How We Count What We Report
Most nonprofit metrics are estimates typed into a form once a year. Ours are computed — every number on our impact page and our Candid profile is derived programmatically from records that carry their own dates, so anyone re-running the derivation gets the same answer. This page states each definition and the honest caveats.
“Nonprofits served” — span evidence
A nonprofit counts as served in year Y when a charity service or registered domain was in force during Y— measured from each record’s registration date to its next-due or expiry date (active services run through today). We deliberately do notcount from billing: our services are free, so most invoices are $0 and payment events dramatically undercount actual service delivery. We also don’t count from “current status” flags, which carry no history.
“Domains under management”
Distinct domains whose registration span covers the year. The current-year figure also includes organizations on legacy hosting that we manage outside our billing system — counted from our operational sites inventory, which is rebuilt weekly from live infrastructure (DNS, hosting, and health probes).
Support and volunteer metrics — a full census
For 2023–2025 we individually classified every conversation thread on the FFC support line — 5,951 threads read and categorized by hand, of which 1,153 were charity or volunteer traffic. Per-year interaction counts, active volunteers, active charity partners, and text-support hours all come from that census. No sampling, no extrapolation; only aggregate counts are ever published.
Volunteer hours — a conservative floor
We publish modeled hours from the census (each thread costed by its support category) rather than guessed totals. This undercounts— founder hours and untracked project work aren’t included — and we say so on the profile rather than inflating the number.
The corrections we made to our own history
Radical transparency includes our mistakes. When we rebuilt the metrics pipeline in 2026, we found our previously published member counts came from point-in-time dashboard readings with inconsistent method. Re-deriving from dated records showed:
- The 2022 value (104) was validated — span evidence gives 99, so the old reading was honest.
- The 2023 value (221) was wrong — it was a 2024 reading of a total accounts counter, not members served. The corrected value is 108, and that is what our profile now shows.
We chose to publish the smaller, defensible number. If you see our growth curve jump in 2024–2025, that’s real growth measured consistently — not a methodology change flattering us.
Privacy
All published figures are aggregate integer counts. No donor, charity contact, or volunteer’s personal information is ever included in the data files that drive this site.
Questions about a specific number? Ask us— the derivation exists in code and we’re glad to show our work.