If you follow politics at all, you've come to understand that money plays a tremendous role in influencing the outcome of elections and the legislation being proposed or opposed in Congress and state legislatures.  But, perhaps you've wondered who is giving away all that money?  How are they donating it?  Or, who are the big recipients of the money?  

If you're looking for this type of information, there are two very helpful websites that can help you connect the dots between funding and policy-making: the Federal Election Commission (FEC) website and Opensecrets.org.  

The FEC webiste grants access to a wide array of data, although the easiest information to find relates to campaign contributors for the current Presidential, House, and Senate elections.  With just a few clicks on an interactive map, users can find out who is giving money to which candidate, how much they are giving, and how much the candidate has raised.   

Digging through the FEC site further, users can find rules for campaign contributions, information about political action committees, individual and group donors by name, amount donated, and candidate the money went to, summaries of election cycle spending trends dating back to 1982, and campaign contributions for every political campaign dating back to 1999.  

Outside of the mapping features displayed above, the site can be a bit difficult to navigate.  If you're looking to really digg through the dirt, you should start by searching the disclosure database.  Doing so enables you to search for information by candidate, election year, committee, or by individual donor - a helpful tool for finding out the influence of a particular person among a group of legislators.

Similar to the FEC site, Opensecrets.org, a project of the Center for Responsive Politics, connects users to information about campaign contributors.   The site is much easier to use than the FEC's, allowing users to easily browse information by who's giving and who's getting. 

Opensecrets.org highlights the top donors and which political party they are giving more money to, gives users the ability to browse by the industry donating, the business or individual donating by name, state, and year going back to 1990, and who are the top recipients of the money trail.