Require corporations to disclose campaign spending to shareholders within 24 hours
Campaign finance
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
This position asks companies to tell their own shareholders where political money goes, something any board can adopt without legislation. Owner action has already moved most large firms. The 2024 CPA-Zicklin Index found 394 S&P 500 companies fully or partly disclose political spending or prohibit some of it. It counted 103 companies scoring 90 percent or higher, up from 35 in 2016. The Index links several of the largest single-year gains to shareholder disclosure proposals. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility already pursues this through the proxy ballot; its members filed 23 election spending disclosure proposals in the 2025 season alone.
How this was scoredPivotal
Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Common Ground of the American People: Government & Elections, Program for Public Consultation / Voice of the People, 2026 (study August 2017)
- 2024 CPA-Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Disclosure and Accountability, Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, 2024-11-06
- Investors File 60 Proposals Calling for Transparency Around Corporate Political Activity, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2025-04-01
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Members filed 23 election spending disclosure proposals and 32 lobbying disclosure proposals in the 2025 season, with filers including United Church Funds, Zevin Asset Management and Trillium Asset Management.
Coordinates an annual campaign of shareholder proposals asking boards to oversee and disclose political spending from corporate treasury funds.
5 campaigns on record
Adopt board oversight and accountability policies for political spending using corporate treasury funds and disclose that spending.
Result: 12 proposals voted with average support of 31.7 percent; four above 42.5 percent; 10 companies implemented some or all of the proposal by agreement
One company that excluded the proposal settled litigation by agreeing to partial implementation; another reversed its exclusion and substantially implemented the proposal before its meeting.
Adopt board oversight and disclosure of political spending made with corporate funds.
Result: Majority support at all five, including 57.7 percent at Meritage Homes, 52.7 percent at Crown Holdings and 51 percent at Teradyne
Disclose election spending and lobbying and strengthen board oversight of corporate political activity.
With United Church Funds, Zevin Asset Management, Trillium Asset Management, Center for Political Accountability
Result: Eight companies reached withdrawal agreements; six proposals went to votes; Air Products and more than 13 other companies won SEC challenges to omit proposals
AbbVie agreed to changes and the proposal there was withdrawn.
The resolution asked AT&T to publicly disclose how its political contributions align with the company's own stated public-policy priorities and sustainability goals.
Result: Withdrawn after AT&T agreed to As You Sow's request.
AT&T committed to publish data on how its political spending aligns with its stated positions. We could not confirm that this data has since appeared in the company's published political engagement reporting.
The CPA-Zicklin Index scores companies on whether they disclose political spending, how they set internal rules on political contributions, and whether the board oversees that spending.
Result: The 2022 edition was the first to cover the full Russell 1000; 78% of S&P 500 companies fully or partially disclosed political spending or restricted at least one type of spending, and the average S&P 500 score rose 3% year over year.
More than half of S&P 500 companies had board-level oversight of political spending by 2022, according to the source, reflecting a trend of rising disclosure scores over the decade the index has run (since 2012).
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Common Ground of the American People's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.