datajam is a real-time reporting platform created by the Sunlight Foundation. The concept of Datajam is to simplify reporting live events in real time with a focus on displaying contextual data and information in accessible ways. 5 | 6 | We call our implementation Sunlight Live, but the underlying platform is called Datajam and has been made freely available to the public. 7 | 8 | There are three basic components to the Datajam platform: 9 | 14 | 15 | So, let's walk through installing Datajam for your own use. 16 | 17 | We built Datajam as a Ruby on Rails application that can be deployed in any number of ways. We think the easiest is through the Heroku cloud-based application hosting environment. For the purposes of this module, that's the setup we're going to assume. 18 | 19 | There are two pieces of software that must first be installed on your computer before you can continue. They are Ruby and Git. You can get more information about each and how to install them here: 20 | 21 | Mac: Ruby | Git 22 | Linux: Ruby | Git 23 | Windows: Ruby | Git 24 | 25 |

My Heroku

26 | 27 |

Once you've set up your local machine with Ruby and Git, you’ll next need to sign up for a free Heroku account. Sign up at https://api.heroku.com/signup.

Heroku has various service levels, including basic service that is free and would be sufficient for running small Datajam events. As your events grow, Heroku can scale services accordingly at pretty low rates. Even heavy Datajam users should expect Heroku charges to be less than $10/month. 28 | 29 |

Once you are set up with Heroku, read through Heroku’s Quickstart Guide to get setup with their tool belt. You need only go through step 3 for our purposes.

30 | 31 |

Git the code

32 | 33 | Now that you've set up your machine with Ruby and Git, and gotten your Heroku account, it's time to download Datajam. We maintain and distribute Datajam's code through GitHub. And in order to move the code from GitHub to your Heroku instance, you must first download the code to your local machine. 34 | 35 | There are a number of steps involved in this process, so we've simplified it with one simple shell command: 36 | 37 | sh <(curl http://get.datajam.org) 38 | 39 | When you run the above command in Terminal, you will be prompted to name the application. Then the script will: 40 | 41 | 48 | 49 | When the script is finished, you will be given a URL where the code has been installed, along with a username and password. Go ahead and log in to see what you've created. 50 | 51 |

Configuration

52 | 53 | With Datajam installed, it's time to start configuring it for your site. The first step in this process is to manage the templates. We will walk you through the basics of this, but the specifics of your template design will depend on your needs. For example, some users might want to design their installation of Datajam so that it looks just like their website. 54 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /intro-docket-wrench-webinar.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Intro to Docket Wrench: Explore the Influence Behind the Regulatory Process (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from February 5, 2013 that explains how to explore comments in the regulatory process. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | Docket Wrench is a new free tool developed by Sunlight Foundation that allows you to examine the submissions and comments to agencies who amend the code of Federal Regulations. With Docket Wrench, you can find clusters of influence by exploring similarities and identifying distinguishing phrases between comments. 8 | 9 | This session covered Docket Wrench and basic skills such as searching for agencies, dockets and submitters as well as provided an explanation on comment clustering to explore the impact on regulations. 10 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /intro-open-states-webinar-archived.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Intro to Open States: Legislative Data Across All 50 States (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from February 22, 2013 that explains how to access legislative data across all 50 states. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | Open States is a free tool that allows you to research your State House, from identifying your legislator, reviewing their votes, tracking legislation to discovering upcoming events. This webinar covered basic functions such as creating issue-based searches, account signups, and bill and legislator alerts. The session also explored the underlying data behind Open States that makes it the most comprehensive, free, state legislative tool available. 8 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /introducing-foreign-influence-explorer-database-fo.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Introducing Foreign Influence Explorer: A database on foreign agents and their clients

