IBM as FEC employer text: $10.5 million

A ticker-length firm name on Schedule A

LobbyVault’s industry table ranks grouped employer text from FEC.gov individual receipts. IBM is the abbreviation committees stored when filers typed those three letters. The $10,520,465 total is those itemized gifts. It is not IBM’s disclosed committee PAC spending, not federal contract awards, and not a NAICS 5415 or 3341 rollup of information-technology services.

People who typed IBM CORPORATION, INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES, IBM GLOBAL SERVICES, or ENGINEER without the company sit in other rows. LobbyVault does not recode those variants into this key. Former employees who still write IBM share the string with current staff; the FEC field is not an HR roster.

1,877 donors and 64,416 contribution lines

1,877 unique donors produced 64,416 IBM contribution lines totaling $10,520,465. That is on the order of 34 itemized receipts per donor — a paperwork volume closer to recurring payroll-style giving than to a handful of large one-time gifts. The packet does not publish a mean gift as its own FEC field.

Party share is not on the industry headline. Independent expenditures and the company’s committee PAC filings sit outside the $10,520,465 unless an individual receipt itself carries this employer string. Unitemized gifts never appear. Repeat names among 64,416 lines are expected.

Tech-employer siblings this string does not include

GOOGLE, GOOGLE INC., MICROSOFT, and MICROSOFT CORPORATION are separate employer-name keys. Combining them with IBM would invent a researcher-built technology recode. This page stays at $10,520,465 for IBM only. ENGINEER and DEVELOPER remain occupation-style rows that may include IBM staff who omitted the company name.

Occupation pages show titles stored beside IBM — software engineer, consultant, retired, sales. Those titles are as typed. They do not recode the employer box. A donor who put CONSULTANT in the employer field is not in these 1,877 people.

Donor table without product or contract inference

The IBM donor table lists disclosed names, amounts, and recipient committees. A large gift is a public individual contribution. LobbyVault does not attach a mainframe sale, a federal IT contract, or a motive to that line. Follow committees on the table for party and office; this guide does not assign a partisan percentage to the three-letter string.

Coverage is itemized federal individual receipts. State filings, 527 activity, and unitemized small gifts are omitted. The ranking uses FEC employer/occupation self-reports, not NAICS. Open the IBM donor table for the underlying names.

Source and what the $10.5 million omits

FEC.gov via LobbyVault: $10,520,465, 64,416 contributions, 1,877 donors, top employer IBM. Labels are FEC employer/occupation self-reports, not a Census industry. The company’s PAC reports and USAspending award tables are different datasets.

Keep IBM’s $10,520,465 on this abbreviation. INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES and IBM CORPORATION stay on their own keys if they exist as stored text. Occupation breakdowns show titles beside IBM. Cite FEC.gov via LobbyVault, not a NAICS computer-systems total.

IBM CORP and ENGINEER remain other stored strings

IBM as three letters is not IBM CORPORATION, INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES, or IBM GLOBAL SERVICES. Those spellings, when committees stored them, sit on other keys. The $10,520,465 total, 64,416 contribution lines, and 1,877 donors describe this abbreviation only. ENGINEER and DEVELOPER still hold staff who omitted the company. MICROSOFT CORPORATION and GOOGLE INC. remain sibling tech-employer rows, not a combined sector.

Unitemized gifts, state filings, independent expenditures that lack this employer string, and the company PAC stay outside the $10,520,465. Occupation pages show titles beside IBM. Alumni who still type the three letters remain in the 1,877. The FEC field is not an HR export and not a NAICS computer-systems table. Repeat names among 64,416 lines are expected; the field is transactional.

Open the IBM donor table for disclosed names and recipient committees. A large gift is a public individual contribution, not a mainframe or federal-IT contract inference. Cite $10,520,465, 64,416 contributions, and 1,877 donors from FEC.gov via LobbyVault. Labels are FEC employer/occupation self-reports. Do not add ENGINEER to IBM and call the sum a technology industry.

Researchers who want a fuller IBM family must document each extra spelling. IBM CORPORATION and INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES are other keys if they appear as stored text. The $10,520,465 figure does not grow when those rows exist; it stays on the three-letter cluster of 1,877 donors and 64,416 lines. ENGINEER as an industry key is still the wrong place to park omitted company names. MICROSOFT CORPORATION and GOOGLE INC. stay on their own pages. Follow recipient committees on the IBM donor table. Party share is not computed on the industry headline. Source: FEC.gov via LobbyVault, self-reported employer text, not NAICS and not the company PAC.

Questions

How much have IBM-listed donors given federally?

LobbyVault attributes $10,520,465 to the IBM employer string, from 64,416 contributions and 1,877 donors. These are itemized individual receipts, not the company’s PAC and not a NAICS information-technology total. Unitemized gifts and non-federal filings are omitted from that figure. Figures on this answer are limited to that FEC employer string as indexed on LobbyVault; unitemized gifts and non-federal filings are omitted.

Is this IBM corporate political spending?

No. The $10,520,465 total is individual contributions whose employer text grouped to IBM. Corporate treasury and committee PAC filings are other FEC categories. Federal contract obligations are a different dataset. Figures here are limited to that FEC employer string as indexed on LobbyVault.

Does this include Microsoft or Google employees?

No. MICROSOFT, MICROSOFT CORPORATION, GOOGLE, and GOOGLE INC. are separate employer strings. A receipt counted here carries the grouped text IBM. Staff who typed only ENGINEER sit in that occupation-style row instead. Unitemized gifts are omitted. Coverage is itemized federal individual receipts only.

Why so many contributions from 1,877 donors?

The 64,416 lines include repeat gifts from the same 1,877 people — on the order of 34 itemized receipts per donor. Recurring itemized programs raise the line count. The FEC field is transactional, not a once-per-employee census. Coverage is itemized federal receipts only.