What ENTREPRENEUR donors give in federal races

Volume under a $39.9 million headline

$39,863,198, 76,659 itemizations, and 4,799 donor records are the three occupation-level facts. Mean contribution size is about $520. Mean dollars per donor record is about $8,307. Repeat giving is about 16 contributions per donor record.

The per-line mean sits above high-volume trades such as accountant-style labels and below concentrated dual-executive keys. The packet has no median, so a few large itemizations can still dominate the average.

4,799 donor records used this word on at least one matching line. That is not a count of people who founded companies, and it is not a Small Business Administration roster.

Entrepreneur is not founder and not owner

FOUNDER, OWNER, BUSINESS OWNER, and SELF-EMPLOYED are neighboring occupation strings with their own pages. A donor who prefers ENTREPRENEUR lands here even if the same person might have typed FOUNDER on another form. Combining those keys without naming each source total mixes buckets the FEC file kept apart.

This guide cites only $39,863,198, 76,659 contributions, and 4,799 donors. Best-efforts rules do not force a controlled vocabulary of business titles.

What the occupation column will not tell you

The string does not encode firm size, industry, or whether the donor still operates a business. Retired founders and people using the word loosely can all appear. Occupation is stored per transaction.

LobbyVault does not infer party or motive from the title. Recipient committees are a different join.

Keep industry pages as a separate cut

Industry tables group employer categories. Entrepreneurs in software and entrepreneurs in construction share this occupation string if they typed ENTREPRENEUR. Adding $39,863,198 to an industry total double-counts overlapping itemizations.

Open the ENTREPRENEUR occupation page for rows. Use the occupations index to compare neighboring self-reported business titles.

How to cite the key

A usable sentence is: occupation equals ENTREPRENEUR, dollars equal $39,863,198, contributions equal 76,659, donors equal 4,799, sourced from FEC Form 3/3X itemizations indexed on LobbyVault. Unitemized receipts never carry an occupation code.

If a brief needs “business founders as a group,” list ENTREPRENEUR, FOUNDER, and OWNER as separate lines. This overlay does not add them.

Self-image text versus a founder registry

ENTREPRENEUR in this extract is $39,863,198 on 76,659 itemizations from 4,799 donor records, or $39.9 million in compact millions. Those dollars are itemized activity on FEC Form 3 and Form 3X schedules indexed on LobbyVault from FEC.gov bulk data. Unitemized receipts never carry an occupation code, so they never enter the total. Refunds and memo entries follow FEC presentation in the underlying schedules; this guide does not invent a fourth occupation-level fact. People who start companies also type FOUNDER and OWNER. Those gifts do not sit inside $39,863,198 unless the occupation line actually said ENTREPRENEUR. The occupation field is donor-supplied free text, not a NAICS industry code and not a licensing roster.

Arithmetic means on this key are about $520 per contribution and about $8,307 per donor record, with roughly 16 itemizations per donor record. Means are not medians. The packet has no gift-size distribution and no party split. Neighboring strings such as FOUNDER, OWNER, BUSINESS OWNER, and SELF-EMPLOYED remain other occupation pages unless the bulk extract normalized them to ENTREPRENEUR. Combining those keys without naming each source total changes the unit from one FEC string to a homemade cluster. About 16 itemizations per donor record is a filing cadence, not a measure of how many ventures a person launched.

Industry pages group employer-side categories and should not be added to $39,863,198. A person who listed ENTREPRENEUR on some gifts and a neighboring title on others will appear in both occupation totals for the respective lines, because occupation is stored per transaction. A public-record citation that stays inside the packet is: occupation equals ENTREPRENEUR, dollars equal $39,863,198, contributions equal 76,659, donors equal 4,799. Candidate and committee pages hold the recipient side. LobbyVault does not infer motive from the occupation column.

Researchers who need cycle cuts, employer text, or recipient lists should leave this guide and open the live occupation hub. This file restates harvested packet facts only. Compact millions ($39.9 million) are the same headline amount as $39,863,198, rounded to one decimal place. Keep the contribution count and the donor-record count in any sentence that quotes the dollars, so readers can see whether ENTREPRENEUR is a high-volume stack, a concentrated pool, or a high-repeat status label. Exact-string matching is the method. Anything else is a different query.

Questions

How much have ENTREPRENEUR donors given in FEC records?

Itemizations that list ENTREPRENEUR sum to $39,863,198 across 76,659 contributions and 4,799 donor records in the LobbyVault index of FEC bulk data. The figure is an occupation-string total, not a census of company founders. Occupation is self-reported free text on FEC Form 3 and Form 3X schedules. Unitemized receipts never enter this occupation total.

Is FOUNDER included in the ENTREPRENEUR total?

No. FOUNDER, OWNER, and BUSINESS OWNER are separate occupation strings. This page covers ENTREPRENEUR only: $39,863,198, 76,659 contributions, and 4,799 donors. Name each key if you add them. Occupation is self-reported free text on FEC Form 3 and Form 3X schedules. Unitemized receipts never enter this occupation total.

What is the average ENTREPRENEUR contribution?

Dividing $39,863,198 by 76,659 itemizations yields about $520 per contribution. Dividing by 4,799 donors yields about $8,307 per donor record. Both are means, not medians. Unitemized receipts never enter this occupation total. Occupation is self-reported free text on FEC Form 3 and Form 3X schedules. Unitemized receipts never enter this occupation total.

Does ENTREPRENEUR encode the donor’s industry?

No. Occupation is a contributor-title field. Industry pages group employer categories and are a different cut. Cite 76,659 contributions and 4,799 donor records with the $39,863,198 headline when quoting this string. Occupation is self-reported free text on FEC Form 3 and Form 3X schedules. Unitemized receipts never enter this occupation total.