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from May 13, 2014 that explored the functionality of Foreign Influence Explorer. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | This session covered basic skills of using Foreign Influence Explorer, a free tool that documents the different ways foreign entities influence policy and opinions in the United States. The database sources documents from 8 | the Department of Justice as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and includes information such as lobbying, press outreach, travels, political contributions and meetings and conference attended by foreign agents. Foreign Influence Explorer also makes available data on proposed arms sales to foreign militaries from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. Foreign Influence Explorer is the latest addition to Influence Explorer and features 2013 data as well as archival information. 9 | 10 | Learn how to research foreign influence, such as by searching for foreign entities, browsing clients, creating customized downloads on a country basis, accessing bulk information and finding individualized information on contacts by foreign agents with government officials, organizations, conferences and journalists. We will also review profiles of members of Congress and their contacts with foreign agents, including any political contributions as reported to FARA. Lastly, we will explore ways to fact check the data and provide tips and advance functionality for journalists and other power users on how to make the most of Foreign Influence Explorer. 11 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /learning-about-datagov.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Learning About Data.gov

2 | 3 | Data.gov seeks to organize all of the U.S. government's data, a daunting and unfinished task. In this module, learn about the powers and limitations of Data.gov, and what other resources to use to fill in Data.gov's gaps. The Obama Administration started Data.gov as a clearinghouse for the government information stored on dozens of federal websites. 4 | 5 | As of this writing, Data.gov links to about 400,000 different data sets. That might sound like a lot, but it's far short of all the data the government has available. 6 | 7 | Indeed, if you search Data.gov and don't find the information you seek, try specific agency websites, which can sometimes host more current data than what Data.gov has available. 8 | 9 |

Raw data

10 | 11 | Searching Data.gov is easy. Start by clicking the "Data" tab and then select "Raw Data." The resulting page displays data sets you can browse, along with methods of filtering the data sets, such as by type, agency, category, topic and more. 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | Of course, we can also search for specific data. Let's start by searching for "economic assistance." 16 | 17 | Youtube Video 18 | 19 | Although this data set is available as a CSV, or comma-separated value file, others might download as Excel spreadsheets, XML, KML (a Google maps format), SHP or Shapefiles (also for mapping) or any number of other types. 20 | 21 |

Interactive data

22 | 23 | Depending on your needs, you might only want to look up information, rather than download raw data that you have to manipulate. 24 | 25 | For this reason, Data.gov provides some information as interactive databases. Click the "Interactive Datasets" button at the top of the page. Again we'll search for "economic assistance" and you'll see "Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance" atop the list of results. Click the link to launch the interactive database. 26 | 27 | Within the interactive database, you can filter results and export the data you need, as shown here: 28 | 29 | Youtube Video 30 | 31 |

Geodata

32 | 33 | Another type of data found on the site is useful for mapping. Known as "Geodata," these data sets can be found, unsurprisingly, by clicking on the "Geodata" button at the top of the page. 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | Geodata are distinct for other data sets only in that contained within them is geographical information, such as latitude and longitude, county names or other information that can be useful in mapping. 38 | 39 |

Other resources

40 | 41 | Data.gov is a useful, if imperfect, website. So, to augment Data.gov, here are some additional resources for data that Data.gov might not offer: 42 | 43 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /lobbying-contribution-report.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Lobbying Contribution Reports

2 | 3 | These reports highlight the millions of dollars that lobbying entities spend every year giving to charities in honor of lawmakers and executive branch officials, technically referred to as “honorary fees.” Find out how to investigate lobbying contribution reports, understand the rules behind them and see what you can do with the findings. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | Lobbying contribution reports are also known as LD-203 reports and can be found on the website of the U.S. House Office of the Clerk 8 | and Senate Office of Public Records. 9 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /lobbying-registration-tracker.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Lobbying Registration Tracker

2 | 3 | Learn about the Lobbying Registration Tracker, a Sunlight Foundation tool that allows you to track new registrations for federal lobbyists and lobbying firms. This database allows users to view registrations as they're submitted, browse by issue, registrant or client, and see the trends in issues and registrations over the last 12 months. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | The Lobbying Disclosure Act requires lobbyists and lobbying firms to register with the House and the Senate within 45 days of being hired by a client. The registrations list the issue areas that lobbying will cover. The Lobbying Registration Tracker is updated weekly based on Senate records and includes all registrations since 2009. 8 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /lobbying-report-form.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Lobbying Report Form

2 | 3 | Four times a year, groups that lobby Congress and the federal government file reports on their activities. Unlock the important information contained in the quarterly lobbying reports to keep track of who's influencing whom in Washington. Learn tips on how to read the reports and how they can inform your reporting. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | In this tutorial we walk through the forms and explain the findings. You can find these lobbying forms for both the House and the Senate. 8 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /mapping-campaign-finance-data.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Mapping Campaign Finance Data

2 | 3 | Campaign finance data can be complex and confusing -- for reporters and for readers. But it doesn't have to be. One way to make sense of it all is through mapping. Learn how to turn campaign finance information into beautiful maps, all through free tools.

