Where this organisation actually stands.

irabu.org is a sponsorship programme run by Irabu, the commercial company that builds the platform. A separate legal entity for the nonprofit arm is being formed. Until that is finished:

• Every obligation on this site is an obligation of the commercial company.
• Mission tier places are given by that company, at its own cost, under the 3% commitment.
• No sponsorship money is being taken, because there is nothing that could lawfully receive it.
• There is no separate board, no separate bank account and no separate accounts to publish.

When incorporation completes, this page will carry the registered name, the number, the jurisdiction and the governing document. Not before.

The 3% commitment

Irabu commits 3% of its profit to this programme. That is what pays for places today, before any sponsor is involved. It is worth being exact about it, because this is the kind of commitment that gets quietly inflated in the retelling.

• 3% of profit, not revenue. A percentage of revenue would be a much larger number and we are not claiming it.
• A forward commitment, not a track record. We are not publishing an amount, because there is no audited figure to publish and an estimate presented as a fact is exactly what this page exists to avoid.
• In a year with no profit, 3% is nothing. That is the honest shape of a profit-linked commitment, and it is precisely why sponsorship exists alongside it rather than instead of it.
• Sponsors add capacity on top. Sponsorship money does not substitute for the commitment or reduce it.

Funding the programme from the commercial business has two consequences worth stating plainly, one good and one not.

What we will publish, and when

Once the entity exists and has a first financial year, this page will carry, annually:

• Total income, split into the 3% commitment and sponsorship — including the cash amount the commitment actually produced that year.
• Total spend, split into programme delivery and everything else.
• The share of income reaching the programme, calculated the same way each year, with the method shown.
• Places funded by the commitment versus places funded by sponsors.
• Groups supported and groups declined, with the main reasons for decline, broken down by the six group types.
• How long listed groups waited for a sponsor, and how many were never sponsored.
• The value of licences given, at Mission list rate.

None of those numbers exist yet. We are not printing estimates in their place.

A nonprofit arm that gives away its own parent company’s product is a conflict of interest. Pretending otherwise would be the fastest way to lose a serious funder, so here is our position on it.

The conflict

Sponsored licences build market share, produce goodwill and create future paying customers. Those are commercial benefits and they accrue to the company funding the programme. A sponsor’s money, once it opens, would also flow to a commercial entity for its own product.

Why Mission is not the business product

Giving the full commercial product away for nothing would undercut the customers whose payments generate the 3%. Mission is a deliberately different tier so that the programme does not compete with the business that funds it. That is a constraint on generosity, and we would rather explain it than pretend it is not there.

What we will not do

We do not upsell sponsored groups. There is no sales contact, no conversion target on the programme, and no point at which a sponsored place silently becomes a paid plan. If a group outgrows Mission, we say so and they decide.

Sponsors do not choose who is approved

A sponsor can pick which listed group to cover. A sponsor cannot influence eligibility, get a group approved, or have one removed. Approval happens before anyone sees a listing.

Sponsors never see inside a workspace

A sponsor is told which group they covered and that it is running. Not what is in it, not who uses it, not how much.

Data separation

Group workspace content is not used for commercial marketing, is not shared with the sales side, and is not used to train models.

No conditions on groups

We do not require a logo, a testimonial, a case study or a public thank-you as a condition of access or of sponsorship. Sponsorship does not buy publicity.

Once the entity exists

Eligibility decisions will sit with the nonprofit entity, its criteria published, and at least one person on its board will be independent of the commercial company. Restricted funding from third parties will be held and reported separately, and the 3% will be paid to the entity rather than spent on its behalf.

Today, decisions about the programme — eligibility, approvals, renewals — are made inside the commercial company. There is no independent board, because there is not yet an entity for one to govern.

We are not going to list advisors or supporters we do not have. A names section on a page like this is easy to write and worth nothing, and funders read it that way.

What is in place now

• Published eligibility criteria that we apply consistently, so a decision can be checked against a written rule rather than a mood.
• A written reason for every decline, sent to the applicant.
• An appeal route: reply to the decision email and a different person reviews it.
• A safeguarding contact, safeguarding@irabu.org, acknowledged within one working day.

Institutional funders usually ask which frameworks a programme maps onto. Ours maps most directly onto two of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This is our own assessment of alignment — we are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or accredited to the United Nations or any of its agencies.

Impact claims are where nonprofit communications most often stop being true. So the method is being written before the numbers exist, not after.

We will not publish “hours saved”, “people reached”, “lives changed” or “incomes raised” figures. Those are modelled numbers presented as measured ones, and we would have no way to defend them. A programme that hands out software cannot honestly claim credit for someone’s income going up.

Sponsored groups run on the same platform as commercial customers, so the same statement applies — including the gaps.

The full statement is on the commercial security page.