‘Why should I become a Maple member when I already support other independent media outlets with my limited budget?’
I’ve come across that question often this year. There are several things I could bring up to answer it here, but I’ll focus on one: our funding model.
We’re a 100 per cent reader-funded publication, meaning all of our revenue comes from memberships and one-time donations. We mention this often, but few know how rare our model is, even among the independent outlets you may associate us with.
These outlets will describe themselves as reader funded, and that’s true in the sense that they get some of their funding from readers. But it’s not the whole story.
I reviewed a range of independent media outlets’ funding models on their websites to see what percentage of their revenue comes from readers. I found the median was about 44 per cent, with other sources including ads, charitable donations, corporate donors, government funding and unions making up the rest. For comparison, in 2025 Postmedia got about 34 per cent of its revenue from readers. So, while other independent outlets are generally doing better than that, it’s not by much.
To give you one example of the money these publications are getting, let’s look at the Canadian Journalism Collective’s (CJC) funding recipients.
The CJC was created to hand out the $100 million Google agreed to pay the Canadian government annually. It has distributed one-year’s worth of this funding, with four more to come. My review of the numbers found that independent publications you may associate us with have received between $12,000 and $140,000 from Google thus far, with an average of about $78,000. We’re proud that we’ve taken $0 from Google.
So, what’s the catch? Does “reader funded” actually mean some shady rich guy is making a massive annual donation that keeps us afloat?
Not at all. Here are the facts.
The vast majority of our revenue comes through annual or monthly memberships at three levels: 1) $70 annually or $7 per month; 2) $150 annually or $15 per month; 3) $250 annually or $25 per month. About 88 per cent of members are at the $70 level, 9 per cent are at the $150 level and 3 per cent are at the $250 level.
In sum: the overwhelmingly majority of The Maple’s funding has come from thousands of readers purchasing relatively cheap annual memberships.
But what about one-time donations? The numbers on this front may be surprising to people familiar with the finances of non-profits.
The median one-time donation to The Maple is just under $11. Our highest one-time donation was $1,039, which we’re certainly very grateful for but is just a fraction of what other outlets have received from their largest donors. To get even more specific, we’ve had just three donations over $1,000, nine over $400, 28 over $300 and 74 over $200, ever.
I’m proud of these numbers because they’re proof we survive off of widespread, organic support from the many, not the potentially temporary goodwill of the few.
To be clear, there are good reasons why other outlets don’t rely solely on readers. For example, the funding they’ve received from other sources may allow them to hire more journalists or to continue paying the ones they already employ. I’m not saying these outlets are doing something bad — they’re just doing something different from what we’ve committed to since we launched.
Sometimes, however, these differences have put us at financial odds. One clear example is the ongoing dispute between the Canadian government and Meta.
The government’s proposal to force Meta and Google to pay Canadian media outlets has received explicit, widespread support from the industry, including publications on the right and left alike. We aren’t one of them.
As a result of this dispute, Meta has stopped its users from seeing Canadian news content. This means that the Instagram and Facebook accounts we spent years building and have tens of thousands of followers on are now effectively useless.
The same is true of other outlets to some extent, but we’re not in the same boat. For one, as I’ve outlined, they get the majority of their funding from other sources, meaning the absence of the sort of organic support social media can bring may sting less for them than us.
Also, as has been the case with Google, these publications may receive significant amounts of money from Meta should it end up making a deal with the government. We will get $0, no matter what. We’re dealing with all the negatives but stand to receive none of the positives.
Now, you’re probably wondering why we’ve refused to take what may seem like easy money.
There are a few reasons we decided on this when we launched as a publication and have stuck by it: 1) principle; 2) stability; 3) editorial freedom; 4) protection from those who’d like to shut us down.
First, we believe refusing to take money from sources we have moral, ethical and significant political issues with is a principled thing to do. Google is a clear example of this. As a publication that has spent the past two years reporting extensively on the genocide in Gaza, I don’t think our readers would appreciate if we took money from Google, which in 2025, as reported by Dropsite News, signed a “$45 million contract with Netanyahu’s office to spread Israeli propaganda.”
Second, relying solely on reader funding means we’re more stable, which is important for the team we employ. If we were awarded with an ongoing federal government grant that gave us tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars we could end up hiring more journalists. But what if the government in power changed and the new one decided to cut all that funding, as the Conservatives were set to do? We’d have to lay people off and scale back. We’d rather grow slowly and steadily.
Third, if we relied on a small number of major funders to stay alive, we’d worry about whether what we publish could cause them to pull their financial support, as this sort of funding often comes with explicit or implicit conditions. In such cases, journalists can start to self-censor and avoid publishing important work. That is not something we have to worry about at The Maple, as we rely on thousands of funding sources: our members. We believe you can only be truly independent as a publication when you’re financially independent.
Finally, being 100 per cent reader funded means we’re more resilient to attacks intended to shut us down. This year has been a great example of this point in practice.
Earlier this year I launched a series about Canadians who join the Israeli military, which attracted organic support throughout the world but also intense backlash from Zionists and the Israeli government. If you’ve followed these sorts of controversies at all, you’ll know Zionists will try to get the funding their targets receive cut as a means of shutting them down. If we relied on government grants or major donors, those attacking our work would have a target to pressure. Their efforts are often successful given the significant financial and political influence they hold.
In our case, that wasn’t an option for them. The only option they had was to try to convince thousands of our readers to drop us. They didn’t bother, probably because they knew it would be incredibly difficult, and if they had, I’m confident our readers would have told them to [redacted].
These reasons and more are why we’ve decided to be 100 per cent reader funded. And our existing members are incredibly supportive of this choice.
A poll of readers we ran last month found that 79 per cent are staunchly opposed to us changing our funding model. More than 90 per cent of our readers are also against specific funding sources that other outlets take, such as major corporate donations.
We respect our readers, and we have no plans of changing our funding model. What this means, however, is that we’re in need of new, ongoing and expanded financial support from readers like you to keep us alive, and that we have to run fundraising campaigns to make this happen.
We’re in the midst of our most important funding drive yet.
If you want to support a truly independent media outlet where “reader funded” is more than a marketing tool, please become a Maple member and/or make a one-time donation now. We value every dollar we receive, and your contribution will help ensure everything we publish remains free for all.
If you’re convinced, please share this explainer as widely as you can. We can’t thank you enough.