Getting started

4 | 5 | One of the interesting ways to deal with campaign finance information is to plot it on a map. It can be useful to see where donors to a particular party are located, for example. You can see if donors are concentrated in certain counties. Or, you can aggregate donation amounts and see where most of the money comes from. 6 | 7 | To do these visualizations, we need a source for the data and tools for mapping it. That's what this tutorial will guide you through. Specifically, we're going to look at how much Barack Obama raised in various Ohio ZIP code areas for the 2012 election. 8 | 9 | We'll start by finding campaign relevant finance information. For that, we'll turn to Influence Explorer, and specifically the "Data" tab on the right side of the page. 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | Using the data feature of Influence Explorer unlocks the full power of the site by enabling users to query the underlying Influence Explorer databases. For example, we can search for individual contributions from people living in Ohio to Barack Obama during the 2012 election cycle. Here's how we'd do that: 14 | 15 | Youtube Video 16 | 17 | Once we download the resulting data, you'll see it's a good bit of data, with more than 1,200 rows and 30 columns. 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |

Data clean-up

22 | 23 | To make the rest of the process simpler and faster, it's useful to spend a few minutes cleaning up the data. This spreadsheet contains quite a few columns that aren't relevant to our goals. 24 | 25 | In fact, we can remove all BUT the following columns: 26 | 27 | 39 | 40 | Even some of those columns we're keeping aren't necessary to the map, but they're useful and interesting nonetheless. 41 | 42 | Once we delete the unneeded columns, we'll end up with a spreadsheet that looks like this: 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | It's also important to take a moment to familiarize ourselves with the data. If you sort the spreadsheet by the "amount" column, you may notice the existence of negative numbers: 47 | 48 | Youtube Video 49 | 50 | You might be tempted to remove rows with negative values, but that would be a mistake. 51 | 52 | The negative values are listed when campaigns refund donations. This can happen, for example, if the donor was ineligible or had already contributed the maximum. 53 | 54 | The next step is to export our spreadsheet as a CSV, or comma separated value document. We need to do this, instead of simply saving it as an Excel spreadsheet, because of the next step. The exact process for exporting as a CSV depends on the version of Excel you're using, but generally you can "save as" or "export" the current file and select "Comma separated values .csv" in the resulting dialog box. 55 | 56 |

GeoCommons

57 | 58 | In order to make our data geographically relevant, we're going to enlist the website GeoCommons. This free service does several important things, including geocoding addresses, creating maps and performing geographic analyses on data. 59 | 60 | (Note: If you don't already have a free login for GeoCommons, you'll need to create one.) 61 | 62 | Upon logging into GeoCommons, you'll select and upload your CSV file, as shown here: 63 | 64 | Youtube Video 65 | 66 | When you upload your file to GeoCommons, you'll be asked to georeference your data. That's a fancy way of saying, "add some geographic information to this file." 67 | 68 | You'll get two options. The first is to "join with a boundary dataset," which means you can associate data with area, like states, counties or ZIP code areas. The second option is to "geocode based on an address or place name." As our data includes donor addresses, this second option is what we want to do. 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | Now we will see a new page in which we have to tell GeoCommons which fields from our spreadsheet it should use to determine precise locations. This is just a matter of editing the data formats as follows: 73 | 74 | Youtube Video 75 | 76 | Once you click "Continue," GeoCommons will spend a few minutes analyzing the addresses and setting latitude and longitude coordinates for each row. 77 | 78 | Assuming all goes well, you should be presented with a screen that looks like this: 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | Next, you'll be asked to "Describe and Share your Dataset." This information is optional, but it's good practice to fill it out as completely as possible. 83 | 84 | Once you click "save," you are ready to map and/or analyze the data. 85 | 86 |

