What is a joint fundraising committee (JFC)?

A joint fundraising committee (JFC) is a fundraising structure established by Federal Election Commission regulations at 11 C.F.R. Section 102.17, promulgated under the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA, 52 U.S.C. Section 30101 et seq.). Two or more authorized political committees -- which may include a federal candidate's authorized committee, a national party committee, a state party committee, a political action committee, or any combination of these -- may form a JFC by executing a written joint fundraising agreement. The agreement specifies how contributions collected by the JFC will be allocated among the participants and designates one participant or a newly created committee to serve as the joint fundraising representative, operating the JFC's dedicated bank account and administering its events and solicitations. Unlike a super PAC, which may not give any money directly to a candidate or party, a JFC does not make independent expenditures; instead it acts as an agent that collects contributions and passes them through to each participant in the portions the agreement specifies.

When a donor responds to a JFC solicitation and makes a contribution, the JFC applies the written allocation formula to distribute the payment among the participants. The portion allocated to each participant is treated as a direct contribution from the donor to that committee, subject to the same per-election contribution limits that would apply to a direct gift. If a donor's total contribution would, when allocated, cause any participant's share to exceed that participant's applicable per-election limit, the JFC may not accept the excess portion for that participant; the donor may still give up to the amount that would be properly allocable to the remaining participants. Each participant continues to file its own FEC disclosure reports reflecting its share of receipts from the JFC; the JFC itself must also register with the FEC as a political committee and file its own periodic reports if it raises or spends more than $1,000 in connection with a federal election. This dual-reporting structure means that a researcher can trace the contributions both in the JFC's filings and in the filings of every individual participating committee, all of which are publicly searchable at fec.gov.

The practical advantage of a JFC is that it allows a campaign and its affiliated party committees to conduct a single fundraising event or mail a single solicitation that captures contributions intended for all participants simultaneously. A donor at a presidential JFC reception can write one check (or authorize one credit-card charge) for an amount up to the sum of the per-election limits applicable to each participating committee, rather than writing multiple separate checks to multiple separate committees. The JFC then handles the allocation paperwork. This reduces friction for large donors and allows campaigns to efficiently cultivate their highest-capacity donors -- those who can give the maximum to multiple recipients -- in a single interaction. JFCs also allow campaigns and party committees to share the administrative costs of major fundraising events, though each participant must still bear the costs attributable to its own share in accordance with FEC regulations.

McCutcheon v. FEC, 572 U.S. 185 (2014), significantly expanded the practical power of JFCs. Before McCutcheon, FECA imposed aggregate biennial contribution limits: a single donor could not give more than a specified total to all federal candidates combined and to all party committees and PACs combined in a two-year election cycle. These aggregate caps constrained JFC giving because even if each individual allocation to a participant was within that participant's per-election limit, a donor who had already given to multiple other committees could hit the aggregate ceiling and be unable to contribute fully through the JFC. Justice Breyer's dissent in McCutcheon specifically identified JFCs as a circumvention risk without aggregate limits: a wealthy donor could contribute the per-election base limit to each of many participants through a single JFC event, channeling large aggregate sums across many campaigns without a cumulative ceiling. After McCutcheon struck the aggregate limits as unconstitutional, the only constraints on JFC giving are the per-entity per-election base limits applicable to each individual participant -- limits the Court upheld in Buckley v. Valeo (1976) as valid anti-corruption measures and left intact in McCutcheon.

For the 2028 presidential election, JFCs are expected to be a primary vehicle for major fundraising events by presidential campaigns and their affiliated national party committees. Presidential candidates typically establish JFCs with the national party shortly after clinching the nomination or even during the primary season. Because the individual per-election contribution limits are adjusted by the FEC for inflation each election cycle under the indexing mechanism that BCRA established, the exact dollar limits applicable to each participating committee in a 2028 JFC will be announced by the FEC before the 2028 cycle begins. All contributions made through a JFC are subject to FECA's disclosure requirements: contributions above $200 must be itemized in FEC reports, and all reports are publicly searchable in real time at fec.gov, allowing voters and journalists to monitor which donors are funding 2028 presidential campaigns through joint fundraising arrangements.