Obama’s nonprofit gets more big donors

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The latest release of donor information from President Barack Obama's nonprofit group Friday showed that Organizing for Action raised significantly more money than it did in the first quarter of its existence — and more from big givers.

Here is a downloadable .csv file of all the donors who gave $250 or more. Unlike the information released on the Organizing for Action webpage, the file Sunlight is providing here can easily be searched and sorted by donors' names, the amounts they gave and by their states and cities of residence.

OFA, an offshoot of the president's campaign committee, Obama for America, which uses the same acronym, brought in $8.2 million in the second quarter compared to $4.8 million between January and March.

Overall this year, OFA  has raised $13.1 million from more than 237,000 individuals, the group announced. As a 501(c)4 nonprofit, it is not required to disclose donors to the public. OFA faced criticism after it launched for not swearing off corporate donations and saying it would only disclose donations in broad ranges, policies it reversed in March

Since that first disclosure, the checks have gotten larger. Of donors who have given $10,000 or more since OFA's founding, 66 percent came during the second quarter. There were eight six-figure donations in the second quarter as opposed to four in the preceding one. The $10,000 club represented one-third of its haul in the second quarter compared to 27 percent in the earlier period.

Two donors gave $500,000 in the second quarter: Chicago gay rights activist and publisher Fred Eychaner and David E Shaw, a New York computer scientist who started his own hedge fund, D.E. Shaw & Co. Amy Goldman, a philantropist and author of gardening books, gave $250,000.

No Democrat donated more to super PACs in the 2012 election than Eychaner — at $14 million. Shaw was also a big super PAC giver, gifting $1.8 million to Priorities USA Action, which supported President Obama, and Majority PAC, which backed Senate candidates. Eychaner bundled at least $500,000 for the Obama campaign in 2012 and Shaw bundled between $200,000 and $500,000. 

Other six-figure donors in the second quarter include Jon Stryker, a billionaire gay activist and medical supply company heir who gave $2.5 million to super PACs in the last election; Stephen Cloobeck, the CEO of an international resorts company who donated $100,000 to Majority PAC; and William and Judith Scheide, a retired Princeton, N.J. couple. Another $100,000 giver is Kenneth Levine of Boston, Mass. That could be the same Ken Levine who contributed over $70,000 to the president's reelection and is the vice president of software security company McAfee.

OFA's policy is to disclose donors who have given at least $250. Those donors have accounted for $5.7 million of the $13.1 million raised thus far.

Most of the group's top donors have not contributed in both quarters but two have: Venture capitalist Imaad Zuberi and Utah-based Ryan Smith, the founder of a data company. 

The average gift to OFA has been $55 this year, which is up from an average of $44 for just first quarter, OFA reported.

 

(Photo credit: Intel Photos via Flickr)