Analysis

87 | One of the most powerful and impressive features of GeoCommons is its ability to perform various analyses on the data you uploaded. To get started, click the "analyze" button on the dataset we just uploaded. 88 | 89 | You'll then be presented with a bevy of options, from merging datasets to filtering by distance, to performing mathematical functions on the data. 90 | 91 | Since our goal is to add up contributions by ZIP code areas, we'll select "aggregation." Then we'll need to select a boundary to aggregate to (ZIP code areas), determine what to do with areas that have no data, and what kind of aggregation we want to do. For example: 92 | 93 | Youtube Video 94 | 95 | Once you submit your analysis, GeoCommons will crunch the numbers for a few seconds. The result is a new dataset, so once the analysis is complete, you'll once again be asked to "Describe and Share your Dataset." 96 | 97 |

Mapping

98 | You're now ready to map the data. Although GeoCommons has built-in mapping functions, we're going to take our data to Google and map it there. 99 | 100 | The primary reason for this is because Google is much more flexible than GeoCommons regarding how you can design your map. 101 | 102 | So, to export our map data, we'll download the KML file from our dataset page. 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | This will save a KML file to your computer. A KML file is a form of XML that is specifically formatted for Google's mapping system. (KML stands for Keyhole Markup Language -- Keyhole is the mapping company Google bought and turned into bring Google Maps.) 107 | 108 | At this point, we'll turn to Google Docs. Once you log in, click the "Create" button and select "Table." (These are sometimes known as "Fusion Tables," which is what Google initially called them.) You'll then be presented with the option to import a new table. You'll proceed like this: 109 | 110 | Youtube Video 111 | 112 | At the end of import process, you'll be presented with your table. We preserved the "Name," "Sum of Amount" and "geometry" columns, as shown here: 113 | 114 | 115 | 116 | Before we make the map, we need to do a couple of things with this data. First, we should apply a format to the field "sumofamount," which is, after all, a dollar figure. Within the table, go to "Edit" and "Modify columns." You should see a screen like this: 117 | 118 | 119 | 120 | Now, click on "sumofamount" and change the format to "$1,234.56." That will add a dollar sign and a thousands comma separator to the fields in the column. (Unfortunately, it also adds cents to the values. I say "unfortunately," because our values don't have cents, so it adds an unnecessary ".00" to every number. Oh well.) 121 | 122 | Next, let's check to see what the highest and lowest values are for the "sumofamount" column are: 123 | 124 | Youtube Video 125 | 126 | It'll be helpful to know these figures later in the process. 127 | 128 | Now it's time to make the map. Go to the "Visualize" menu, and select "Map." The resulting screen will plot the ZIP code areas and color them all red. Clicking on one of the red splotches will call up an info box, as you can see here: 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 | There are still a few things we'd like to do this map. Namely, we want to make the info box a little more meaningful, and we want to color code the areas by the amount donated. That is, we don't want every area to be the same shade of red. Rather, we'd like areas with greater donations to be darker than areas with fewer donations. 133 | 134 | Let's start with fixing the info box. Currently it says "Name," followed by the ZIP code, and then "sumofamount," followed by the total donations. The words "Name" and "sumofamount" come from the column headers in our data. 135 | 136 | Let's change "Name" to something more meaningful, like "ZIP code area," and "sumofamount" to "Total donated." To make this change, click "Configure info window" and follow along here: 137 | 138 | Youtube Video 139 | 140 | We're almost there. Now it's time to color code the map. We'll do that by clicking "Configure styles" and do the following: 141 | 142 | Youtube Video 143 | 144 | Once you return to your map, you'll see green splotches all over Ohio. And if you zoom into the Cleveland area, you'll see that's where Obama is raising the most money: 145 | 146 | 147 | 148 | With our map made, we're ready to publish. We need only to make the map public and get the embed code. 149 | 150 | In the upper right, click the "share" button and on the resulting pop-up window, change the access from "Private" to "Public on the web." 151 | 152 | Youtube Video 153 | 154 | Next, click "Get embeddable link." On the resulting pop-up window, enter your desired width and height and then copy the code beneath the text "Paste HTML to embed in website." 155 | 156 | 157 | 158 | Your final step is simply to paste the copied code into your website! 159 | 160 | For those who are interested in more advanced ways of manipulating and displaying Fusion Table maps, you can learn more at Google's Maps API page. With the instructions here, you can change the look of the baseman (remove features, colors, etc.), add dropdown menus and more. 161 | 162 | You can leave questions and comments in the section below. And if you use these instructions to make a map of your own, please let us know. We'd love to see your work. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /opencongress-webinar.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Reintroducing OpenCongress: Federal Legislation Made Easy (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from November 5, 2013 that explains how to use the tool for exploring federal legislation, from bills, votes, and legislator information. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | OpenCongress is a free, open source tool that allows you to explore the workings of Congress from searching for legislation, identifying popular bills, browsing voting records to finding and connecting with your lawmaker. The project, originally launched by the Participatory Politics Foundation, is now a project of Sunlight Foundation. The webinar covered ways to optimize OpenCongress for your use, from creating issue specific widgets, comparing voting records between two lawmakers (“head to head” function), setting email alerts for federal bills and creating a user account. 8 | 9 | The session also explored the data that powers OpenCongress and provided insight on how we developed the tool while soliciting feedback on future functionalities. 10 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /pivot-tables.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Pivot Tables

