Methodology

How every listing is sourced.

Three kinds of information, three different standards of evidence, never blended into one score.

Tier 1

Verified record — public donation filings

Where a business owner has made a reportable political donation, Disclosr shows the literal filing — who, how much, to whom, and when — sourced from FEC records (federal) or a state's own campaign finance database, with a direct link to the original filing.

What this is not: a donation record is not a vote. We never translate "donated $X to [Candidate]" into "leans Republican" or "leans Democrat." The record speaks for itself, exactly as filed.

Tier 2

In their own words — documented public statements

When a business or its owner has posted something publicly (on TikTok, Instagram, or elsewhere) that's relevant to how they present themselves, we show it as a direct, verbatim quote — never paraphrased, never summarized into our own words — with a link back to the original post.

  • Quotes are copied exactly, including enough surrounding context that we're not distorting the meaning.
  • Every quote links to its source, and where possible is archived in case the original post is later deleted.
  • We do not editorialize on top of a quote or characterize what it "really means" — it's shown, not interpreted.

Know of a Tier 1 or Tier 2 source for a business we don't have one for yet? Report it — every report is manually checked against this same standard before anything changes.

Tier 3

Self-reported — verified business profiles

A verified business owner or employee can create a profile for their farm or stand and, if they choose, state their own values or political stance in their own words. This is the lowest-risk category of all — it's the business's own speech about itself, published through an account they control, and they can edit or remove it at any time.

How verification actually works

Most small farms and roadside stands don't have a formal business email or an LLC. Requiring one would exclude exactly the businesses this directory is meant to help. So verification works on a ladder, and we use whatever level of proof a given business actually has:

If they have paperwork

Formal documentation

A business license, seller's permit, state agricultural or cottage-food registration, or an EIN letter.

If they don't, but have a public presence

Cross-checked public signals

An existing public social media account consistently tied to the farm, a photo or short video confirmation, or a match against a public listing (a farmers market vendor roster, a county agricultural extension list, a USDA local food directory). Two or three of these together are treated as sufficient — no single "gotcha" document is required.

If neither exists yet

Manual confirmation

A direct phone call to an independently-found number — a farmers market booth, a market organizer, or a number visible on a physical sign. Slower, but it works for anyone, including sellers with no online footprint of their own.

Every business account is manually reviewed before it goes live. We don't auto-approve submissions, because a falsely "verified" account posting a false statement is worse than an anonymous comment — it carries our platform's implied confirmation that we checked, so we actually have to check.

What we deliberately do not do

  • We do not scrape social media and guess at anyone's politics from tone, imagery, music, or engagement patterns.
  • We do not publish a "leans left / leans right" label on any business unless that business said so themselves.
  • We do not allow open public comments where strangers can post unsourced claims about a business's politics — that's the single biggest source of harassment and moderation risk, and we're not willing to ship it. What we do allow is reporting a specific Tier 1 or Tier 2 source someone found -- a real donation filing or a real direct quote. A report is never published on its own say-so: it sits in a review queue until we've actually opened the link and confirmed it meets the same standard described above, exactly like any other Tier 1/2 entry on this page.
  • Red and blue only ever appear on the map to reflect a business's own declared stance — and even then, they're not the only two options. A business that declares something other than the two major parties (independent, libertarian, or anything else) gets its own separate color rather than being forced into a binary.

Questions or corrections

If something on Disclosr is wrong, or a business wants a correction or removal, see Contact.