# Political Payola (`politicalpayola.com`) — Governance, Ethics, Conflict of Interest & Donor Transparency Policy

**Effective Date:** November 2, 2026  
**Compliance Standards:** Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) Membership Standards · International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) Code of Principles · IRS Section 501(c)(3) Public-Charity Nonpartisanship Mandate (`26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(3)`)  
**Founder & Project Director:** Tristan Jordan (Political Science Graduate & Civic Data Researcher — Pueblo, Colorado)  
**Public Verification Repository:** `https://github.com/jjordanjr74-dot/politicalpayola-site`

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## 1. Nonpartisan 501(c)(3) Public-Charity Charter & Prohibited Political Activity
Political Payola is an open-access, nonpartisan civic data, legislative transparency, and public-health literacy archive indexing **5,309 primary-source verified records across 26 modules** (1981–2026).

In strict compliance with **Internal Revenue Code § 501(c)(3)**, **Revenue Ruling 2007-41**, and **Revenue Ruling 78-248**:
1. **Zero Candidate Intervention:** Political Payola does not endorse, oppose, rate on a partisan scale, or contribute funds to any candidate for federal, state, or local public office, nor any political party or political action committee (PAC).
2. **Equal-Standard Comprehensive Coverage:** All **539 voting and non-voting members of the 119th U.S. Congress**, all **50 U.S. states + D.C.**, and all major political parties are evaluated using identical, automated schema fields (`FEC.gov` receipts, `Congress.gov` roll-call votes, `CBO` fiscal scores, `DOJ`/`Ethics` dockets, and peer-reviewed *JAMA*/*NEJM*/*KFF*/*NBER* indicators).
3. **No Grassroots Lobbying Expenditure of Grant Funds (`IRC § 4945(d)(1)`):** Private foundation and public charity grant proceeds are restricted 100% to nonpartisan public education, bilingual (`EN/ES`) civic data engineering, rural accessibility, and academic/classroom curriculum distribution. No grant funds are ever used to urge readers to support or oppose specific legislation.

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## 2. Editorial Independence & Donor Transparency Firewall (INN Standard)
Political Payola maintains an absolute firewall between revenue/philanthropic funding and editorial/data curation:
- **Zero Corporate PAC or Politician Funding:** Political Payola accepts **$0** from political candidates, party committees, corporate PACs, or registered lobbying entities.
- **$5,000+ Public Donor Disclosure:** In accordance with Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) standards, Political Payola publicly discloses all foundation grantmakers, institutional sponsors, and individual donors contributing **$5,000 or more** in any calendar year on this page.
- **No Funder Review of Data:** Grantmakers, fiscal sponsors, and commercial API/research subscribers have zero prior review, veto, or editing rights over dataset records, legislative vote tables, media bias classifications, or corruption dockets.
- **Dual-Track Fiscal Accounting:** Earned commercial licensing revenue (WebMCP API access, newsroom embed widgets, and archival primary-source verification binders) is accounted for separately from restricted 501(c)(3) philanthropic grant awards.

### Current Institutional Funding & Disclosure Ledger (2026)
- **Candidate / Corporate PAC Contributions Accepted:** `$0.00` (Permanently Prohibited)
- **Open-Source Infrastructure & Maintainer Support:** Self-funded & community-supported by Founder Tristan Jordan (Pueblo, CO); open-access codebase hosted publicly under `CC-BY-4.0`.
- **Philanthropic Grants & Fiscal Sponsorships ($5,000+):** Updated within 15 business days of award execution.

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## 3. Advisory & Peer-Review Governance Structure
To satisfy institutional foundation governance requirements while operating as an agile civic-technology project:
1. **Project Director & Lead Researcher:** **Tristan Jordan** (B.A. Political Science; Pueblo, Colorado) oversees primary-source schema design, nonpartisan balance verification, and bilingual community partnerships across Southern Colorado.
2. **Independent Civic, Academic & Journalism Advisory Review:** Dataset methodologies, grade-10 readability translations, and classroom civics modules undergo open public review via GitHub pull requests (`jjordanjr74-dot/politicalpayola-site`) and advisory review by Colorado secondary civics educators, public-health translators, and open-data engineers.
3. **Conflict-of-Interest Recusal Rule:** Any contributor, advisor, or researcher who has worked for, advised, or donated to a candidate or campaign within the past 24 months is barred from authoring or editing records pertaining to that race or jurisdiction without independent dual-key verification against raw federal filings (`FEC.gov` / `Congress.gov`).

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## 4. Public Corrections & 24-Hour Right-of-Reply SLA
Every record on `politicalpayola.com` must link directly to an official statutory, judicial, or peer-reviewed primary source.
- **How to Submit a Correction:** Any lawmaker, state agency, newsroom, researcher, or citizen may submit a documented correction request with a primary-source URL via our GitHub Issue Tracker (`https://github.com/jjordanjr74-dot/politicalpayola-site/issues`) or editorial desk (`corrections@politicalpayola.com`).
- **24-Hour SLA:** Verified mathematical, transcription, or broken-link errors are patched in both the raw JSON module and the live site bundle within **24 hours**, with a permanent timestamped entry in our public Git commit history.