Important Terms to Understand When Discussing Campaign Finance.

As a political science major who believes that campaign finance is a serious subject that is often overlooked and under-discussed, I have realized that there are quite a few terms vital to discussing campaign finance that most people do not fully grasp.
This is a list of [some] basic terms that I believe to be vital to the understanding and discussion of campaign finance.

1. Interest Group: a group of institutions or individuals that share similar interests and opinions who unite to work together to influence political outcomes. Keep in mind that there are various types of interest groups, but that is a topic for a different time.
2. Political Action Committees (PACs): organizations that raise, collect, and distribute campaign contributions throughout the United States. PACs typically donate to both Democratic and Republican candidates equally.
3. Democratic corporatism: a system in which interest groups operate on the inside as partners with the democratic government.
4. Interest group pluralism: a system in which interest groups operate outside of the system and independent from the democratic government.
5. Bundling: This process requires combining smaller individual contributions together to make a single large contribution to a candidate running for office. Bundling allows candidates to look as if they are refusing donations from PACs to avoid organized interest groups, however, bundling does typically include donations from interest groups.
6. Campaign involvement: strategy of United States interest groups that include activities including, but not limited to: registering voters, working on behalf of candidates, speaking to candidates and convincing them to support certain positions, joining and shaping political parties decisions, and making campaign contributions.
7. Direct contributions: contributions that are directly given to the candidate.
8. Independent Expenditures: money that is spent on behalf of a candidate without being directly donated to the candidate.
9. Soft money: this is money that is given indirectly to support a campaign. This money is primarily donated by organized interest groups and used for party-building activities and programs.

   There we go, a list of terms that are vital to the discussion of campaign finance. Are there some terms that you believe that I missed? If so, please add them in the comments below!