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Last week, the annual CPA/Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Disclosure and Accountability - benchmarking S&P 500 corporate political spending practices and disclosure - was released. Among the key findings:

- Publicly available policies: In 2016, 56% of companies (from 52% in 2015) had a detailed policy governing corporate political spending on their websites, while 33% (down from 35% in 2015) provided brief, somewhat vague policies.

- Voluntary Disclosure & Shareholder Engagement: Just over 40% of the S&P 500 have been subject to a shareholder corporate political spending proposal. Of those, 61% have reached agreements with shareholders. A minority of the companies that have not received a proposal disclosed some level of information on direct expenditures, 501(c)(4) payments, and/or trade association payments (or said they don't make them).

- Board Oversight in 2016 compared to 2015:

• 47% (from 43% in 2015) of S&P 500 boards regularly oversee political spending.
• 34% (from 30% in 2015) have a board committee that reviews the company's political spending policy.
• 38% (from 34% in 2015) have a board committee that reviews the company's political expenditures.
• 30% (from 24% in 2015) have a board committee that reviews the company's payments to trade associations.

Number of Companies with Oversight Policies by Type

See also this article from The Washington Post, this post "Political Contributions Disclosure: Where Does Your Company Rank and Why Does it Matter" from The Conference Board Senior Fellow and Society member Rhonda Brauer (reported on here), and additional resources on our Political Contributions & Disclosure topical page.