Supporting Canadian Atheist

Canadian Atheist is not and never has been a for-profit business. It’s primary goal is to be an information resource and community hub, not a money-making venture.

That said, it costs money to run Canadian Atheist, mostly in the form of hosting expenses. Also, we’d like to be able to do more, such as providing services to Canadian atheists in need, or maybe one day running a conference or event.

That’s why we ask for financial assistance from our readers. This is entirely optional. We will never have any form of paywall blocking CA content, and we would never ask readers who aren’t financially able to contribute anything. However, if you like Canadian Atheist, our content, what we stand for, and what we’re working toward, and you want to show your appreciation for what we do or help us do more, we would very much appreciate a contribution of a few dollars a month if you can afford it.

Before you donate

If you are interested in helping Canadian Atheist out, great! However, there are a few things you should be aware of first.

Canadian Atheist is not a registered charity. That means that any donations you make to us are not tax-deductible. (Will CA ever become a registered charity? Currently, we’re not considering the idea, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. It is something we would have to investigate.)

Canadian Atheist is not incorporated. That means it doesn’t exist as a separate entity with its own bank accounts and such. All of CA’s finances are currently handled out of the private accounts of the managing editor (currently Indi). For that reason, it is functionally impossible to extract “pure” financial statements for CA (for example, it is impossible to say how much CA pays in taxes, because that is all mixed in with the managing editor’s personal taxes). CA’s accounting is kept separate as much as practically possible, but unless/until CA becomes a legally independent organization, most of the accounting will have to be estimates. The methods used in the estimation are disclosed and explained in the financial reports. (Will CA ever incorporate or otherwise become an independent legal entity? If the income becomes enough to be able to pay for the costs of incorporation – or becoming a registered charity – then likely yes. But at the moment, that would just be another expense, and one with no particular benefit given the tiny amounts of money involved.)

You should also know how we spend our money, and how we plan to spend in the future. Detailed financial reports for past years are available for you to review, as well as a prospectus outlining plans for future spending.

Once you understand CA’s financial situation and what we plan to do with donated money, if you still want to help us out we greatly appreciate it. Read on to find out ways to contribute.

Contribution options

Here are the ways you can help Canadian Atheist out financially.

Liberapay

Liberapay logo

Liberapay is a platform for providing recurring donations to people or organizations you want to support. (It’s very similar to Patreon.)

Canadian Atheist has a profile on Liberapay at https://liberapay.com/canadian-atheist/ where you can set up a recurring, weekly donation.

The neat thing about Liberapay is that it is very friendly to small donations. You can make a weekly contribution as low as US$0.01… that’s one US cent (all money is in US dollars)… and the system is set up to minimize fees on all sides. (I haven’t tried it completely yet, but I believe the way it works is that once you set up a donation, a minimum of US$20 is taken from your credit/debit card. That cash is held in your “wallet”, and doled out as you specify, so if you give US$0.01 a week, that initial US$20 would last over 38 years.) It’s a great way to provide a small amount of support to a large amount of projects, and there are several worthy projects on Liberapay besides just Canadian Atheist.

Liberapay is the preferred platform for continued/recurring support of Canadian Atheist.

Patreon

Patreon logo

Patreon is the most popular platform for providing financial support to creators.

Canadian Atheist’s profile on Patreon is https://www.patreon.com/canatheist. You can set up a recurring, monthly donation there.

(Note that there are multiple profiles on Patreon with the name “Canadian Atheist” or something similar. Only https://www.patreon.com/canatheist is actually us.)

Become a Patron!