JFC Funding and budget
The Japan Fact Check Center (JFC) offers fact checking free of charge. This is because it is impossible to compete with the free false information if there is a charge for the verification articles that point out the errors.
For this reason, JFC relies primarily on donations and grants to fund its activities. In order to maintain organizational transparency, we will regularly disclose information about our budget and new funding here.
Support for JFC
Upon its establishment in October 2022, JFC received grant support of USD$1.5 million from Google.org, and 20 million yen from Yahoo! JAPAN.
In addition, in October 2023, JFC received funding of 5 million yen from LINE Yahoo! and in December of the same year, 4 million yen from Meta.
JFC is committed to promoting fact-checking and media literacy in order to improve the information environment and protect a healthy democratic society. In order to maintain and strengthen our activities, we would like to ask for broad support from various companies, organizations, and individuals who agree with us.
Accounting
In order to ensure not only independence from external parties, but also independence from the parent organization, SIA, the budgets of SIA and JFC are managed independently in separate accounts.
Here we will publish the documents by fiscal year. The first fiscal year is from the establishment on October 1, 2022 to the end of March 2023. Thereafter, we will release the documents approved by SIA's Board of Directors in June after the end date of the fiscal year at the end of March, in order.
Note (July 12, 2024): To increase financial transparency, we will also disclose the breakdown of SIA's income, retroactive to the fiscal year 2022.
Financial Report for 2023
JFC's Financial Report for FY 2023 (April 2023 - March 2024) is here.
Total income for this period is ¥83,466,733, which includes ¥82,676,499 from grants by Google.org, LINE Yahoo Corporation, Meta, and additional revenue from news distribution.
Total expenses amount to ¥70,141,389. This includes ¥20,613,505 allocated for research and development, such as the 20,000-person survey conducted with GLOCOM.
The remaining balance will be carried over for content creation aimed at improving literacy (such as YouTube videos) from April 2024 onward.
Additionally, here is the breakdown of SIA’s income for FY 2023.
Financial Report for 2022
JFC's Financial Report for FY 2022 (October 2022 - March 2023) is here.
Total income for this period is ¥124,035,538, which includes grants from Google.org and Yahoo Corporation.
Total expenses, including the preparation period, amount to ¥36,517,596.
The remaining balance will be carried over for external research, tool development for fact-checking, and educational material development to enhance literacy.
Additionally, here is the breakdown of SIA’s income for FY 2022.
The organizations supporting JFC
(as of the end of January 2024)
Google.org
LY Corporation
Meta
