CKUA Radio Foundation is a 3-star charity. It has a B Results Reporting grade, which is average. The charity’s overhead spending is within Ci’s reasonable range.

Founded in 1927 and established as a registered charity in 1983, CKUA Radio Foundation is an Alberta broadcasting service working to connect a community of music, art, and culture. It has a broadcast studio in Edmonton and one in Calgary. The CKUA library holds over one million sound recordings. CKUA spent $4.5m on its programs in the fiscal year ending in August 2024 (F2024).

CKUA Radio is on air 24 hours day, every day of the year. Hosts explore music genres like blues, roots, country, jazz, folk, soul, bluegrass, Celtic, classical, and choral. The charity aired 127.5 hours of original content per week and interviewed 256 musicians and artists in F2024. CKUA had an average of 500,000 monthly listeners.

CKUA Radio Foundation launched OnDemand in 2022. It consists of the same programs from the radio, but allows users to listen on their own schedule. In F2024, OnDemand saw an average of over two hours of streaming time and had 70,000 unique listeners.

CKUA Radio Foundation received $5.7m in donations (75% of total revenue) in F2024. This is an increase of 58% from $3.6m in F2023. Its lotteries earned 567k, net of costs. The charity received $69k in government funding and $87k in investment income.

CKUA spent $4.5m on its programs which is 60% of revenue. It ran a surplus of $252k which is 3% of revenue. The charity spent $1.2m on fundraising (21% of donations) and $1.1m in administrative costs, which is 14% of total revenue (excluding investment income). For every dollar donated to the charity, 65 cents are available to go to the cause. This is within Ci’s reasonable range between 65-95.

CKUA has $4.8m in reserve funds, but it has an interest bearing debt of $6.0m. Since it is likely building its reserves to pay this debt, this is within Ci’s reasonable range.

In F2024, CKUA Radio Foundation paid external fundraisers $107k to raise $1.2m in donations. The cost of raising a dollar through external fundraisers was nine cents.

At year end, CKUA Foundation had $6.0m in bank loans. These were flexible rate non-revolving bank loans which the bank had the right to call. After year end, in December 2024, CKUA Foundation and its bank, ATB Financial, amended the loans. In fiscal 2025 CKUA Foundation must repay $1.03 million ($810k was paid in January 2025 leaving $221k to be paid). CKUA Foundation will pay $331k in loan repayments in F2026 and F2027, with $4.086 million to be paid in F2028. These loans are secured by CKUA Foundation’s property of $13.9 million. CKUA Foundation’s auditor notes that this restructured lending reduces the liquidity risk of demand loans.

Updated on May 28, 2025 by Joshua Leduc.