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The American Future Fund is among dozens of interest groups whose influence on campaigns has surged following a Supreme Court ruling that relaxed restrictions on corporate and union donations. Greiner and representatives for her group did not return several messages this week seeking comment about where the group gets its money and who is involved.

So far this year, at least $5.6 million has been spent in Massachusetts by outside groups, almost all of it during Scott Brown’s special-election win for the US Senate in January, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by the Sunlight Foundation.

Also, a Nevada-based political action committee called Western Representative paid $10,000 for an e-mail campaign opposing Representative Barney Frank; the group also took out $1,560 in radio ads supporting Marty Lamb, the Republican nominee challenging Representative James McGovern. Several outside groups also supported Mac D’Alessandro in his unsuccessful Democratic primary campaign against Representative Stephen Lynch.

At least $3.6 million has been spent in New Hampshire, most of it on the US Senate race between Representative Paul Hodes, the Democrat, and former attorney general Kelly Ayotte, the Republican. No outside money has been spent this year in Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, or Rhode Island.

All told, $95.5 million has been spent this year by groups not affiliated with a campaign or national party organizations. In contrast, the top campaign committees for the parties have spent $41.2 million on independent expenditures, which are made to advocate for specific candidates but are not coordinated with their campaigns.

There are various types of outside groups, including organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce or trade unions such as the AFL-CIO. But increasingly, there are also well-funded groups whose donors are harder to trace. This year, for example, GOP strategist Karl Rove helped form a nonprofit organization called Crossroads GPS that has been purchasing ads across the country.

To avoid some of the stricter disclosure requirements of the tax code, groups have been registering as nonprofits under the 501(c) section of the tax code — which applies to social welfare groups, unions, and trade associations — rather than section 527, which is reserved for political organizations and requires disclosure of donors. The nonprofit groups are allowed to engage in political campaigns, but only if that constitutes less than half of their spending.

Two nonpartisan organizations, Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center, asked the Internal Revenue Service this week to investigate whether Rove’s group is violating its tax status as a nonprofit. The IRS does not comment on specific cases. A spokesman for Rove’s group stood by its activities.

“Our organization carefully and methodically follows the law, as do the center left who play in this space,’’ said Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for Crossroads GPS. “There’s nothing new here. It’s a model that was copied by the Democrat and left-wing playbook and now that the right is raising more money, everyone is up in arms.’’

Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter last week to the IRS commissioner asking the agency to examine whether nonprofit organizations are complying with the tax laws. Currently, the IRS is the primary overseer of such nonprofit groups.

The use of undisclosed funds has skyrocketed. During the 2006 midterms, for example, 97 percent of groups taking out a broadcast ad just before an election disclosed the donors funding the ads. This year, fewer than a third have made such disclosures, according to a study by Public Citizen, a voters rights group.

The outside groups are mostly expected to bolster Republicans and offset weak fund-raising from the Republican National Committee.

The American Future Fund was formed in 2007, but did not become a force on the national scene until earlier this year when it took out ads against Coakley. The spot took a comment out of context from Coakley saying, “We need to get taxes up.’’

At the time, Brown disavowed the group, but the ads accomplished the goal of casting Coakley as a tax-raising liberal.

Greiner served for 16 years as a state representative in the Iowa Legislature. She was initially treasurer of the American Future Fund but became the group’s president last year. Its stated mission is “to promote conservative free market principles to the citizens of America.’’ None of the officers are compensated.

A spokesman told the Center for Public Integrity last month that the group planned to spend up to $25 million this year.

“This is the fun part of politics,’’ Greiner told the Sacramento Bee, shortly after the group’s ads ran in the Massachusetts election.

Some of the group’s ads were made by Larry McCarthy, who worked for Governor Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign and produced the 1988 Willie Horton ad that damaged Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign that year.

The past president, Nicole Schlinger, was Romney’s Iowa straw poll coordinator during his presidential campaign. The young conservative liaison, Cord Overton, was a field consultant for Romney’s presidential campaign. His political director, Jill Latham, also has a role with American Future Fund.

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The man most responsible for the Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to be more directly involved in politics said that fears of corporate takeovers of campaigns were overblown.

Dave Bossie is president of Citizens United, the conservative group that sued the Federal Election Commission and won a 5-4 decision in January. In an interview, he said he believes there is not "an ounce of evidence" that the ruling itself will drastically increase overall campaign spending, although it appears to be affecting who is raising and spending it. The Washington Post reported Monday that "outside groups" have spent about $80 million in congressional races this year, roughly five times the amount spent in 2006, and that only about half of the donations are public. Republican-leaning groups have outspent groups supporting Democrats by about 7-1, according to the Post. Bossie and others say that is a reflection of opposition to the Obama administration's policies as much as the Supreme Court decision.

