Royal Ontario Museum

100 Queens Park
Toronto, ON M5S 2C6
President & CEO: Josh Basseches
Board Chair: Robert Chant

Charitable Reg. #:13628 2126 RR0001

STAR RATING

Ci's Star Rating is calculated based on the following independent metrics:

[Charity Rating: 4/5]

✔+

FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY

Audited financial statements for current and previous years available on the charity’s website.

B+

RESULTS REPORTING

Grade based on the charity's public reporting of the work it does and the results it achieves.

n/r

DEMONSTRATED IMPACT

The demonstrated impact per dollar Ci calculates from available program information.

NEED FOR FUNDING

Charity's cash and investments (funding reserves) relative to how much it spends on programs in most recent year.

76%

CENTS TO THE CAUSE

For a dollar donated, after overhead costs of fundraising and admin/management (excluding surplus) 76 cents are available for programs.



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OVERVIEW

About Royal Ontario Museum:

The Royal Ontario Museum is a 4-star charity with an above average results reporting grade. It is financially transparent, and has reasonable overhead spending. With its current reserves, excluding donor-endowed funds, the charity can cover more than 4 months of annual program costs.  

Founded in 1914, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is the largest museum in Canada. Its mission is to transform lives by helping people to understand the past, make sense of the present, and come together to shape a shared future. The museum showcases art, culture, and nature from across the globe and across the ages. Donors giving to the ROM primarily give through the Royal Ontario Museum Foundation. 

The ROM has 13 million items on display across 40 galleries and exhibits. The ROM has two main collections: Arts and Culture and Natural History. The Arts and Culture collection includes 386,000 pieces of artwork from the Americas and 242,000 pieces from the ancient Near East, among others. In its Natural History collection, the ROM has 5.3 million insect, 1.3 million invertebrate, 1.5 million fish, and 1.2 million plant specimens, among others. In addition to its onsite exhibits, the ROM ran one travelling exhibition in F2022, the Christian Dior exhibition. The final stop of the exhibition was in Montreal, Quebec, and had 92,940 visitors.   

In F2022, 346,400 people visited the Royal Ontario Museum (84,500 in F2021). Around half the visitors are Canadian, with 72% originating from within Ontario. The ROM provided 15,378 free tickets through initiatives that remove financial, social and cultural barriers during the year.  

The ROM also runs many youth education programs. During the covid-19 pandemic, in-person school visits were suspended and did not resume in F2022. However, in F2022, Virtual School Visits recorded 155,000 students and over 31,000 students participated in digital events focusing on Indigenous programming. After closure due to the pandemic, the ROM's two hands-on galleries reopened. Around 213,000 people got hands-on experience with objects, specimens and live animals. The ROMKids programs normally involve summer camp groups and weekend clubs; however, F2022 they offered virtual family workshops reaching over 2,700 children.  

The Royal Ontario Museum has a strong digital presence, with the ROM at Home platform being visited 259,600 times in F2022 (208,000 in F2021). In this same fiscal year, the ROM launched its first mobile app, which provides virtual tours of the ROM collections. In F2022, the ROM finished digitalizing parts of its collection and made it accessible through an eMuseum portal.  The portal currently has 75,073 objects uploaded online.  

The Royal Ontario Museum also conducts research in the fields of art, culture, and nature. In F2022, ROM staff authored 113 publications. 

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Results and Impact

The Royal Ontario Museum reports that for every dollar invested in the museum by the Ontario government, it generates $10 in GDP. The ROM also reports supporting 2,940 jobs and generating $17.1 million in tax revenue across all three levels of government. These outcomes come from an economic impact study done by Deloitte Canada, published in 2019 and based on the ROM’s 2017-18 data.

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Finances

The ROM’s fundraising arm is the Royal Ontario Museum Foundation, which was founded in 1992. Its common name is ROM Governors. The ROM and ROM Governors have independent boards and are separate registered charities.   

The following financial review represents the consolidated financial position of Royal Ontario Museum and ROM Governors.  

Royal Ontario Museum is a Major 100 charity, meaning it is one of Canada’s largest in terms of donations. It received $56.6m in donations and special events fundraising in F2022, which is a 209% increase from F2021 where it received $18.3m. Administrative costs are 21% of revenues (excluding investment income) and fundraising costs are 3% of donations and special events fundraising. For every dollar donated, 76 cents go to the cause. This is within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending. 

Net funding reserves of $98.3m include $126.5m in cash and investments and $28.3m in bank debt.  Externally endowed funds total $88.1m. The ROM’s funding reserves, excluding donor endowments, can cover program costs for over four months.  

ROM Governors uses external fundraisers to collect donations through telemarketing. In F2022, ROM Governors paid $52k to external fundraisers who raised $158k. It cost the charity 33 cents for every dollar raised by external fundraisers.  

Compensation information represents the combined T3010 salary data filed by the ROM and ROM Governors in F2022. 

This report is an update that has been sent to Royal Ontario Museum for review. Comments and edits may be forthcoming. 

Updated on June 20, 2023 by Alessandra Castino. 

Financial Review


Financial Ratios

Fiscal year ending March
202220212020
Administrative costs as % of revenues 20.5%37.0%25.2%
Fundraising costs as % of donations 3.4%8.2%3.7%
Total overhead spending 23.9%45.2%28.9%
Program cost coverage (%) 36.1%10.7%23.7%

Summary Financial Statements

All figures in $000s
202220212020
Donations 55,44918,14444,826
Government funding 50,53245,36527,515
Fees for service 9,2112,11226,236
Special events 1,165193208
Investment income 2,78016,644(9,096)
Other income 1,2958721,001
Total revenues 120,43283,33090,690
Program costs 32,61528,78642,888
Administrative costs 24,10924,66225,136
Fundraising costs 1,9351,5101,649
Other costs 9,93800
Total spending 68,59754,95869,673
Cash flow from operations 51,83528,37221,017
Capital spending 13,3269,3138,691
Funding reserves 98,25656,56749,545

Note: Interfund transfers between the ROM and ROM Governors have been excluded from the analysis, removing offsetting total revenues and expenses of $3.0m in F2022, $3.3m in F2021, and $7.3m in F2020. Ci excluded amortization of deferred capital assets, decreasing revenues by $13.1m in F2022, $13.2m in F2021 and $12.6m in F2020. Ci adjusted for deferred donations and capital contributions, affecting revenues by $6.9m in F2022, $7.5m in F2021 and $12.4m in F2020. Funding received by ROM from the federal government was gathered from the charity’s T3010 CRA filings. ROM Governor’s investment income is reported net of counsel fees, decreasing total revenue and expenses by $241k in F2022, $211k in F2021, and $233k in F2020. The ROM’s program, fundraising and administrative spending figures come from the charity’s T3010 CRA filings. Amortization of $14.0m in F2022, $13.7m in F2021 and $12.9m in F2020 has been removed from program costs.

Salary Information

Full-time staff: 337

Avg. compensation: $108,899

Top 10 staff salary range:

$350k +
2
$300k - $350k
3
$250k - $300k
0
$200k - $250k
3
$160k - $200k
2
$120k - $160k
0
$80k - $120k
0
$40k - $80k
0
< $40k
0

Information from most recent CRA Charities Directorate filings for F2022

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Comments & Contact

Comments added by the Charity:

No comments have been added by the charity.

Charity Contact

Website: www.rom.on.ca
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Tel: 416.586.5660

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Charitable Registration Number: 80340 7956 RR0001