2 | 3 | Pivot tables are powerful tools, but it's not always obvious how to use them. Learn how to create and use pivot tables in Excel to aggregate and summarize data that otherwise would require a database. 4 | Welcome to this lesson on using pivot tables. This tool is a terrific way to analyze data in a spreadsheet. It allows you to organize information in a way that otherwise would require a database. 5 | 6 | In this module, we'll walk through the process using Excel 2007 for Windows. Other versions of Excel can do the same things, but some of the steps might be slightly different. 7 | 8 | So, what is a pivot table, exactly? It's really just a tool for summarizing information. You can use pivot tables to do a number of things with your data, such as counting occurrences of some value, or aggregating data based on common values. 9 | 10 | To get started, let's download this spreadsheet from data.gov. 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | The spreadsheet we're using details U.S. foreign aid since 1946, and it does so by country and by program. 15 | 16 |

About the data

17 | 18 | Before we go on, notice the multiple tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet. The second tab, titled "Economic Historical $," provides monetary figures in real dollars -- that is, how much was actually spent at the time in those years. The third tab, titled "Economic Constant $," provides the data in constant dollars, enabling us to make sensible year-to-comparisons. 19 | 20 | Which tab we use will depend on the questions we ask. 21 | 22 | Let's say we want to know how much the U.S. spent in 2009 on the various programs across all countries. If we want to understand this figure at today's value (which isn't all that different from 2009), use tab 3. If you want to see it at 2009's values, use tab 2. 23 | 24 |

Creating a pivot table

25 | 26 | To create our pivot table, select "Insert" and click "PivotTable." Stay with the default settings in the resulting dialog box and a blank Pivot Table will be placed on a new sheet in Excel. 27 | 28 | With our pivot table in place, let's start looking at the data: 29 | 30 | Youtube Video 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | What Excel did was add up all the spending done in all of the countries and organized it by program. So, the U.S. spent about $15.5 million on Child Survival and Health programs around the world in 2009. 35 | 36 | Now let's organize this data so we can see where the money is going: 37 | 38 | Youtube Video 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | Of course, it would be a lot easier to read this data if it were formatted properly. No problem: 43 | 44 | Youtube Video 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 |

Working the count

49 | 50 | Another question one might ask this data is, how many foreign aid programs is the U.S. running in each country? This is easily answered using the "count" function. 51 | 52 | Youtube Video 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 |

Playing the percentages

57 | 58 | Another useful function is calculating percentages. For example, maybe we'd like to break down 2009 program spending by percentage. 59 | 60 | Youtube Video 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | We can also look at what percentage of all aid since 1946 was handed out in 2009. To do this, we'll need to add a new column in our data tab totaling all the years for each country and program. We'll call this column "Total." 65 | 66 | Youtube Video 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | Now, let's create a new pivot table with "country_name" in the row labels and "Total" in values. Be sure to set total to "sum." 71 | 72 | Then we'll need to create a new column in our pivot table: 73 | 74 | Youtube Video 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 |

