Returns FEC Schedule A contribution data — money flowing INTO federal committees — in AGGREGATED form. Individual donors are never exposed as searchable per-record rows: the FEC sale-or-use rule (11 CFR 104.15) permits aggregated presentation only, so this tool serves group totals and a bounded ORGANISATION leaderboard (the same posture as Quiver Quantitative's public pages). Source: api.open.fec.gov (official FEC API), queried live per request with a cached-rollup fallback (responses carry source: live | cache). THREE MODES (pick one): 1. Aggregate totals — pass group_by: - group_by='employer' + recipient_committee_id + cycle → total + count per employer for that committee (FEC-computed, all itemized rows). E.g. which employers' workforces fund committee X. - group_by='state' + recipient_committee_id + cycle → geographic fundraising pattern for a committee. ⚠ On employer and state rows, contribution_count is the number of CONTRIBUTIONS, not contributors — the FEC publishes no contributor count for these aggregates. A cell can carry a dozen contributions from ONE person (measured: an employer cell with 14 contributions and a single contributor). Do not read it as a crowd, and do not use it to judge whether a cell describes a population or an individual. - group_by='candidate' + cycle (optionally candidate_id) → per- candidate cycle receipts, itemized-individual share, disbursements, cash on hand. Sorted by receipts DESC — 'who raised the most'. - group_by='committee' + recipient_committee_id (cycle optional) → that committee's cycle totals. Top-committee LISTS come from the rollup cache and may lag a day. - group_by='cycle' + candidate_id or recipient_committee_id → per-cycle rows across cycles (fundraising trajectory). 2. Donor leaderboard — pass leaderboard=true + cycle + EXACTLY ONE scope: recipient_committee_id | candidate_id | contributor_state | contributor_employer. Returns top ORGANISATION donors (PAC / party / committee / company) as name + summed total + contribution count, PLUS the individual side as STATISTICS ONLY: individual_donor_count and individual_total. NO median and NO maximum are served — each is one person's number (a median over an odd count IS one contributor's gift) and re-identifies against the FEC's own site. ⚠ SMALL-CELL FLOOR: when fewer than 5 distinct individuals contributed in the scope, the whole individual block is WITHHELD — count and total both null, suppressed=true, and the envelope carries suppressed_small_cells. Three donors plus a total is three people's gifts nearly reconstructed, and the scope is public. The organisation board is never floored; entities are not natural persons. NO NATURAL PERSON IS NAMED BY THIS TOOL, IN ANY MODE. A paid service ranking named individuals by their contribution history is a prohibited commercial use of contributor lists (11 CFR 104.15; 52 U.S.C. 30111(a)(4)). An empty organisation list means no organisation gave in that scope above the floor — it is never a reason to look for people. No addresses, no city/ZIP, no per-record rows. The response's leaderboard.complete flag is true when every itemized row at or above the fixed $1,000 floor (min_amount is not accepted in this mode) for the scope was aggregated — totals are then exact; otherwise the pull hit its page cap and ranks are amount-weighted approximations. 3. Per-record (NON-INDIVIDUAL only) — pass entity_type (COM, CCM, PAC, PTY, ORG) with optional recipient_committee_id / candidate_id / contributor_state / cycle / amount / date filters, or sub_id for a direct lookup. Individual (IND) rows are never returned per-record; memo subtotals are excluded by default (exclude_memos=false to include). Useful for PAC-to-PAC transfer analysis. There is NO contributor_name search and no individual street/city/ZIP anywhere in this tool's output — by design, permanently. Killer query patterns: - Who raised the most this cycle? group_by='candidate' + cycle=2026. - Who funds Senator X? get_fec_candidate_profile → principal committee → leaderboard=true + recipient_committee_id + cycle. - Which employers' staff fund committee Y? group_by='employer' + recipient_committee_id + cycle. - Where does committee Y's money come from? group_by='state' + recipient_committee_id + cycle. - PAC-to-PAC flows into committee Z? entity_type='PAC' + recipient_committee_id.