The split court ruled that the Constitution's free-speech guarantee meant the government could not ban corporate participation in political campaigns, although direct corporate donations to politicians are still banned.

Not everyone agrees with Bossie, most notably President Barack Obama, who argues that the decision allows corporations and wealthy donors to give anonymously, and in unlimited amounts, to groups that can try to influence elections by organizing through parts of the federal tax code governing educational and lobbying nonprofits. These sections, called C3 and C4, have less stringent disclosure requirements than those put on candidates and other political committees organized under different parts of the federal election or Internal Revenue Service codes.

"We've got great candidates who are taking their case directly to the American people, but they are being drowned out by groups like Americans for Prosperity," Obama said at a Philadelphia rally last week, pointing out one of the conservative organizations he said is exploiting the decision. "We know who they are — but nobody knows where the money is coming from."

Americans for Prosperity was started by oil-industry billionaire David Koch, a longtime contributor to Republican candidates. The group is running issue ads favorable to Republican candidates in about 10 congressional districts.

Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips said his organization represents 1.5 million activists who believe "reducing the size and intrusiveness of government is the best way to promote individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans."

Ed Gillespie, the former Republican National Committee chairman and adviser for former President George W. Bush, helped found American Crossroads, another group that has drawn criticism from the left. The group hopes to raise $50 million to help Republicans win congressional elections this fall. On Friday, the Center for Responsive Politics reported that over the previous seven days, American Crossroads had spent $3.4 million on advertisements, mailings and other activity helping Senate candidates in Colorado, Illinois, Washington, Missouri, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Florida and Kentucky — all pivotal states in the GOP's attempt to take control of the Senate.

Last week, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., asked the IRS to investigate if groups like American Crossroads were staying within the law's tax-exempt requirements, including restrictions that they not be primarily involved in political activity.

"Is the tax code being used to eliminate transparency in the funding of our elections?" Baucus asked in a letter to the IRS.

Critics say the problem is not the amount, but the fact that so much of the money comes from anonymous donors with axes to grind that hide behind benign-sounding names.

"Groups don't always produce ads that are straightforward," said Bill Allison, investigative editor at the Sunlight Foundation. "They don't say, 'We are the tobacco industry and we are against (a candidate) because he wants to crack down on our product.' Instead, they talk about his family values."

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Sandy Greiner is a 64-year-old grandmother of six, farming corn and soybeans in Iowa while running for the state Senate. She’s also steering one of the biggest efforts to inject unrestricted and anonymous funding into the midterm elections, financing ads around the country in an attempt to win Republican majorities.

Greiner is president of the American Future Fund, which has poured money into at least 20 congressional races this year, spending $7.5 million — and which reportedly has plans to spend three times more. Outside of the traditional political parties and campaign committees, it is among the most active groups trying to influence the elections.

But because it is registered as a nonprofit, it does not have to reveal its contributors. That exemption from traditional bounds of reporting requirements makes it virtually impossible to determine who is funding the group, and why. Yet groups such as Greiner’s — launched onto the national scene earlier this year, with $650,000 in attack ads against Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley during her unsuccessful bid for US Senate — could determine the balance of power in the House and Senate.

“It’s a bit of a free-for-all this election cycle, made all the more complicated by the plain fact that many of the groups engaging in political messaging or advertising don’t have to disclose who’s funding those ads,’’ said Dave Levinthal, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization that studies money in politics. “You have these nonprofit groups that are not supposed to have a primary purpose of engaging in politics, yet many of them are engaging in politics with great regularity.’’

The American Future Fund is among dozens of interest groups whose influence on campaigns has surged following a Supreme Court ruling that relaxed restrictions on corporate and union donations. Greiner and representatives for her group did not return several messages this week seeking comment about where the group gets its money and who is involved.

So far this year, at least $5.6 million has been spent in Massachusetts by outside groups, almost all of it during Scott Brown’s special-election win for the US Senate in January, according to Federal Election Commission data compiled by the Sunlight Foundation.

Also, a Nevada-based political action committee called Western Representative paid $10,000 for an e-mail campaign opposing Representative Barney Frank; the group also took out $1,560 in radio ads supporting Marty Lamb, the Republican nominee challenging Representative James McGovern. Several outside groups also supported Mac D’Alessandro in his unsuccessful Democratic primary campaign against Representative Stephen Lynch.

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