Comparisons

79 | 80 | Finally, you can add multiple values if you want to make side-by-side comparisons. 81 | 82 | Simply remove "Total" from the value box and instead add two years, say 2000 and 2009. Make sure to set both to "sum of." 83 | 84 | Youtube Video 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | As you can see, pivot tables are incredibly powerful, if not always intuitive. But, with a little patience, you can start using them to better analyze and understand your data. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /political-ad-information-your-finger-tip-webinar.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Political Ad Information at Your Finger Tip (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from October 23, 2012. Learn how to use Ad Hawk as a research tool to create effective searches, understand campaign finance data, and discover how to analyze this year's political ads. 4 | 5 | Political ads are saturating our airwaves. That is why we built Ad Hawk, a free mobile and web app that identifies information about who is buying political ads using audio fingerprint technology. The tool lets you know who placed the ads, their campaign finance profile and other election information. The political ads are archived on Ad Hawk and are also available in a searchable database. 6 | 7 | Youtube Video 8 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /political-ad-sleuth.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Political Ad Sleuth

2 | 3 | Frustrated by political ads inundating your TV? Learn how you can discover who is funding these ads from the public files at your local television station through this tutorial. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | New campaign finance rules mean that the airwaves this election year will be dominated by outside groups, many of which don’t have to disclose the sources of their funding.\rBut there is one place where they will leave a paper trail: At the TV stations where they buy airtime for their ads. For the first time, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has ordered television stations to put their public and political files online. But this year, only stations affiliated with the major networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC) in the top 50 markets will have to put their political files online -- and only beginning August 2. 8 | 9 | This leaves out much of the spending that already has occurred this year and will cover only a fraction of the markets in swing states where the majority of political ad spending will occur. To sign up to become a Political Ad Sleuth or for more information about the project please visit: http://politicaladsleuth.com 10 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /political-fundraising-unveiled-webinar.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Political Fundraising Unveiled (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar on October 16, 2012 that covered Party Time and how to search the database of fundraiser inviters, whether it be by candidate, host, location, party theme or VIPs in attendance. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | Virtually every day, candidates and the incumbents they want to unseat are holding breakfast, lunch and happy-hour fundraisers and Party Time tells you when and where they are taking place. Since its start in 2008, Party Time has chronicled fundraisers happening in D.C. and around the U.S. and is the central clearinghouse of information for journalists, citizen journalists, activists and voters who are interested in following the money -- and the influence it carries. 8 | 9 | This webinar covered Party Time and how to search the database of fundraiser inviters, whether it be by candidate, host, location, party theme or VIPs in attendance. The session also provided insight on how to use the data to discover patterns in giving in the most comprehensive listing of political fundraisers available. 10 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /scout-training.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Scout

2 | 3 | Scout is a legislative and governmental tracking tool from the Sunlight Foundation that alerts you when Congress or your state capitol talks about or takes action on issues you care about. Learn how to search and create alerts on federal and state legislation, regulations and the Congressional Record. 4 | Youtube Video 5 | 6 | Scout is a free service that provides daily insight to how our laws and regulations are shaped in Washington, D.C. and our state capitols. 7 | 8 | This tutorial will walk you through how to subscribe and create customized email or text alerts on what Congress is doing around an issue or a specific bill, as well as bills in the state legislature and federal regulations. 9 | 10 | You can also add external RSS feeds to complement a Scout subscription, such as press releases from a member of Congress or an issue-based blog. 11 | 12 | These days, you can receive electronic alerts to know when a company is in the news, when a TV show is scheduled to air or when a sports team wins. Now, you can also be alerted when our elected officials take action on an issue you care about. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /scout-webinar.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Scout (Webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar and demo of Scout from July 26, 2012. The session covered basic skills such as search terms and bill queries, as well as advanced functions such as tagging, merging outside RSS feeds and creating curated search collections. 4 | Youtube Video 5 | 6 | This is a recorded webinar. To find out more about our live trainings, please visit our webinars page. 7 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /state-pac-data-and-influence-tools.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

