Robert Maguire for the Center for Responsive Politics:

A social welfare group called Carolina Rising spent 97 percent of the money it raised in the 2014 midterm elections — nearly $5 million — running ads that helped Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) defeat the incumbent Democrat that cycle.

The group, formed by political operative Dallas Woodhouse in late March 2014, did virtually nothing else. Its first tax filing, obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics, shows that the organization raised nearly $4.9 million in its first year — $4.8 million of it from a single donor;  nearly all of that went out the door to a prominent political media firm in Virginia for ads mentioning Tillis, while the rest was spent on payments to an LLC started by Woodhouse only months earlier.

The stark set of facts raises questions not only about whether the group spent the majority of its funds on political activity — verboten for nonprofits claiming 501(c)(4) status under the tax code — but about whether Carolina Rising was devoted to helping a single individual. That would violate an IRS rule barring social welfare organizations from benefiting one person — the so-called “private benefit” prohibition.

As OpenSecrets Blog prepared to publish this post, the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (with which this blog has no affiliation) filed complaints with the IRS accusing Carolina Rising and a 501(c)(4) group working to help elect GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio of spending the vast majority of their money on behalf of a single candidate, in violation of the agencie’s rules.