2023 Transparency Report

On April 20, 2023, The Maple and Passage merged into one publication. Passage was launched in February 2020, and The Maple, in its original form, was launched in August 2021. The new publication retained The Maple’s branding and staff members from both publications. Davide Mastracci, the former managing editor at Passage, became the opinion editor at The Maple. Alex Cosh, the former managing editor at The Maple, became the news editor at The Maple. You can read our FAQ page about the merger to learn more.

This Transparency Report documents work at The Maple from the merger onward, and includes details on our revenue, costs, and output last year. As a 100 per cent reader-funded organization, we believe it’s important to share this information with you. The Maple’s continued existence is only possible thanks to the generosity of our members, who provide 100 per cent of our funding. Thank you for supporting us.

These Transparency Reports will be released on an annual basis going forward, though this one will be slightly different. This report will cover the period from April 20 to December 31 of 2023, which is from the merger until the end of the year. This means that the periods from Dec. 1, 2022 to April 19, 2023 at Passage and Nov. 23, 2021 to April 19, 2023 at The Maple are not covered in this transparency report or any previous ones published by Passage and The Maple when they were independent publications. All past transparency reports, however, are available online, and our funding model during these periods remained the same as before and after.

Next year’s transparency report for The Maple will cover from January 1 to December 31 of 2024, and this timeline will be used for all years going forward.

If you haven’t become a Maple member yet, we hope you’ll consider supporting us after reading this report so that we can continue to grow, and better fulfil our mission of producing the highest quality left news, opinion, and analysis in Canada.

Thank you,

The Maple team.

Revenue

The Maple is a non-profit funded exclusively by readers like you, which means all revenue is re-invested to grow the publication.

The Maple’s revenue throughout the year has come from readers signing up as members, and, to a much lesser degree, donations. Readers are able to donate as much as they want, and/or sign up at a monthly ($7, $15, $25), annual ($70, $150, $250) or, for a limited period, lifetime ($499) level. A variety of other membership rates have also been available at various points throughout the existence of The Maple’s predecessors, and some current members maintain these rates.

The amount of revenue each month has varied throughout the year, with new members joining and some cancelling. As of December 31, the last day included in this report, we had 4,698 active paying readers at a variety of membership levels, and received $16,668 in donations from April 20 onward.

Fundraising Campaigns

Our 2023 end-of-year annual fundraising campaign was launched on December 1 and ended on December 31. We had a goal of bringing on at least 500 new members and $40,000 in revenue. The campaign ended up resulting in 413 new members and approximately $44,000 in new revenue.

In next year’s report, we’ll provide information on all of the major fundraising campaigns in 2024.

How We Spend Your Money Each Month

We’ve spent a different amount of money each month, and in a variety of ways, throughout the year, including on newsletters, articles, and other projects. It’s difficult to find a single month that can accurately represent our spending patterns. As such, recency is probably the best approach, so here’s an average of how we spent your money in the past three months.

Audience Numbers

Between April 20 and December 31, we published 67 articles (32 opinion articles and 35 news articles). We also published 35 Class Struggle newsletter editions, and sent other newsletters (Digest News, Digest Opinion, and Friday Roundup) on a combined-daily basis (excluding holidays and weekends).

Taken together, our website brought in about 852,000 page views during this period.

The top five articles by page views during this period were the following:

The top five news articles by page views during this period were the following:

The top five Class Struggle issues by page views during this period, all written by Adam D.K. King, were the following:

Articles We’re Especially Proud Of

One of the reasons we launched The Maple was to provide an outlet for the sort of views and reporting you won’t find in corporate media. We’ve felt happy with the progress we’ve made on this front, so here are a few articles and newsletter editions in particular we think represent what we did in 2023:

Diversity

The Maple now has three staffers: two white cis men and one racialized cis man.

We can provide you with a rough and broad estimate of the demographics of our freelance writers from April 20 to December 31. We didn’t ask our writers to provide this info, but we were able to put an estimate together. In order to protect the privacy of our low number of writers, and considering we haven’t actually surveyed any of them, we will keep the demographic stats very general. We recognize that this makes the data less useful, but it’s necessary at this point.

From April 20 to December 31, 69 per cent of our writers were white compared to 69 per cent of all Canadians, according to the most recent StatCan census. Also in this period, 56 per cent of our writers were cis men, and and 31 per cent of our writers were cis women. Trans and non-binary writers, meanwhile, made up about 13 per cent of our writers, compared to 0.3 per cent of the population in Canada.

Corrections

We edit and fact check every article and newsletter before publication. Regardless, we made errors in 2023.

When we realize we’ve made an error, often because readers like you bring them to our attention, we update the relevant article to correct it as quickly as possible. Then we include a correction notice at the bottom of the article explaining what we did, for full transparency. Here’s a list of corrections for all errors of which we’ve been made aware.

Correction: This article has been updated to accurately reflect the total number of seats won by the Alberta NDP.

Correction: This article has been updated to note that Cooper did post an announcement about his new project on LinkedIn before this article was published.

Correction: This story has been updated to include a quote from Sam Cooper’s statement on LinkedIn.

Correction: This newsletter has been updated to note that the B.C. Labour Relations Board has taken a position on digital union cards.

Correction: This article was updated on June 21 to clarify that an investment property attributed to MP Shannon Stubbs actually belongs to her spouse.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to Vilnius as the capital of Latvia. In fact, it is the capital of Lithuania.

Correction: This interview has been updated with editor’s notes to point out and correct two errors.

Correction: This article has been updated to clarify the nature of the new model proposed for drivers.

Correction: This story has been updated to accurately reflect the most up-to-date information about the deaths of Israelis and migrant workers on October 7.

Correction: This story has been updated to accurately reflect the most up-to-date information about the deaths of Israelis and migrant workers on October 7.

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the union density percentage for the federal private sector.

If you’d like to send us any feedback, please email us at hello@readthemaple.com with “Transparency Report” in the subject line.