Lobbying Methodology
Predicated on the values-based statement: that companies should spend no money lobbying governments.
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In the United States, all lobbyists are required to report to the US Senate their active lobbying clients and the amount those clients spent on lobbying fees during each quarter of the year. Companies are also required to report the total amount they spend on lobbying each quarter. This data is then made available to the general public for perusal or download, updated on a quarterly basis. This Spendwell ranking is predicated on the values-based statement that companies should spend no money lobbying governments.
For Spendwell’s rankings, companies spending less on lobbying rank higher than companies spending more on lobbying. In order to account for fluctuations in political cycles, Spendwell reports on the last 5 available years of a company’s lobbying history.
At a minimum, Spendwell’s corporate and commercial impact reporting requires 2 fundamental criteria for including a data point in an individual value ranking: it must be directly measurable and it must be publicly accessible. These 2 criteria help ethics-driven people understand Spendwell’s rankings by ensuring they are able to access data points at their source and immediately compare data points from 1 company to another (through the Spendwell web app). You can access the source data Spendwell uses for any company’s lobbying activity through the following query tool:
Search for a company by name to view its filed lobbying reports or reports filed on its behalf.