This post was published on Jan. 4, 2023 when the IJF launched. Want to see how we're spending supporters' money today? Please go here.
The IJF is a nonprofit. That means every dollar from donors and subscribers directly supports our mission of strengthening Canadian democracy through public interest journalism. You can see a full list of all our donors here. Want to join them? You can subscribe here or donate here.
At launch, we spend our supporters' money in three key areas: staff, tech and miscellaneous. Staff costs 83 per cent, tech is 13 per cent and miscellaneous is 4 per cent.
Our staff’s salaries, including payroll taxes and other related costs, make up 83 per cent of our monthly costs.
We spend 13 per cent on tech costs. This is mostly Amazon Web Services (AWS), which we use for our backend. It also includes Supabase, Vercel, Mailchimp, Logtail, and Docsend.
Our miscellaneous category makes up four per cent of our costs. It includes insurance, lawyers' fees, and our accountant. We spend about two per cent on insurance, which includes media liability, cyber liability and general liability insurance. We also spend about two per cent on our accountant and lawyers.
Our spending is likely to go up after we launch. For example, our AWS costs are partially based on how many people are conducting free searches on the databases, so those will jump.
Similarly, we’re proud that we’re now accepting submissions from freelancers so that will be a new cost area.
We’ll update this page at the end of the next fiscal year, which ends on October 31 each year.