State PAC data and influence tools (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar on September 12, 2013, for INN members on state PAC data and other political influence tools. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | The first part of the training introduced Sunlight’s campaign finance tool, Influence Explorer, which includes campaign finance data, both on a federal and state level. The training will also include a look at other state based legislative tools. The second part took participants through how we used the data digitized by the National Institute for Money and State Politics for stories and showed INN members how they can effectively use this data in their reporting. 8 | 9 | Background on state PAC data: 10 | 11 | Earlier this year National Institute for Money and State Politics digitized records tracking donors to Political Action Committee for 28 states for the first time. Sunlight is partnering with them to analyze this data and share it with organizations across the country. These records will trace back the money that went from individuals, corporate PACs and labor unions to state level election campaigns in the 2012 races. Sunlight’s focus will be on aggregate national data analysis with partners applying their expertise for local reporting. 12 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /uncover-political-fundraisers-political-party-time.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Uncover Political Fundraisers with Political Party Time (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from April 21, 2015. Learn how to find political fundraisers and explore political influence with Political Party Time. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | Outside the halls of Congress, politicians and the candidates who want to unseat them are holding breakfast, lunch and happy hour fundraisers - and Political Party Time is the only one-stop-shop that has the details on when and where they are happening. Since 2008, Party Time has chronicled more than 21,000 fundraisers around the country. It's the largest repository of this data for journalists, activists and voters who are interested in following the money and the influence it carries. 8 | 9 | This webinar provided an overview of this venerable resource and how to search for fundraiser invitations by candidate, host, location, committee or VIPs in attendance. This webinar also highlighted stories gleaned from Political Party Time data, as well as advanced features like setting alerts and making the most out of the bulk data and API. 10 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /uncover-political-fundraising.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Uncover Political Fundraising

2 | 3 | Political Party Time documents the political fundraising circuit and acts as a clearinghouse for these event invites. Learn how to use the tool and find fundraisers by candidate, host, location or date. 4 | Youtube Video 5 | 6 | Virtually every day, incumbents and challengers running for office are holding breakfast, lunch and happy-hour fundraisers and Political Party Time tells you when and where they are taking place. Since its start in 2008, Party Time has chronicled fundraisers happening in D.C. and around the U.S. and is the central clearinghouse of information for journalists, citizen journalists, activists and voters who are interested in following the money -- and the influence it carries. The site provides information on congressional and presidential candidate fundraisers. 7 | 8 | This training teaches you to search the database of fundraiser inviters, whether it be by candidate, host, location, party theme or VIPs in attendance. 9 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /uncovering-spending-behind-political-ads-webinar.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Uncovering the Spending Behind Political Ads (webinar)

2 | 3 | Recorded webinar from October 9, 2012 and covers the basics on how to read a political file as well as uncover “dark money” political spending. You will also learn to manipulate the data in Political Ad Sleuth and look up ad buys and spending by individual committees influencing the election. Youtube Video 4 | 5 | Political Ad Sleuth is a project dedicated to posting online the information available in the “political files” of all U.S. broadcast stations. This file includes a record of political advertising buys, and contains information about the advertiser’s name, cost of the buy and date range for the ads. 6 | 7 | Until this year, these records have been kept on paper at the headquarters of TV stations (often their broadcast studios), rendering them inaccessible to all but the most tenacious members of the public. For the first time, the Federal Communications Commission is putting some of the files online. Sunlight, in partnership with Free Press, are recruiting volunteers to free the rest of the files. 8 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /unlocking-api.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Unlocking APIs

2 | 3 | What are APIs and how do they deliver government data? This tutorial provides an introduction to using APIs and highlights what Sunlight's APIs have to offer on legislative and congressional data. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | APIs (a.k.a. application programming interfaces) power many websites and mobile apps, at Sunlight we collect vital government data into specific APIs that you can use. 8 | 9 | Interested in learning how to code with Sunlight APIs? Take a free course from Codecademy. 10 | 11 | Bonus: Read more about the utility of APIs for government data. 12 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /using-influence-explorer-track-campaign-contributi.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Using Influence Explorer to Track Campaign Contributions

