The Royal Ontario Museum
STAR RATINGCi's Star Rating is calculated based on the following independent metrics: |
✔+
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.
72%
CENTS TO THE CAUSE
For a dollar donated, after overhead costs of fundraising and admin/management (excluding surplus) 72 cents are available for programs.
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OVERVIEW
About The Royal Ontario Museum:
The Royal Ontario Museum is a 4-star charity. It has a B+ results reporting grade, which is above average. Its overhead spending is within Ci’s reasonable range, and it has reserve funds to cover eight months of its annual program costs.
Founded in 1914, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is the largest museum in Canada. Its mission is to help people understand the past, make sense of the present, and shape a shared future. The ROM has two main programs: Exhibition and Gallery; and Digital, Research, and Learning.
Exhibition and Gallery: The museum holds a collection of 18 million artworks, cultural objects, and natural history specimens. It has 40 gallery and exhibition spaces. In the fiscal year ending March 2023 (F2023), the ROM welcomed 931,746 visitors. This is more than double the previous year’s total of 346,400, but short of pre-pandemic levels of 1.3 million. In F2023, 84,562 people visited the ROM for free through the ROM Community Access Network (ROMCAN). This included group visits from ROMCAN partners, new immigrants, visitors with disabilities, and Indigenous visitors. During F2023, over one million people saw the ROM’s travelling exhibitions at other museums. On King Charles III's coronation day, museum admission was free for all. Over 17,000 people attended. The ROM also offered its Free Main Floor program for the second year. 22,000 visitors came to the ROM for this free experience in F2023.
Digital, Research, and Learning: In F2023, 89,977 students and teachers engaged in a school visit to the ROM. 24,968 visited in-person and 61,712 participated in virtual lessons. The remaining 3,297 engaged in specialty digital programming such as ROM Minecraft. ROM partnered with St. Alban’s Boys and Girls Club in F2023 to deliver ROM Trailblazers. This program delivered five weeks of after-school ROM programming to 66 children in underserved GTA neighbourhoods. ROM Connects offers talks and panel discussions that highlight research, collections, and exhibitions. In F2023, 993 people attended six in-person ROM Connects. 746 people attended ten online ROM Connects.
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Results and Impact
In F2023, ROM researchers discovered the oldest known species of jellyfish. Natural History staff at the ROM published 40 peer-reviewed articles in F2023.
While Ci highlights these key outcomes, they may not be a complete representation of the Royal Ontario Museum’s results and impact.
This charity is not yet rated on impact (n/r).
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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. In F2023, the Royal Ontario Museum received $51.3m in donations and special events revenue. It also received $27.3m in government funding (24% of total revenue). The ROM made $25.1m in fees for service in F2023 (22% of total revenue). Administrative costs are 25% of total revenue (excluding investment income) and fundraising costs are 3% of donations. Overhead spending is 28%, which is within Ci’s reasonable range. For every dollar donated, 72 cents are available for the cause. In F2023, the ROM spent $47.4m on its programs (42% of total revenue).
In F2023, the ROM had a surplus of $37.0m and spent $8.8m on capital expenditures.
At the end of F2023, the ROM has $122.7m in reserve funds. $94.3m of its reserve funds are donor endowed. Excluding donor-endowed funds, the ROM has enough reserve funds to cover 67% or eight months of its annual program costs.
ROM Governors uses external fundraisers to collect donations. In F2023, external fundraisers collected $124k and received $20k from ROM Governors. It cost the charity 16 cents to raise a dollar through external fundraisers in F2023.
This charity profile is an update that has been sent to the Royal Ontario Museum for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.
Updated on July 29th by Thea Clark.
Financial Review
Fiscal year ending March
|
2023 | 2022 | 2021 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Administrative costs as % of revenues | 25.0% | 20.6% | 37.4% |
| Fundraising costs as % of donations | 2.9% | 3.4% | 8.2% |
| Total overhead spending | 27.9% | 24.0% | 45.7% |
| Program cost coverage (%) | 66.5% | 36.1% | 10.7% |
Summary Financial StatementsAll figures in $000s |
2023 | 2022 | 2021 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Donations | 51,261 | 55,449 | 18,144 |
| Government funding | 27,292 | 50,532 | 45,365 |
| Fees for service | 25,134 | 9,211 | 2,112 |
| Special events | 209 | 1,165 | 193 |
| Investment income | 3,499 | 2,780 | 16,644 |
| Other income | 5,811 | 945 | 81 |
| Total revenues | 113,206 | 120,082 | 82,539 |
| Program costs | 47,364 | 32,615 | 28,786 |
| Administrative costs | 27,388 | 24,109 | 24,662 |
| Fundraising costs | 1,495 | 1,935 | 1,510 |
| Other costs | 0 | 9,938 | 0 |
| Total spending | 76,247 | 68,597 | 54,958 |
| Cash flow from operations | 36,959 | 51,485 | 27,581 |
| Capital spending | 8,823 | 13,326 | 9,313 |
| Funding reserves | 122,689 | 98,256 | 56,567 |
Note: ADMINISTRATIVE AND FUNDRAISING COSTS: The charity does not report administrative and fundraising costs in its audited financial statements. Ci used the charity’s T3010 filing with the CRA to determine program, administrative, and fundraising costs. AMORTIZATION: Ci removed amortization of capital assets from program costs. DEFERRED REVENUE: The charity uses deferred accounting. To show donors this information on a consistent basis, Ci adjusted for deferred revenue. This affected total revenue by ($11.3m) in F2023, ($6.6m) in F2022, and ($6.7m) in F2021. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FUNDING: Ci used the charity’s T3010 filing with the CRA to determine federal government funding received. INVESTMENT COUNSEL FEES: Ci included investment counsel fees in investment income, decreasing total revenue and expenses by $226k in F2023, $241k in F2022, and $211k in F2021.
Salary Information
$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:
Charity Contact
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Tel: 416-586-5660