Support
Help keep Council Books free
Council Books is free for everyone, runs no ad networks and answers to no one but its readers. It is paid for by people who think residents should be able to understand how their council spends public money.
Support us on Ko-fiOur rules about money
Ko-fi handles the payment. We never see your card details. One-time or monthly, any amount helps.
Opens Ko-fi’s donation form on this page. Nothing loads from Ko-fi until you click.
What your support pays for
- Reading the documents. Every town we look at closely means hours of budgets, audited statements, auditor reports and council records, often hundreds of pages, before a single question is written.
- Checking every number. Each figure on the site is checked against the document it comes from, and each question links to its source.
- More towns, kept up to date. Ontario has 413 municipalities that run their own services. Support lets us read more of them closely and refresh the ones we have when new budgets and reports come out.
- Keeping it free. No paywall and no ad networks, and we never sell your data. We use Google Analytics to see which pages help people, only if you say yes. Privacy
Our rules about money
- Support never buys influence. No one can pay to add, change or remove a question, or to have a town left out. Councils and residents can always answer a question for free through our contact page.
- We do not take money from candidates, political parties, councils or municipal staff. If we learn a gift came from one, we give it back.
- Local sponsors stay apart from the content. A town's page can carry up to five local sponsors, one shown on each visit, always labelled, never next to a question, and with no say in what we write. We never accept candidates, parties, the municipality itself or its contractors. The full rules.
- We say who pays. Council Books is funded by readers through Ko-fi, and by any local sponsors shown on town pages. If that changes, this page will say so.
Not a charity
Council Books is not a registered charity, so we cannot issue tax receipts. Your support is a gift, not a tax-deductible donation.
Other ways to help
- Share your town's page with neighbours, local groups and candidates. That is how residents find it.
- Tell us about a document we should read, or a number we got wrong, on the contact page.
- Ask the questions. Every question on the site ends with things you could ask your council. Ontario votes October 26.