2 | 3 | Want to find out who the special interests are trying to influence politicians at all levels of government? Influence Explorer lets you track the heavy hitters in all presidential and congressional elections. In this module, we will dig into the site’s features on campaign finance data. To start, let’s search for a politician who has a long and detailed history of raising and spending money: Mitt Romney. 4 | 5 | Youtube Video 6 | 7 | A special note about the profile pages: they generally default to the current election cycle. So, when we see that Romney has raised more than $195 million, that’s just for the 2011-2012 election cycle. 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | The only exception: when a candidate’s account hasn’t been active in the current cycle. In that case, the page defaults to “all years.” Use the drop-down to change the cycle or to see all cycles combined. 12 | 13 | Addicts of political history can roll back the cycle to 1994 when Romney ran for Senate, losing to veteran Democrat Ted Kennedy. 14 | 15 | Youtube Video 16 | 17 | To dive deeper into the data for this election, select 2011-2012. 18 | 19 | Let’s walk through the “Latest FEC Data” section 20 | 21 | Youtube Video 22 | 23 | It’s important to note that campaigns are only required to disclose details on donors that have given $200 or more. The timeline chart therefore only reflects large donations. That’s why the final number in the timeline is less than the reported total raised. For some candidates, a significant portion of their fundraising comes from donors below the reporting limit. 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | Use the links highlighted by the red arrow and download the raw data to analyze any way you like. They allow you 28 | to dig deep and discover the more subtle patterns of influence. We’ll discuss how in a future training. 29 | 30 | Most users will find everything they need right on this page. So let’s scroll down to the next feature, which adds some important information to put the money and influence in context: 31 | independent expenditures. 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | The independent expenditures show you the outside groups who are giving to support or oppose the candidate. Here, Priorities USA Action, the super PAC that supports Barack Obama, leads the, pardon the pun, PAC with its spending opposing Romney. The second spender on the list is A super PAC backing Romney. 36 | 37 | Unlike the campaign finance data, which can be several weeks behind, independent spending must be reported to the Federal Election Commission as it happens, so this information is updated daily. 38 | 39 | Youtube Video 40 | 41 | But let’s head back to Mitt Romney’s Influence Explorer page. 42 | 43 | Further down, we find donor information. 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | You’ll notice a pie chart indicating the percentages of contributions from in state versus out of state. This chart is relevant for elections other than president, which is the only national election, thus the 100% “out of state” figure for Romney. 48 | 49 | To determine “Top Industries,” Influence Explorer relies on data from the Center for Responsive Politics, which categorizes donors by their industries. This is a manual process, so these data lag FEC reports by several months. Nevertheless, this chart gives you a good idea of where a candidate’s deepest gratitude may lie. 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | Beneath the “Top Industries” chart are the “Top Contributors.” You might wonder how, in Romney’s case, Goldman Sachs could have donated $638,580, since corporations are barred from donating directly to political campaigns. 54 | 55 | The answer is that the $638,580 figure, as noted under the heading, “includes contributions from an organization’s employees, their family members and its political action committee.” The chart is designed so that each bar is color-coded by individual contributions (in yellow) and PAC contributions (in orange). As you can see in this chart, all of the “Goldman Sachs” contributions came from individuals. 56 | 57 | Even though the maximum donation to a political candidate is $2,500 per election (the primaries all count as one election), not all maxed-out donors are equal. Some are so-called bundlers, who gather contributions from others and bundle them together. Disclosure laws require the reporting of bundlers who are registered lobbyists, and we list them here: 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | Naturally, clicking on the lobbyist’s names takes you to their Influence Explorer profiles. 62 | 63 | Next comes the parties! The “Recent and upcoming fundraisers” gives you a snapshot of the most recent fundraisers benefiting the politician we’re interested in -- in this case Mitt Romney. [Screenshot of party time list: 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | This data comes from another popular Sunlight database, Political Party Time. Political Party Time is a crowd-sourced site that aggregates and organizes fundraisers being held for the benefit of politicians. Party Time is a great resource that gets better the more contributions we get. So upload those invitations. 68 | 69 | That completes our look at the campaign finance data available in Influence Explorer. Check back soon to 70 | learn how to do advanced searching with IE’s raw data. 71 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------