Government records
The underlying public records (campaign finance reports, roll-call votes, payments, contracts, budgets and similar filings) belong to the public. You do not need our permission to use them, and the original sources are named on every page so you can go straight to them.
Our work: CC BY 4.0
Our own work, meaning our compiled datasets and CSV downloads, maps, charts, tables and the text we write, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You may copy, share, adapt and build on it, including for commercial purposes, as long as you:
- credit SignalData and link to the page you used;
- say if you changed anything (filtered, combined or recalculated figures);
- do not suggest that SignalData endorses you or your use.
How to credit us
A short credit is enough:
Source: SignalData (signaldata.org), from [original record], accessed [date].
For a chart or map, put the credit under the graphic. Online, link “SignalData” to the page you used.
What this license does not cover
- Other publishers’ reporting. When we credit another newsroom’s reporting, their work remains theirs. Link to them.
- Our name and wordmark. The license covers our data and content, not the SignalData name or logo; see the Terms of Use.
- Third-party maps and images, where a page credits someone else.
Keep figures in context
Every figure on SignalData says what it measures and what it is not. Payments, amounts owed, contract ceilings and contributions are different measures and should not be added together. If you reuse a figure, please keep its period and its limits with it. Corrections we make after you download a file are listed in our corrections log.
Questions
For bulk data or a question about reuse, write to info@signaldata.org.