One of Sunlight's signature grantees, MAPLight.org, just launched a revolutionary new revolutionary search engine that reveals the connections between money and politics within Congress by effectively and elegantly presenting data from official voting records archived by Library of Congress with campaign contributions tracked and compiled by Sunlight grantee, the Center for Responsive Politics.

MAPLight.org's work truly embodies how to use Web 2.0 technology to shed light on the power campaign contributions have on federal legislation.

When MAPLight.org's Executive Director Dan Newman showed us a prototype to allow citizens to learn at the click of a mouse which special interests were donating to legislators ­ and how those legislators were voting on specific issues and bills, we knew MAPLight.org was onto something extraordinary that would simplify how journalists and citizens can investigate the federal
money and voting trail.

Sunlight is pleased to have made an initial grant of $77,000 to support the development of the federal money and politics search engine MAPLight.org launched yesterday. We are even more pleased to announce a Sunlight Foundation grant of $200,000 to support MAPLight.org's core operations for the next year as they further extend and enhance the application.

The Sunlight Foundation is proud to provide core funding for MAPlight.org's federal work ­ especially as their work ties specifically to Sunlight's mission to empower citizens with tools they can use to learn what their elected representatives are doing to become their own best watchdogs — ultimately ensuring greater accountability, transparency and public trust in Congress.

I encourage you to bookmark MAPLight.org, watch the short screencast about this extraordinary to project and start using the site to track whose money is influencing how your member of Congress votes on issues you care about.